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This week I'll take a detour from practical energy-conserving solutions to take a look at oil (petroleum) — the fluid that has powered our automobile-based society. Be prepared for some new terminology and a little bit of chemistry!

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Rich Cowan lives in an 1,800-square foot bungalow in northern Massachusetts that has been renovated twice in the last decade but still has some problems: no insulation in the basement, and a furnace and air handler in the vented attic.

"The heat produced by our gas furnace is quickly moving through the ceilings to a vented attic, and then is lost forever," Cowan writes in a Q&A post. Money to correct the problems is not unlimited, but Cowan has a plan.

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While most of us think of the petroleum age starting in the late 1850s, when North America's first oil well began gushing oil, human use of petroleum actually goes back much further.

Asphalt, a heavy constituent of petroleum (see last week's blog), was used four thousand years ago in constructing the walls of Babylon. During the Roman era, oil was collected and used in the province of Dacia (now Romania), where it was referred to as "picula."

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UPDATED: 1/3/11 with expert opinions from Mark Sevier and Peter Yost

Chris Koehn will be building a 1,600-sq.-ft. home in British Columbia for owners who want to heat primarily with wood. They envision a wood-burning cookstove and a fireplace, and they'd also like to incorporate some solar capability.

Because of its island location, the house will be off the electricity grid.

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It's fitting that this first blog of 2011 takes a look into the crystal ball — at the energy source that pretty-much defines our culture.

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Guest blog by Allison A. Bailes III

If your attic is going to have 50 bags of insulation blown into it, does it make much of a difference if it goes in flat or lumpy?

One reason that I'm interested in the question is that my dissertation in grad school was called “Flat or Lumpy.” (Of course, it had the requisite incomprehensibility in the subtitle, with words like “heteroepitaxy.”) Those two words in the title, which cut to the heart of what my surface physics research was all about, also describe a property of insulation that's important in building science.

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by Martin Holladay

GBAGreenBuildingAdvisor.com is launching a new feature: periodic reviews of interesting blogs. To get the ball rolling, I’m recommending the Energy Vanguard blog.

The author of the Energy Vanguard blog, Allison Bailes of Decatur, Georgia, is a RESNET-accredited energy consultant and trainer. He performs heat loss calculations, provides HERS rating services, and provides rater training and Energy StarLabeling system sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Energy for labeling the most energy-efficient products on the market; applies to a wide range of products, from computers and office equipment to refrigerators and air conditioners. training, among other services.

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UPDATED with an expert opinion from Bruce King

Writing from Glacier, Washington, Karen Bean faces a home-building dilemma that confronts many thousands of people: what's the best way to insulate the walls of her new house on a modest budget?

She has $150,000 to spend on the two-bedroom, two-bathroom house, which she plans to build on a foundation originally intended for a traditional house. Although the concrete-block foundation is well made, it's not necessarily well matched to the double 2x4 walls she's hoping to use.

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For the past few weeks, I've been writing about petroleum: what it is, the history of petroleum use, and what's ahead for this ubiquitous energy source that, to a significant extent, defines our society.

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John Hess built a small house 20 years ago, and he may have the chance to build again in the coming year. But he realizes a lot has changed in residential construction since 1990.

He'd like to incorporate more green-building features this time around while making fewer mistakes than he did with his first house.

“Can anyone recommend a downloadable checklist or spreadsheet which covers the many and varied aspects of building a house?” he asks in this Q&A post.

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Energy consumption carries with it numerous environment impacts. Most importantly, burning fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, to oil) to heat homes or generate electricity emits the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which is the leading cause of global climate change. Debate about whether climate change is real has long since ended in most scientific circles and is now relegated to the radical blogosphere and pseudo news outlets. The vast preponderance of evidence supports the contention that greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere are trapping heat and warming the globe.

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UPDATED: 12/9/10 Expert opinions
(David White and Marc Rosenbaum)

Frank Os new house is tight very tight. Tests by an energy auditor measured 0.13 air changes per hour at 50 pascals of depressurizationSituation that occurs within a house when the indoor air pressure is lower than that outdoors. Exhaust fans, including bath and kitchen fans, or a clothes dryer can cause depressurization, and it may in turn cause back drafting as well as increased levels of radon within the home. (ACH50), meaning the house beats the very stringent airtightness target of the PassivhausA residential building construction standard requiring very low levels of air leakage, very high levels of insulation, and windows with a very low U-factor. Developed in the early 1990s by Bo Adamson and Wolfgang Feist, the standard is now promoted by the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt, Germany. To meet the standard, a home must have an infiltration rate no greater than 0.60 AC/H @ 50 pascals, a maximum annual heating energy use of 15 kWh per square meter (4,755 Btu per square foot), a maximum annual cooling energy use of 15 kWh per square meter (1.39 kWh per square foot), and maximum source energy use for all purposes of 120 kWh per square meter (11.1 kWh per square foot). The standard recommends, but does not require, a maximum design heating load of 10 W per square meter and windows with a maximum U-factor of 0.14. The Passivhaus standard was developed for buildings in central and northern Europe; efforts are underway to clarify the best techniques to achieve the standard for buildings in hot climates. standard.

Frank O has installed a heat-recovery ventilator (HRV(HRV). Balanced ventilation system in which most of the heat from outgoing exhaust air is transferred to incoming fresh air via an air-to-air heat exchanger; a similar device, an energy-recovery ventilator, also transfers water vapor. HRVs recover 50% to 80% of the heat in exhausted air. In hot climates, the function is reversed so that the cooler inside air reduces the temperature of the incoming hot air. ) to provide fresh air as well as fans for spot ventilation and a range hood fan rated at 189 cubic feet per minute (cfm).

Sounds perfect. So whats the problem?

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Im just back from Chicago, where I was attending the Greenbuild Conference of the U.S. Green Building Council. Despite the weak economy, some 27,000 architects, builders, developers, and manufacturers gathered for this 9th annual conference.

At Greenbuild, I moderated an interactive session looking at hype vs. reality with LED lighting. Indeed, there is a lot of hype out there (more on that below), but the bottom line is that there are some amazing products coming onto the market.

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I sent an email to Jeff Gagnon and Jim Godbout, and asked them five basic questions about ground-source heat pumpHome heating and cooling system that relies on the mass of the earth as the heat source and heat sink. Temperatures underground are relatively constant. Using a ground-source heat pump, heat from fluid circulated through an underground loop is transferred to and/or from the home through a heat exchanger. The energy performance of ground-source heat pumps is usually better than that of air-source heat pumps; ground-source heat pumps also perform better over a wider range of above-ground temperatures. installations. In this part of the Green Architects Lounge podcast, Phil and I take some time to review and compare their answers. We also take a moment to touch on the subject of ozone-depleting refrigerants.

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With Black Friday behind us, its time for my annual Christmas shopping list ideas for energy-saving and green living gifts this holiday season. Most of these products can be purchased locally benefiting the local economy. Discounts may be available for both in-store and online purchases.

Concept SL-100 Solar-Powered LED Security Light

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After restoring historic buildings for more than three decades, Roy Harmon seems a little disillusioned, if not outright confused, with the current state of residential construction.

Most of the buildings hes worked on are more than a century old, built at a time when carpenters served apprenticeships but building codes did not exist. The only reason the buildings eventually fail is because of neglect, not inherently poor construction.

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For the past eight years weve been able to turn our kitchen faucet on and off using a knee- and foot-controlled valve from the Canadian company Tapmaster. This may seem like a convenience-only product designed for lazy people. I cant argue with all of that and admit that I probably wouldnt have installed one if I hadnt received it for testing from the manufacturer after we had reviewed a competing product in Environmental Building News.

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