Teaching Seminar visit to zhomes

Last night for Teaching Seminar Lane arranged for us to have a tour of zhomes, a new zero-energy development of town homes in Issaquah. I videotaped, but I'm not sure if there's really anything worth seeing on the video.

We had a good crowd, about 15 teachers, some of whom I hadn't seen for a while, and everyone seemed very enthusiastic about the tour. The tour was led by a woman named Elly, who is the education and outreach coordinator, and a man named Brad who is the project manager. Both of them were extremely knowledgeable about the project and were able to answer every question we asked except for the question about whether any of them had sold yet. Our fears that the tour would just be a sales pitch by a real estate agent were totally unfounded.

Having recently been through a green house remodel (from hell) myself and learned all the ins and outs of what's really green and what's greenwashing, I can say that they pulled out all the stops on this one, and really made it green in every way: reducing energy (and water) consumption, producing renewable energy (and water), reducing waste, using sustainably produced materials, and using non-toxic materials. They have super-insulated walls and a geothermal heat pump, which keeps the energy needed for heating the house and water low. They produce all the energy they need with pv solar panels. They *don't* have two things people commonly think of as being "green" features, solar hot water panels and an on-demand hot water heater, because they don't really need them with the geo-thermal heat pump. Also, there's no gas in the house, and one thing I learned in my own house remodel is that an on-demand water heater uses so much energy at once (although not much averaged over time), that it puts a huge load on your electrical system, so it's usually not worth it if you have to power it with electricity. They also harvest rainwater for flushing toilets and washing clothes. And they do lots of other cool things that I won't go into.

A couple new things I learned last night:

1. The term "watergy" means the combined water and energy used, taking into account the energy that went into producing your water and the water that went into producing your energy. I'm not sure if this is a quantitative concept, as in there's a formula to actually calculate a number for your watergy, or a qualitative concept, as in, wow, a lot of energy is used to get water to your house and a lot of water is used to make energy.

2. The price of pv solar panels has recently dropped dramatically due to flooding of the market from China, and Washington state is offering so many incentives (we pay 6 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity, but Washington state will pay you up to 55 cents per kilowatt-hour to produce electricity), that the payback time for solar panels in Washington is now estimated to be only 7-9 years. Wow.

The two things I was not impressed with about zhomes were the design and liveability of the homes, and the price. The lighting was terrible, and that combined with super dark finishes made them really depressing to be inside. And the most of them, even a 1500-square-foot "two bedroom" had no private rooms at all, just giant rooms and lofts that are all interconnected. I like less privacy than most people I know, but even I couldn't live in a house like that. Even if I could afford it, which I definitely couldn't!

So what did this tour add up to for the Energy Project? What did we or the teachers learn that we could use in our teaching? I think using a zero energy house design could be a great starting point for a unit on energy. Students be given the task of designing a house, and then make arguments for the trade-offs of various choices. After grappling with the problem for themselves, they could be presented with the real choices made in various design projects, including zhomes (I have lots of contacts for people who could provide other case studies, and could even offer my own house to study), and asked to evaluate those choices. Bringing in things besides energy, like water, cost, and liveability, makes all those decisions even more complex. I think a project like this could really help students learn about energy conservation in both senses of the phrase (and compare the two senses) and learn some great critical thinking skills. But if neither we nor the teachers are going to take on this project, I'm not exactly sure how this tour fits into what we're doing.

It might be interesting to ask the teachers who went to reflect on how they could use what they learned in their teaching of energy.