I Made A Mistake Building My New Net Zero Home
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- čas přidán 28. 08. 2023
- I Made A Mistake Building My New Net Zero Home. Open an Atmos account today and take a step towards aligning your finances with the climate. www.joinatmos.com/undecided But that's not all - with an Atmos solar loan, you can amplify your environmental impact by embracing clean energy for your home. Join us in the journey towards a sustainable future while enjoying the benefits of lower energy costs. My new net zero energy home build is almost done, but there's been a few issues along the way that could be a good learning lesson. The high level goal for my new net zero home has been to build an energy efficient house that will produce as much energy as it uses over the year, as well as tying in some of the latest and greatest tech to make that happen. Tech like a geothermal heating and cooling system, as well as Enphase solar and home battery. And all of our electrical feeds into a Span Panel with EV charger for smart home energy management. It's all awesome stuff, but I made some decisions that have over complicated things. So why did I do that? And what would I have done differently? There’s a good learning lesson here.
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You did have a after action review on n KISS and learn from this mistake, that's called experience!
Too complicated, I told you so Matt! When you first described you house plans I said you were getting too complicated and should focus more on passive heating and cooling and reducing your power consumption. Instead you went with very expensive high tech systems that YOU will not be able to do maintenance on and will have constant failure issues to deal with.
I built my super insulated off grid cabin myself for cash and my solar power is only 1.4Kw. I was able to retire at 49 from the savings and I can do all the maintenance to keep my system running for the rest of my life.
No house payments, no utility bills and freedom!
I agree with your assessment. Many times K.I.S.S. can't be emphasized enough. All things considered, you did a heck of a job!
I'm a big believer in 80/20. First of all, find the smallest possible home you can comfortably live in. Make sure it's as well insulated as you can, install solar, replace appliances with better ones as they need replacing. Buy secondhand where you can.
I've learned I have to think outside of everyone else's box, which means I have to communicate to businesses, institutions and governments outside their forms. I have to learn what the rules for building, zoning, manufacture, plumbing, electrical, HVAC are, and why those rules are in place, often when the people enforcing the rules don't know them. What I thought would be tech turned out to be civics.
And in delay due to red tape.
Especially, when the original builder did things outside the box, too, like laying all the electrical and telecommunications diagonally across the yard, making it impossible to do installations without excavating at great expense what they laid down without cost or thought for the future.
As a former specialist in construction, and armature architect, I've learned that you want to have a general idea of where larger components are going before breaking ground, and have exact details finalized 2-3 steps ahead. It also doesn't hurt to meet with all your crew leads day one and learn early wither to use carrot or stick with them. Either way being a GC is much like being a cat-herder with louder messier cats.
I am a big believer in conditioned crawlspaces and / or attics for many of the reasons you mentioned. It keeps envelope penetrations down, and allows for easy routing of any ducting, pipes, wires, etc when the building is being built and more importantly, down the line when you want to add anything or make changes. It is a great feeling knowing that your house has the freedom to grow and change as time goes on.
Absolutely. At minimum, a crawlspace. I will never do a slab.
It's already a big, single family home. We should stop building single family homes and making homes continually larger. Especially if we wanna be intellectually consistent when talking about being eco friendly
so american :p
@@veganpotterthevegan That does not look like a large home. There is a double garage, and he has a filming studio for his CZcams channel.
@ChessMasterNate for sure...by atrocious US standards. He also already had a perfectly good, oversized home. This is extremely wasteful at best.
I suggest from my own experience of having a house built to allow a lot of ventilation [ even in winter ] for the first 12 months despite energy loss. The building materials,sealers, paints, varnishes out gas an unhealthy amount.I did not do that and my wife got very sick over the first few months [ she works at home so she was home 24/7 ]. Sort of a chronic fatigue syndrome that disappeared in spring when windows were opened.
Good suggestion. Houseplants can help break down off-gassing, too.
Would an extremely airtight home not also cause humidity/condensation problems? Unless multiple dehumidifiers are used.
Interesting. I'm also highly sensitive/aware of chemical off-gassing - so would have tried to find alternative (ie. less/no VOC) products ahead of time. But as this is obviously time consuming (and not typically a realistic thought with most sub-contractors), wouldn't an HRV (Heat Ventilation Recovery) system exchange the interior air enough? I was under the impression that any airtight homes require HRV's to constantly maintain fresh interior air. Thoughts?
@@kittimcconnell2633unfortunately, recent meta studies indicate that you would need a massive amount of houseplants for a significant effect. Air purifiers with high capacity active carbon filters would be better. But the best option probably is to keep the ventilation on a higher setting for the first year (with a heat exchanger, the energy loss is also reasonable).
@@QH96well, he's talked in previous videos about having a system that circulates air and replaces it with outside air while heating the outside air with the outgoing inside air. So air is getting replaced, it's just being done intentionally rather than unintentionally
I started watching this and was thinking, " wow he's over complicating this install" I'm glad I watched to the end where that was exactly what you said. We started an EV and battery installation business this year in CT. Keep learning and growing and life will never get boring. Good job Matt and yes being the GC can be a lot of work.
Whats your company name? I'm in Eastern CT. I've been toying with a home battery backup...i should have had tesla install it when i got the panels in 2020.
I should have t-shirts made, "I overcomplicated things."
@@UndecidedMF Sure it needs to be in past tense? :P
I think an additional problem is that many contractors aren’t familiar with this new technology so they wouldn’t have known how to do it all either.
There are companies you can hire to design the entire hvac/electrical/whatever systems from an engineering/architecture standpoint, not merely trying to figure out how to fit it all in place. There is a significant cost, but the chance of mistakes or bad decision making is greatly reduced and you also will have a system that works optimally. I know of one company here in Austin that does tis sort of thing.
It's a learning opportunity for the builder as well in terms of making sure there's sufficient space in the utility area for equipment more conventional homes don't have.
The problem isn't the familiarity so much, as much of this tech has been around for nearly 50 years, how it is being used and the allowable tolerances have added to the issues. Unfortunately, the greatest issue is knowledge and training in the industry. Most builders have little of either, and the trades have a tendency to learn what's popular in the industry, and never learn or do anything more.
This is so true. I just wanted a simple heat pump water heater installed (in my county, I'm not allowed to do electrical/plumbing DIY or else I would have.. it's a 2 hour job). It took me so many different contractors to find one who even knew what they were.....
@@willythemailboy2 The thing is, not many people are willing to pay to have their home be that "learning opportunity" Where the contractor makes those mistakes.
Love following along this journey, Matt. It's inspiring and will definitely help me in my own endeavor of turning my 1980 home into an energy-efficient one!
It's definitely been a journey! Learn from my mistakes 😉
Hey, I like this guy 😁
In my house I did a full double wall. Insulated, sealed, dry walled everything. Then built a whole new interior wall and framed drop ceiling. All my hvac, electrical, cat cable runs inside the envelope. Costs nothing to heat and cool plus later modifications won’t require disturbing the sealed wall. Only downside is the 12” thick walls are weird at doorways.
Expensive, but it's probably a banger of a wall assembly.
It would be really interesting if you did a video on how you constructed your house with a double wall config!
Childhood friend of my dad did a double wall, alternating 2x6 studs. Built in the 80-90s I think.
Ever since I learned about it, I've always kept it in my mind for if I ever build my own.
I assume the cost is worth it.
@@toddjasper1 I have pics but didn’t even think to video anything. I did it in 2021 when lumber was crazy but metal was cheap. It’s steel on the outside. Wall assembly is a normal 2x6 wall with horizontal stringers on the outside and inside of that wall. Rockwool in the 2x6 cavity and horizontally between the stringers inside and out. 8.5” total. Vapor barrier sealed on the inside and ceiling then normal sheet rock taped and mudded and a coat of paint to keep the tape from peeling. Then the inside wall is just 2x3 standard framing since it’s just there to run electrical and such. The dropped ceiling is custom made floor trusses 16” high that hang from the building trusses under the sheet rock. From there it’s just normal construction. There is only 1 penetration through the ceiling for the sewer stack and four in the wall, one for the erv, two bathroom fans, and conduit for all the outside electrical. 2500 sq ft and my most expensive electric bill so far is $120 so I’m super happy.
@@toddjasper1double walls are fairly standard for efficient homes. It prevents direct heat transfer from outside to inside through studs.
If you include a service layer in your ceiling below your vapor barrier, the extra money in 2×4 will be saved tenfold in envelope management and penetrations. Then you run all of your wiring inside the envelope and only have to deal with plumbing vents penetrating the ceiling. Low profile clip in potlights help facilitate this setup.
I built mine 25 ish years ago, and one of the things we did was run some unused extra conduits "just in case". Since that time, that have been used !
I took a very different approach to my "new" home.
Five years ago I moved into my 60-year-old home in the mountains of central Mexico. The house is all masonry construction with 14" thick ceilings and 8" thick walls. The climate here is so temperate that most homes do not have HVAC systems other than opening or closing windows as needed. Electricity can be very expensive, even by US standards, and can be a hardship for local people on Mexican incomes.
When we moved in, the electrical system consisted of four circuit breakers and ungrounded outlets, perfectly acceptable for 1950's construction. High on the list was to replace all the wiring and outlets and install a 20-breaker electric panel. For the first six months I kept close track of electrical usage with the idea of adding solar panels.
Knowing in advance what my electric consumption was, I spec'd out the system to generate on a year-round average about 4 kWh per day more than I consumed. What I missed was the overhead to run the inverters and normal system losses between my panels and the electric meter, so I only ended up with a 2 kWh per day year-round average surplus. It's enough.
Where my approach differs from yours is that I went for a brute-force energy system rather than trying to make a 60-year-old house energy efficient. I have enough solar panels that *_I don't care about efficiency._* My electric bills, which would run me more than $4,000 USD per year without the solar panels, comes to $1.33 per month, which is the minimum grid-connection fee. For my $1.33, the provider "stores" my excess production on a 12-month use-it-or-lose it system, 90% of which they get to keep without compensation because I rarely have to dip into the storage. I give them $16 a year plus four or five hundred kWh that I have no use for, and in return have no hassles or worries about my electricity.
Two years ago I started polishing my tinfoil hat and decided I wanted some battery storage. I added enough that I am fully off-grid capable short-term, with "short" being defined as one to two years. This is because I specified deep-discharge lead-acid [I hear your gasp of dismay, but hear me out!] batteries instead of lithium-ion. Why? Because they were less than a third the price of Li-Ion and I could see the incredible changes coming with battery technology and knew that in five years I could replace them with new technology for half of what I paid for them and at the same time get twice the storage. As long as I remain grid-tied, they sit on trickle-charge with occasional short discharge when there is a local grid failure. They'll easily last 10 years at that usage level, but if the grid fails long-term then the heavier duty cycle will do them in in just a couple of years. To lessen the load on the batteries in that scenario, some non-essentials (garden lighting, swimming pool pump, one of the electric hot water heaters, limit the A/C, etc.) would be turned off, but other than that life would go on as usual.
I saw on your video 13:58 the specifications on your 26 panel system, and at first thought "That's about the same as mine, but I'm generating 40% more power", then realized that with the exception of the three month rainy season (June-July-August) I am living in a high-desert climate with cloudless skies at 5,000 feet elevation day after day for the rest of the year. Insolation counts for a lot!😀
Anyway, that's my system, and it was one of the best financial decisions I ever made, coming in #2 after the decision to move to Mexico in my retirement.
that span ad was brutal.
Congratulations on your inspiring project, Matt 👍🏻
A few questions though:
1) Are you able to put a ballpark cost to the entire project?
2) And how does this impact your local property tax & home insurance?
3) What kind of windows did you have installed?
4) Because your home is so hi tech, do you have any protective measures in place if ever there was a freak internet downtime or malicious attack?
Thanks in advance!
Cool questions I'd love to see a video on this in the future
The cost just for those batteries probably costs the same as half a new house :( Wish this tech was more affordable!
Agreed, while I get trying to go all the way, cost is really important. With enough money anyone can build a "zero footprint" house. Since you probably aren't super rich I'm sure you have a ton of economical choices you made in this regard. Thanks for sharing.
Matt,
It would be nice to hear you wife's perspective on this build at some point. I've built a house, and moved a few times, and the stresses and pleasures of each move are seen differently by my wife and I. If it is something that possible, and compatible with your families feeling about personal privacy, I think it would be very useful perspective in this journey. Either way, thanks for another great video.
Definitely do a video (or several) on your home automation and network. I think that would be good for a ton of people. Great video, keep it up!
Amazing system and house. Living in my van with two lead acid RV Batteries I recently found real battery cables. This is great no more alarms from my 80 watt inverter that it is starved for energy.
Being an early adopter of way to much tech, I feel your pain Matt. Sometimes it is pull it out and start over, sometimes the answer is 'live with what you got' (until the next shiny thing comes by anyway), but KISS is always a reasonable guiding light. We all need to remember that Murphy is always hiding ing the corner waiting for us to stub a toe. We all need to take our 'Murphy Moments' as learning/remembering opertunities and not to flog ourselves over it (70+ years of beating my head against the wall of experience here!)
@@scsherman207 Why do you watch his content then bud?
@@scsherman207 Better safe than sorry and in ANY CASE, he is winning !
@@scsherman207 If you live like the Amish, OK
@@scsherman207 I imagine that you will feel shockingly guilty and bad if it turns out that they were right all the time and the planet is severely damaged. Best to keep an open mind and appreciate the interest in gadgets and new technology.
@@scsherman207 maybe try some arctic fishing sometime to see how the ice caps are holding up. Your stance is basically saying "I don't understand how a fart can be smelt across the room". Gases have properties, CO2 and methane insulate better, so the more of those, the more heat. It's actually really, really basic. So we are not "controlling" the climate, if we could just flip a switch obviously we would not be breaking record temps in july across the world. We are affecting it.
Wait, just re-read some of your comment. Must be bait, you can't really think all that. Good day.
I now live by the idea of SSI, Super Simple Implementations. You can always scale up from there, but you cannot easily scale back down with many things.
I wasn’t quite expecting the issue you ran into! I had commented about modular home electrical being tricky awhile back, but this video was so interesting in what exactly your problems ended up being. You explain things very well here and it’ll definitely help people who are looking into the stuff you’ve done to your house for themselves.
Vehicle to house that supports >20kw is going to be a game changer to energy independence. That coupled with DC fast chargers located in more locations. In an ideal world you'd charge your car off solar and use that as the battery bank to supplment the existing 20 kWh you already have. Run low? Go and top off at a dc fast charger near by and move the energy from car to house bank.
Agreed. I have solar PV on my small house, and about 120 kW of battery storage - in my driveway. Buying batteries solely for backup is too costly for my budget. At some point I hope to be able to seamlessly power my home (or feed the grid) with my vehicles, as I do with my solar system.
OMG, can't wait to watch this after work today. I'm so happy for you. That teaser footage/intro grabbed me in all the right ways!
We installed a Span, 20Kwsolar system, and 3 powerwalls into our 1950s colonial in RI. Works great
Thank you for being transparent to share what you learned, your mistakes, and what you would’ve done differently. I appreciate the insight and it further adds to your credibility.
👍It’s been a learning experience and want to be sure to share the good and bad of it.
Having the panel on an inside wall is great! Having it on an inside wall in the garage would have been the best. I think you missed a geo-thermal trick by not having a second 1000 ft of line placed and plumbed to the garage. With just the 100 watts needed to run a fan you could have cooled your garage in the summer and kept your cold weather temp to 45deg F. It could have been inside/outside temp driven. Think of your cars being 45 deg in the winter and no ice and snow stuck to your car.
I'd say the grey-blue interior wall paint is the most obvious mistake. I live in Australia with lots of sunshine and still have white interior walls to offset depression grey on the rare raining grey day.
I guess each to their own tho.
Gray is "in vogue" in the USA right now. I find it depressing also and chose a warm white for our walls.
We call it pebble
grey is a good colour for walls because then you can add any accent colour you want via more temporary objects, or even better for mood you can add colour with lighting. Some funky rgb led lighting is more effective if a room has no colour on the walls, and instead has shades of grey. walls with a colour to them already will change the colour of the light reflecting off them and effect how colour accurate the rgb effects are. Obviously this is more obvious with strong saturated colours.
Like my neighbour, we decorated her daughters bedroom for her as a surprise while she wa son holiday. She had a dark purple wall, two lighter purple walls, and a wallpapered wall with a purple galaxy effect on it, and just bare led's taped to the top of the walls. Needless to say no matter how much light you put out of those leds, the room still felt dark and everything had a purple cast to it that made the room feel dark.
Now it's got light grey walls, with silver crushed velvet for the curtains to match her bed frame, and i built some proper WLED diffused floor to ceiling light bars and the room feels bright, and clean with there being no colour tone from the walls. but then she can add whatever colour she wants with the leds on a steady colour mode. Or she can put them in a calming slow changing mode. or music reactive mode and the effect is far better with grey walls than the old purple.
I was actually wanting to know that color name so I could use it in my house, lol. It's very calming. 🙂
Color is highly subjective, but whatever makes you happy. To each their own. 👍
You'd better give us a full tour of the systems. Once it's all installed! This looks amazing and I'm psyched to see how it all works together! One day I want to do this too
House is looking amazing!
I'd love to see a follow up on the Span/HomeAssistant integration. Get them on camera talking about the current state of it. Dependency on cloud based services was a big part of my decision to hold off on the Span for now. It's important they know that, and speak to the current state of it.
Yes, more home energy / home automation videos please! I'd love to do something similar in a few years and your videos are a great source of inspiration!
I really love the idea of making a super efficient or self sufficient home. It’s not something I can afford and may never be able to afford one. I still enjoy getting glimpses of you doing it. If ever I have the extra cash, I’ll definitely use your guide as principles for such a build/design.
This reminds me a little bit of an anecdote about American and Japanese cars versus German cars. I've heard mechanics say that German cars are designed by engineers who don't think about things like How hard it will be to turn a Wrench in the engine compartment, where American and Japanese cars usually allow space for people to work.
It seems the same with homes. It's not just the ease of building, but the ease of fixing and servicing the house over time.
Steps I would take after hearing your experience.
1) Determine where the meter "has to be" prior to house design.
If you want all mechanicals on the same side of the house, then that is paramount to that design.
2) Design a larger mechanical room and don't be to tight on the specs.
If you want all of it to fit, then make sure it's large enough for all of it to fit.
3) Don't start the build until you have all the specifications down on paper.
By holding off the build and getting all the specs down first, issues like the unwillingness of two companies that need to communicate with one another, to communicate in a timely manner, would suggest that one or both of those companies need to be changed out for one's that will communicate with one another in a timely manner. But, if you insist on using those two companies, then waiting for both to get their heads out of their backsides is necessary before beginning the build.
Even if you end up waiting an additional 6 months for the build to begin, by waiting, you can iron out all the hiccups and have the adjustments in the plans and the build will go a lot smoother and be more efficient.
It's one thing to have to wait on something.
But why let someone pressure you into having to hurry up and wait?
Got points, but I'd add: Design the mechanical room as being split in half by a wall, one side being inside and one outside the envelope. That way, all connections can be routed through that one wall in a low-airflow room. It's much easier to make that one airtight, especially because it doesn't need to be as thick and insulated as other walls with both sides being low-airflow.
Having built two houses from the ground up and remodeled several others, I can tell you that nobody has their design 100% when they start construction and there is a lot of work done by the contractor simply because they've done it many, many times before. In the current market here in the US, if you wait to start construction for 6 months, you likely lose your desired contractors which is a much bigger issue.
Idea for other building homes (net zero or otherwise):
Design in infrastructure rooms and closets, as well as relatively easy-to-access conduits/culverts (trekkies, think Jeffries Tubes, albeit in a smaller form factor) in a way which allows for adaptability and resilience when it comes to upgrades and repairs to utilities.
Starting with the flawed desire for a single family home is a problem in itself. We don't need more of these things
@@veganpotterthevegan No we will not live in the pod and eat the bugs, get over it.
@elff107 who's saying that dummy? I'm just wondering why people can't be intellectually consistent if they're claiming to be environmentalists.
@@veganpotterthevegan Having an adaptable and resilient building allows for many and varied contingencies, such as more than one family or generation living there.
And yeah, it appears some have bought the talking points hook, line and sinker as to living and eating.
Such as certain foods being forced onto the menu at the cost of others, or that certain foods with crucial nutrients will always be available or affordable.
And make those rooms twice as big as you need, so there is room to expand. I find utility rooms are often overlooked, even in commercial applications. Especially communication. I've seen businesses shove their servers in bathrooms or other weird places because they never bothered to factor it in. It's often an after thought.
After so much thought went into designing this house with efficiency in mind, one thing that jumped out at me with this build once I saw the overhead and elevation views in this video, is that the shape of it is far from an idea shape to minimize heat loss and to minimize cooling costs.
Also bad for minimizing cost, really H pattern is about as bad of a house design as it gets. Plus WTF is the pimple on the right side of the front...
@@Thorgon-Cross Nook…. Not to mention, some people like their houses unique or different. They’re the ones living in it, so why not make it what you want?
@@farmeunit yea, hey what I like is far from common. Just a odd choice when the goal is efficiency.
I'm going to guess that the garage and hallway leading to it are outside the thermal envelope?
Maybe good for solar capture, though (not sure orientation, or solar exposure).
As the owner of a plumbing/hydronic heating company with 30years experience building high end custom homes, I cannot overemphasize the importance of picking the right builder with a solid TEAM of subcontractors. Especially when implementing new or non-standard tech/systems. Communication regarding systems integration between the subs is a MUST, and a good builder will have subs that do this automatically. We also do pre-construction meetings that include mechanical room layouts, etc. Matt, it sounds like your woes are not huge issues that will alter the overall livability or functionality of your house. Thank you for sharing your experience with us!
Thank you for this episode. Your candor of mistakes and cures was far more educational and informative than if every thing went smoothly. Thank you once again, and I look forward to follow and watch your continuing journey.
I love all this house stuff. My wife and I recently remodeled an old home and a lot of this would have been super helpful to see before then. We're already dreaming of doing a custom build to get the home tech and amenities exactly as we want.
I also like putting ultity room on oppisite side of garage or in garagewall it also makes it easier when replacing equipement
Nice house Matt, hope you really enjoy it once all the startup bugs are worked out. Question about that super-clean metal roof install - how did you route all the plumbing vents so you had no vent perforation in your roof and still meet plumbing code? Also is that a ridge vent under the metal ridge cap? Keep up the good information vids - you're definitely helping to blaze the trail forward for all of us hoping to get off of fossil fuels & get more energy self-sufficient.
I just installed a secondary hydraulic heating grid in my home, because i wanted cooling from a air source monoblock heat pump. This could have been avoided if, 9 years ago when we were redoing the original hydraulic heating grid from the '70's, I'd sprung for insulated lines. wouldn't even have been that much more expensive. But, no-one in the this country was doing heat pumps at that time, climate change hadn't hit us with 40c summers yet, and cooling was seen as a luxury for glass fronted offices. I did run cat5e to every box in the house, intending to run a CAN network and power over it. never used most of those since the house runs on many ESP''s and zigbee now. Hindsight is 20-20.
I love your channel and your home build videos are my absolute favorite. Thanks for your honest assessment about the challenges and please don't be too hard on yourself - it's never going to be perfect. Would love to see features of other deep dives on passive house efforts. I have an idealistic vision for doing one some day in the future.
I'd love to hear more about the SPAN Panel integrations / API. I had a SPAN Panel installed on my house during a remodel (along with 15kw of solar and Tesla batteries). It's a pretty cool set up but I'd love to further expand the SPAN with 3rd party integrations.
Noted!
@@scsherman207Yes, I agree. This is a company started by a bunch of former Tesla employees hoping to cash in on a solution looking for a problem. I don't understand the need to switch entire circuits. The energy monitoring could be accomplished with $200 worth of equipment. The cost v. real benefit doesn't add up to me.
@@D2O2 One thing you can do when you have a SPAN panel and battery back up is to dynamically change your list of devices that are powered by the batteries during an outage. Without SPAN, this is a one time decision you make at installation. With SPAN you can have your “must have devices” your “nice to have devices” and your “don’t backup devices”. When running off battery for a lengthy period you can easily move things around to extend your battery life. This is possible because those loads are managed by s/w rather than by being hard-wired.
@@scsherman207 True but most people are not going to their own thing like that.
@@PatDoyle I can do that with a standard panel by simply supplying the entire panel with a secondary power source and turning breakers on and off at will. I don't need to be able to do that from Italy once every 5 years. Also, span requires a cloud connection to function, no local control. Hope you can make that connection. Also, since the switching relays are only software controlled, if you lose connection with the SPAN cloud with a circuit commanded off, there is NO physical way to turn it back on. So, SPAN has total control of your panel. Yeah....No thanks! SPAN is a start-up, you have no idea what you are going to get now, or in the future. Best of Luck, hope they leave your circuits on when they shut the lights off at the company as it goes out of business or is bought by someone with other ideas.
Hey Matt, would love to see a deeper video on the ERV system! I've always wanted to do something like that for bathroom vents, but the humidity and the number of them seem to make it way harder than it should be. Another video I think would be great to see you do, a little bit down the road, is how do you handle "de-teching" the house when you sell it? Getting it ready for a new owner without totally destroying the value of the home automation. This was a minor sticking point with my last home sale back in the mid 2010s because we had put nest thermometers in for the dual zone heat and the buyers real estate agent wanted us to rip them out and put in standard programmable thermostats because they didn't think we could transfer them to a new owner. I shudder to think about a more complex system like you've built in your old house.
You have to market the house to someone that is interested in buying it. Also find an agent that understands what you are selling. We ran into issues at our house because people buying our house thought it came with stuff that it didn’t come with.
Yes, more on the ERV…currently on the Gulf Coast and humidity is THE ISSUE that one is trying to control and the HVAC industry is still focused on temp control. Lots of energy could be saved with better humidity control.
@@worldtrav72Be careful. ERV’s can be a colossal waste of money depending on your goal. We install ERV’s and HRV’s in Michigan and it is hard to justify if you know all the facts and the truth. If your home was built before 2000, don’t even consider it. The initial cost, running cost, maintenance and failure rate will not justify ANY money savings, if that’s why your installing it. If your house NEEDS more/better air exchanges that would be the ONLY reason to install. It’s going to cost you money, and it’s complication you don’t need.
Fascinating to watch your progress, there are so many ways to build from low tech (my preference) to a home packed with services (your method). I hope you keep us updated as you move in and hopefully get comfortable.
I build a net (sub)zero home and moved in last year. I kept it much simpler. I did geothermal about 30yrs ago, but solar is so cheap now that it looks to be a much better value, at least since I've moved south. I do have heat pumps for the house, hot water, dryer, but they are air sourced keep costs much lower, and then put more into solar. So far this CY the system has generated 4.6MWh more than what was used. That is 35% more than needed. I may even add more solar on a pergola, because it makes the pergola and slap a tax deduction, which should bring the cost of that solar to near zero. One think I did different, and I was skeptical at first, was to use foam insulation. That made the entire attic interior space. It counter intuitive to have more conditioned space, but it make work in the attic much easier and less worry of compromising the insulation and house seal.
Thank you and good morning!
Good morning!
The house design is too conventional with its unconditioned attic. Wouldn't have had this problem with a conditioned attic.
Yeah I can’t believe he went with a conventional attic. The perfect wall theory always uses conditioned attic with insulation on the under side of the roof deck.
Need to watch some Matt Risinger.
@RobyWanKenobi An conditioned attic would have been "bomber".
I love all the tech, but the conventional design aesthetic isn’t appealing.
Hopefully landscaping will help.
It seems bizarre that the attic is not conditioned with a nets zero house.
We just built our home and I put in conduit from the upstairs space to a place close to the electrical panels. I haven't installed solar panels yet but easy access between the roof and the electrical panels is important. I am surprised you didn't have the roof insulated so the whole house would be within the insulated envelope. More and more homes are doing this, making things easier. Also surprised that your mechanical room is so small, note you could have an issue with the heat pump water heater, it requires a great deal of air circulation to function properly. I would suggest you read up and verify that you have sufficient air for the heat pump water heater. As you note, JMO
Once upon a time, I had grand aspirations to put a lot of tech into my house: home automations, whole-home audio, etc. Then I had the realization that kids don't give much time for that, playing tech support for the family becomes a PIA, and guests don't want to read instruction manuals when they come over to visit, babysit, or watch the house. KISS wins nearly every time, now. The one exception I've given I to is the robotic lawn mower, because the amount of time it saves me is worth any headaches that come along with it.
How much loss of effectiveness is there by running the long cables?
What is running in the cable yeah?
I've been in construction for 30 years and still regularly wish I had done things differently. Owning the mistake and drilling through the problem with a level head to solve it in a timely manner is where many tend to go wrong. I can't tell you how many stubborn customers wouldn't take my advice only to have it come back to bite them. The devil is always in the details!! Rember, there's never time to do it right but, there's always time to do it twice! Keep the information flowing!
Thanks for telling us the lesson that we could learned.
Yesssss, more content on this house. I am planning a similar home and would love to hear more details on automation, networking, tech, designs, ect. Love this kind of house construction and designing content!
What to do different next time? Make the utility room much bigger so it isn't so crowded. Mirror-image the house, putting the garage on the right and the living space on the left. And in our PH we used a Climate Master GSHP HVAC that derives the hot water directly. ((Thanks for the PH saga.))
I've always wondered why nobody takes advantage of reserve conduit structures specifically for later alterations and/or additions. I'm also a little curious as to why subterranean conduits and ducts are so often avoided. There seem to be a fair number of cases where two or three simple 1x1' ducts lining the foundation of a home with a few access ports here and there could solve a lot of retrofit/after-thought issues.
Great suggestion. Cast in ribbed ducts are so strong and will never come to harm within a concrete slab. Future proof the infrastructure as well as the technology
At the church I used to go to they planted evergreen trees on the west side to prevent the prevailing west wind from heating up the building in the summer and cooling the building in the winter.
When I did my system seven years ago I wanted it as simple as possible. One large dumb inverter. Connected right straight to my load's panel then run everything as normal. And i've been perfectly happy with it for 7 years off the grid now.
Very cool stuff! A thought: I've been following this channel for quite a while, and I notice that the climate-conscious solutions presented here seem to begin and end with tech. It's awesome that your single-family home is passive and that your car is electric, but what about a video talking about more environmentally friendly alternatives to single-family homes and cars?
Less profitable to encourage consuming less.
The main problem with that type of video is, it's kinda boring, and has a low feasibility in the US. The solution? live in multifamily building in a city near usable public transit (and use it), and eat a mostly vegetarian diet.
@donaldendsley6199 Exactly.
The biggest issues are our single family home culture, combined with zoning laws.
Our cities and towns are designed and legislated to have cars and parking. Our culture wants a large home with a white picket fence (or some version. I'm guilty here, as we moved to a very rural area, so we could have a couple acres).
The suburban sprawl of the US just doesn't really allow for environmentally friendly layout. Some things can be done to improve it, but the fundamentals, like mass transit just don't work when you have 20,000 people spread over 36 square miles (93 km squared)
The truth is that single family homes are more sustainable than the ultra dense urban high-rise living promoted by pseudo-scientist politicians of a Marxist bent. For overwhelming proof (with transportation) research ET3 Global Alliance- and compare ALL value and sustainability measures with electric trains. Back to population density... it is the problem - not the solution. As proof compair the per square foot construction cost of a 100 story skyscraper to a typical 2 story rural farm house ... compair the tax rates ... compair the air and water quality... the noise and light pollution... the per capita crime... etc. And then understand that virtuall EVERY big city is going broke - AND the cities use political and media power to force those who make better decisions to pay the bulk of the enormous additional costs of density. Even still urban water, sewer, electrical, and waste systems are failing (while rural areas continue to thrive with a smaller percapita footprint).
I do have other videos on apartments and some housing alternatives. Lots of possibilities to cover. Unfortunately, when I have touched on those topics not a lot of people seem interested. I'm trying to sprinkle them in as I can.
This video felt too much like an informercial. Could have made it a 5 min video without the overload of in video sponsors and ads.
As a swiss person, it made me smile to see those siga panels :)
Have I learned anything?...every time I touch a hammer or lift a rock, I learn something new about my home and houses in general.
You don't want a perfectly sealed building for living. The replacement air has to come from somewhere and having to do everything mechanically wastes energy more than allowing air to flow passively in, *and* it can lead to air quality problems if you're trying to save *too* much. We used to make that mistake *a lot* in Finland in the 70s after the oil crisis.
the erv solves this issue.
He has a heat recovering ventilator, it's a lot more efficient than allowing air to flow passively in. I bet modern Finish houses all have them too.
Plus u can filter the air reducing reaction from allergies and better for ur health
My understanding is that ERVs use way less energy than you lose from having to heat and cool a house without that airtight envelope. On balance, having less airflow from outside is better.
ERVs are crazy energy efficient and solve that issue.
Stopped watching. Feels like an ad the whole time.
Sorry you feel that way, but appreciate the feedback.
Great that you also share the things that did not went so well! Think that helps a lot of us not making the same mistakes!
Oh yes! Being your own GC is a learning experience for sure. It was foisted upon us unsuspectedly and I don't think I could do it again. On the bright side, I believe we have a more custom finish and more control than we could have otherwise afforded by hiring a GC. But the niggling little details (mistakes like unused, installed tech when the technology changes) will haunt you. Learning that we're not the only ones with this problem, is somewhat consoling. Appreciate the video. Thanks!
This is just one long ad, unsubbed !
Kind of a pointless video. What's the point of using a custom design if you don't take the time to make sure it's well-thought-out?
It was thought out in almost every detail, but things come up ... curveballs come up that require compromises. In my case, some of those compromises bit me in the butt.
I think the biggest mistake every homeowner makes when building or remodeling a home is that they discover the mistake while the house is still under construction but think "it's too late to fix it" and then they live with it for 20 years until the next renovation. Of course, some things like "I wish I'd made the basement ceilings 9' tall instead of 8'" is something that's impossible to change once the framing has started, but things like "I wish I'd added a window on that wall" or "I should have put the bedroom door over there" can still be fixed.
Yes, it will cost more money and take more time, but if you're already spending more money than you've ever done before in your life for something you want (a house), why not spend a tiny bit more and correct your mistake now instead of regretting it for years and years?
I am so envious. We built our house in 1989 to the Snohomish County "Super Good Sence" building requirements and we had a lot of after the fact changes we would have done , just because we could not see the big picture till we moved in. Love your new home!
Nice update! Congrats on the new house!!!
A few things I'd love to see in future videos:
1. What ERV you picked, how it works, and why you chose the one you did.
2. The math behind how you sized your solar + battery system (panel selection and generation estimates, EV charging, appliances, HVAC, etc.).
3. Geothermal HVAC energy usage in your new passive home VS the traditional HVAC energy usage in your prior home.
In my father's home where I grew up there was a large deciduous tree on south side in the back of the back yard. There was a sunroom on each floor. The leaves used to fall off in the fall 🍁 allowing the sun to help heat the house in the winter and spring. In the summer and fall the tree shaded the house preventing the house from sweltering in the summer.
Anyone else been waiting to see this house done?!? Not my house but I can’t wait for that video! Great content.
I love your videos. A lot of information and lessons learned with the house build.
I'm really impressed on what you came up with! I've had solar 9kw and a powerwall on my house for 1yr this August! The one thing I wish I knew was about a SPAN panel and 1 powerwall was on the very edge. I live in Connecticut and haven't had an eversource bill since February. I'm doing this for my mom as I'm her caregiver. I wish you could help us but I know you are very busy.
That smooth, sloping driveway is an energy saver when it comes to snow removal. It will help melt thin layers of snow and ice, even below freezing, and sublimate even below 0 degree F. But the loop I have always wanted to study is a heat pump loop under the drive and walks for heavy snow/ice removal- or even prevention. Safety is great, but such a ground loop has to be more efficient than conventional snow removal methods, in so many ways! Thank you, much.
Excluding time and accidents, of course.
Definitely be sure to visit Edison Motors when you're at Fully Charged!
Matt, thank you for all that you are doing to help our planet. I hope you are having a wonderful Tuesday.
Sheila Mink in New Mexico
Don’t kick yourself too hard!
Remember, we are none perfect!
I bought an older house, so everything is put in,
the best, that I can, with the existing structure.
The recently installed heat pump,
is a very welcome addition!
I look forward to seeing how all this tech, works for you!
Keep your smiles on!
Please keep videos coming, all of the deep dives are really helpful. Trying to go solar next year
Thanks for sharing some behind the scenes and the "not perfect, but practical" aspects of the process!
Thank you for sharing all that info, the good with the bad!
Hi Matt, I have already done this up in Maine 6 years ago. the machinal room is in the middle of the house. here are some problems we have learned. the floor in the utility room should be sealed and have a drain. my water heating system has a lot of vibration with the compressor. both in terms of sound and micro formic transmittal though the building. you need to max out the sound proofing in the walls. isolating the equipment with damping materials.
From my own experience I’ve learned to consolidate the utilities as much as possible. That planning enough space as possible is essential. You learned from your own experience. Getting critical details in advance from your installers helps too. We didn’t get the details about our full propane installation. They installed the propane side but wouldn’t connect the water/boiler side. It was going to cost twice as much to continue. We told them to take the whole thing out including the buried tank. Communication is key. Experience is a great teacher. Go with your gut. It knows more than you do.
Missing One! SCIPs Structural Concrete Insulated Panels! Designed the basics for a new home built in NE Texas. Insulated Concrete Box then add a standard roof. SCIPs have an Expanded Polystyrene Core with concrete sprayed on both sides of the foam. Not only do you have, probably the tightest structure available, but the increase in energy efficiency with the concrete Thermal Mass facing the interior of the home. The Concrete Box: Walls and Ceilings build with SCIPs. In the design we had 12ft high SCIP walls with 24in high cold rolled steel galvanized truss to support the SCIP layer above which were sheet rocked. The truss area doubled as the HVAC return air, charging that upper thermal mass. No air return ducts just return grill with filters. That home is off the electrical grid with panels!
Matt, I thoroughly enjoy your channel and content. Thank you.
Something like Airtable is nice when working on project like this. As long as all the contractors have access you can have all the information in one place. If one contractor needs to relay information to another contractor they can just add a note and tag them and then that contractor gets a notification. Contractors can communicate among each other and as long as you are getting cc'd in emails you know what is going on as well. On top of that pictures can be taken before the drywall goes in so if there is any questions its easy to just pull up the pictures and look at what is going on. As far as layout goes I'd just 3d model out the whole house. Dont need to go crazy with detailed models. As long as you get dimensions right then there is a good visual of how everything will fit. You can even get different contractors access so they can look through and see if they find any conflicts or possible improvements for building and maintaining everything.
Matt, Thanks so much for this one bc I’ve been waiting to see how things turned out as I know like me you’re an OCD planner and perfectionist so this gives me something to compare and contrast with for my own future home building project. 😀
As for the long loop which probably has a good amount of voltage drop, I would have constructed a small air tight wall closet along the back wall in the garage and installed the batteries there. Small supply/return vent from inside the house would have controlled the temperature within the air tight wall cabinet. Great video! Will be waiting for a home tour before it is furnished and after with all the electronic toys in it.
Putting the electrical panel inside the house has one key advantage: It isn't out in the garage. Garages get hot in the summer and cold in the winter and can vary wildly in temperature in any given 24 hour period. That fancy-shmancy electrical panel has a bunch of fancy-shmancy electronics in it. And fancy-shmancy electronics don't like large hot/cold temperature cycles, especially capacitors and lithium ion batteries. You want those to remain in temperature controlled environments like the indoors where central AC and heating can maintain a more narrow range of temperatures.
That is a good point; thanks. The ultimate demise of most circuitry results from expansion/contraction cycles over time.
LiFePO4 I would think it’s a bit safer than the previous two options you mention, as it is design not to have thermal Runway issues
Thanks for sharing your experience. If I ever build a house, I have learned quite a bit for it right here.
That's great to hear! I'm hoping people can learn from what's going right and not right with my build.
Thank you Matt for helping us learn from your experience. 😃
Insulate the underside of the roof with close cell spray in foam (expand the envelope) and use open joists where you want to run ducts, plumbing and wiring : Then you do not need to insulate all the duct work in the attic and less worry about penetrations. That is the new method and it does change conventional plans. Oh and insulated the garage and its common walls so heating it is optional.
The issue isn't insulation. It's ventilation. For an efficient home you need insulation and air tightness. I'm curious if he did a double wall setup.
Always follow your gut instincts.
Take a step back and think out of the box.
I acted as GC for 2 large additions to my home. I had to hang the drywall on one addition when I could not get any drywall contractors to return my calls.
I had 26 solar panels installed in March 2023. So far all my electricity bills have been zero.
Keep up the work.
I look forward to more updates.
I have heard certain sources say that even if you want to "GC" your own house build, you might be well served by having a licensed GC as at least an advisor.
It's kind of like paying a mechanic for a pre-purchase inspection, or hiring your own inspector for the purchase of an existing home. It may cost money up front, but it can save money, time, and headaches afterward.
KISS is at the forefront of my mind in planning my addition. Currently my home is a Cape Cod style house built in 1965 with 2x4 construction. Also there's 4 of us living here... And the house is in a flood plain. We're basically doubling the size of the house and redoing the entire HVAC. All these complicating factors make minimizing surprises, disruption and on-the-fly changes is very important. Maybe someday my house will have solar, home battery and a smart panel, but I see those as upgrades to happen once the house is built and we're settled in.
I learned the same lesson when building our house and its systems (geothermal heat pump, underfloor heating, smart-home for lighting, heating and shades, etc.) - builders and installers are nearly impossible to manage and they don't think in a systematic way. We had a GC and there were still issues that I had to chase/fix/work around. The GC never cares as much as you do and the builders/installers don't care about any knock-on effects of what they do. And for all of them, their time horizon is "quitting time". I'm happy with the result, as I'm sure you are, but it was one of the worst experiences of my life.
You really should do a crossover episode with Matt Risinger! He's a home builder with a great channel and he's really big into passive house tech, as well as several of the other issues addressed in this episode.
Another thing to consider if you ever build a new house, put the boiler etc in the garage too, just make the garage a bit bigger so they fit, be easier to get to for electricians etc as well
How much more expensive is your home vs a home built without energy use as a main concern? How much do you expect to save per year?
please do a follow up video in ten years. Im concerned about the air tightness after the house settles and everything shrinks etc.