My Biggest Regret Building a Net Zero Home

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00:00 - Intro
01:21 - Passive houses
05:16 - Why I’m doing factory built
08:13 - Smart home
08:45 - Is it worth it?
10:58 - What about a retrofit?
12:37 - Regrets?

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[eklectiktoni]

Timing is so tricky since we can't accurately predict the future. But I think the old adage about planting trees might apply: _The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago, the next best time is now._ I think net zero builds are fascinating so I'm excited to see the progress of both houses.

[nd-place]

A family member built one of these. When we went to visit them, they showed us the paperwork that we will be inheriting it! They have no kids or spouse. I was taken aback. It is a very nice home and they had an architect design some really nice features. I feel so lucky and blessed. My wife and I could never afford to build a home like this. This property will be amazing for us in our retirement since it’s net zero and we don’t have a lot of savings, it even has a deep well so no water bill. It’s in an absolutely beautiful scenic location as well. Moral of the story is always be nice to your relatives and maintain relationships with them. Being the nice guy finally paid off! I can at least know that we’ll be warm with a roof over our heads when we’re old! It’s like a burden was lifted.

[jopo]

I tried designing an efficient home with my wife, but it always turned out to be a passive aggressive house.

[ZeroEnergyBuildingLLC]

Getting a passive, LEED, net-zero, or any third party certification adds cost to any project. As a business guy, I didn't understand the justification of added costs telling you that your house is efficient at first; but soon realized that it is a MUST if you want any chance of re-cooping the additional costs of anything energy efficiency in the sale of the house. Certification is the only way to transfer the additional costs into value.

[crowsfarm]

Big project!
We built our efficient home 10 years ago in the BC Rockies.
It is strawbale timberframe with annualized geo solar heat and dhw. Summer solar heat is moved into geothermal lines, my subsoil is currently 73f making winter heating more efficient.
We were able to use a lot of local and salvaged building materials. What we saved in purchases we spent on increased labour, but more of our money stayed local this way.
Just installed the PV system last year and our 8kw system is covering %80 of hydro bill.

[JesseArt]

My dad built a passively solar heated home utilizing greenhouses when we lived in New Hampshire. I'm not sure it would earn those shiny certifications today, but it was incredibly well insulated and did have excellent airflow. In winter even, as long as the sun was out, we often didn't even need to light the wood stove. We could just open the sliding doors to the up and downstairs greenhouses (porch/balcony rooms) and let the hot air in. With the glass south facing and the sun low enough in the sky for both direct and indirect radiant heat, it worked great. And the roof's overhang was long enough that it provided ample shade in the summertime, so we were never overwhelmed with heat in summer either. I remember getting my parents in trouble when I was little at school because I didn't understand at the time how it all worked and I told my teacher that we didn't have any heat at home other than the wood stove we sometimes lit downstairs. Ultimately, we lost that house when I was in grade school due to bankruptcy, but I always loved the simplicity of the design and the effectiveness of it. If I could ever afford to build my own, I would absolutely build something similar with a Net Zero goal. Personally, I love the idea of partially underground builds that maintain reasonable temperatures year round.

[cabanis]

Not just the savings in energy cost, passive house design brings an additional level of comfort. No more cold floors or even a need for heated floors when you focus on thermal bridging.

[Lew]

Congratulations on getting your new project started. I’m excited to see it unfold.

We should all keep in mind that energy efficiency isn’t all or nothing. Going full on NetZero might not be a good choice for some of us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from implementing a subset of the features of a net zero home. Adding insulation, installing a more efficient heating and cooling system, or maybe even adding few solar panels can make a big difference even if we fall well short of net zero.

[_Phillter]

My wife and I just finished building a factory house where we are settling in Saitama, Japan, and are moving in at the end of Oct. We went with a 10kWh solar system (because getting more meant registering as an independent power station), and just got the air-tightness results back a month ago, getting 0.5 all 3 times. We went with the company Ichijou because of their solar roofing and home battery options, as well as their really strict adherence to foreign-company levels of energy and materials efficiency. Hope your new home ends up being amazing!

[allenmgrayson]

Bought a 13 year old home North of Charlotte, NC. Lived in it for 5 years. Add a Water Furnace system (closed loop, 9 feet down) and our energy bill dropped between 32 & 36 %. My experience with Water Furnace equipment was excellent. Enjoy your channel good luck with your new house.

[edwardbarton]

When planning your "smart home" with IoT, you should make sure to keep the IoT devices separate from your main network. IoT has a lot of advantages, but they also come with a lot of security issues. I use a VLAN for my IoT devices (VLAN 107, obviously).

[brandonwallace]

@Undecided with Matt Ferrell I have an open geothermal system installed in my home. I was going to use Water Furnace as well but found out it is the luxury brand of Geostar. Similar to Lexus and Toyota. However with Water Furnace the internal components to the units are exactly the same. I have confirmed this with multiple employees. The Water Furnace has a nicer exterior paint job/graphics but that is all you get for what you pay for between the two units. I have a Geostar unit and it has been great. Support for it has been difficult in my area so I have had to learn how to maintain and troubleshoot it. I have made some modifications to my system so it is more efficient for heating. Just thought I would let you know you can save some money by going with Geostar.

[gatgolf]

a couple of items I ran into when building an energy efficient house. in no particular order. 1. seal the juncture between the outside sheathing and the mudsill/foundation. 2. make sure the ZIP tape on the sheathing is properly rolled after application, the contractors don't like doing this. 3. insulate under and around your concrete slab, whether it is your main floor or your basement floor. 4. Seal the drywall to the walls around the the floor and headers and all outside openings. 5. Sprayfoam all basement walls and extend up into the rim joists. 6. Make sure to use all airtight can lighting and any other ceiling penetrations. 7. Seal your air ducts, we used a product/process called aero-seal. 6. Inspect frequently during construction at all phase and all times of day... you can catch and foam seal alot of small imperfections before they get covered up. I wasn't going for passive, just low utility bills and high comfort, so no self generation or storage. Did pretty good - 3900 ft^2 house and in worts of summer looking about $100 month total electric and in coldest winter months about $150. 21 SEER Daikin inverter and a Rheem heat pump water heater.

[necrojoe]

I also live in California and we dis a major remodel. Our home was built in 1959, and the only insulation was a thin layer in the ceiling. When we remodeled, we put insulation in every wall we opened, and added better insulation in the ceiling. The improvement has been HUGE! On hot summer days, our oldish home stays relatively cooler all day, especially if we "bank" coolness by opening windows at night, like a "reverse thermal battery". So glad we did it, even in California. So worth it.

[BerenElendilAPGaming]

Matt, your sustainable home design videos have shown me something fundamentally important as a current architecture student: how relatively simple, near-term (reaching full adoption during my time working) and sensible a lot of these solutions are. My professors all make such a big deal about these kinds of advancements, but -- while they are, admittedly -- I think they also neglect to mention how much basic sense they make in favor making them seem big and important.

[peterverbogt]

Hello Matt,

As we build our "passive" house back in 2016-2018 we know what it is to live in one. My question, how are you controlling humidity? As air tight houses react very different then old. In summer no need with humidity between 40-50% but in winter and spring it can easily drop to 20-30%. As we added a big humidifier most hvacs don't have a controlled function for this. Keep this in mind.
Second is a net zero in kwh or dollars. As solar in the summer is becoming less and less profitable. Net zero kwh doesn't say that much anymore. With the small heatpump we have its using around 200kWh a week in the winter, no need to put a battery next to it. Good luck with the build its the best thing you can do during your lifetime! Greetings Peter

[doingtimeforsixty]

Hey Matt, love you taking the time to review all of these awesome standards with everyone! I've been nose deep in all the topics you've touched on in this video, I've done new builds and am in the process of rehabbing an older home. If you did want to brainstorm on some of these topics let me know! There's a lot more little tidbits which could help you be more passive in the long run. Side note, the Passive House Institute is not american its a German company who also has reps in the US. That's why the standards between the two are so different.

[jhnsbrgr]

we have just finished year one living in our netzero home here in Vermont. Same idea behind it -- lower running costs, warmer during the winter, all electrical, nearly-passivehaus. So far it has been great. I think we will need to add some more solar panels as our electric use (running computers in our home office have mostly added the additional cost) down the road but overall it has been very cheap to operate and live in. We timed things about as well as possible with buying the property in 2018, completing design during the pandemic and locking in material pricing right before the pandemic hit. We have a Zehnder ComfoAir ERV and two heat pumps (one upstairs and one down) and a few ambient floors. We have a fireplace, dryer vent and range hood which took passivehaus out of the picture for us but it works much better for how we live and have no regrets on those choices. Last year, the house kept its heat even when it was down to -30F over night a few nights.

[binomial]

You should definitely consider aerobarrier as part of the air tightness requirement. They pressurize a house with air born sealant which fills in cracks upto 0.75 inch wide. Matt Risinger has a demo of the improvements to air tightness and it's very impressive. If I recall his new build personal house went from ~1 AHC 50 to under 0.2 AHC 50 after using aerobarrier.

[mauriceharting]

Net-zero residential homes are expensive due to extra design, testing and material cost requirements. But the biggest issue with net-zero homes is indoor air pollution due to the air tightness with the cleaning chemicals and detergents we use daily. HEPA filters do not remove gases only small particulate matter. The extra cost of net-zero homes (at least 10% higher overall costs) and less actual usable floor space is also a problem.

Most of the heat loss in any home (net-zero or not) is through windows and doors with the best ones only giving us a R factor of 8 (triple glazed e panes) and most half that (double glazed e panes).

So the cost of a residential home at a cost of $ 1, 000, 000 would cost at least $ 1, 100.000 for net-zero and probably more with certification, etc.