8 ms·

> With all due respect, looking at your numbers my hunch is that you need better insulation. With all due respect these are the kinds of "tiny" details that re

> With all due respect, looking at your numbers my hunch is that you need better insulation. With all due respect these are the kinds of "tiny" details that renewable enthusiasts conveniently forget. Yes, this person's house needs better insulation. As does everybody else's. You can't just wave this away with "your math is wrong". These numbers reflect reality, not wishful thinking.

dvh 4y ago
In a worst case scenario (no gas, no grid electricity), he could heat only one room instead of entire house.
stewbrew 4y ago
How is this a tiny detail. We live in a passivhaus. We hardly ever heat. Improving insulation of old houses is an important aspect here. Reducing energy consumption is as important as generating and storing energy.
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  - stewbrew 4y ago
    I don't see how this relates to this discussion other than by spamming this subthread.
    - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
      I appreciate that you don't see how a direct answer to your question, where you asked what you don't understand and it was spelled out for you, doesn't relate to the discussion. I agree, your attempt to make the world's energy problems about the way you live personally in a Passivhaus doesn't relate to this discussion. That was kind of my point, as well as the point of several other people who've replied to you so far. You might as well ask why everyone doesn't just live in an igloo. It's because they don't work in the places that most people live, like downtown. And if you try to ask the company "hey, I see that you claim you reduce carbon by 90%, why wouldn't LEED certify you, they only require 30%," the company will quickly change the topic. I'll try it a little differently. "If your solution doesn't work for 99.99% of humans, your solution just doesn't work." No, I wasn't selling anything. This wasn't spam. But, you knew that. I was making a good faith attempt to answer the question you asked.
  - ratww 4y ago
    The point is not that everyone should live in a passivhaus. The point is that better insulation can help reducing energy consumption. Not best: better. Those are two different words. No, you don't need a passivhaus, but the passivhaus example, which barely needs heating, is useful for demonstrating the efficiency of insulation.
    - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
      > The point is that better insulation can help reducing energy consumption Yes, that's a wonderful tidbit that fans love to say. It's also about as relevant to the discussion at hand as giving tips of how not to spill your coffee on the deck to keep it dry is to a sinking boat. You can't solve climate change with better insulation. Sorry. Part of the problem with the discussion about climate change is that people who've never actually looked at the numbers feel the emotional need to take the position of an expert and explain what will help. And yes, if a car is rolling down the hill at you, at some level, technically, throwing a grape at it will slow it down. But not enough to matter. When you take the time to put your solution in the specific context of the discussion, and take a look at how big the impact is, you realize "oh wait, no, this actually isn't a valid line of thought." You might as well try to solve the national debt with a ten dollar bill. You're missing way, way too many zeroes. In order to stop climate change, we must go carbon negative. Energy reduction does not change carbon dynamic spread, and cannot solve the problem without reducing our energy spend to zero. I enthusiastically recommend that you read some work by the academics before continuing. These are not new ideas, and they have been roundly and thoroughly debunked for decades. It turns out that yes, we have thought of insulation. This was not a curve ball. Owens Corning has so thoroughly advertised it to us that by the time I said their name, we all shared a memory of their mascot, its song, and their theme color. There is a reason that absolutely nobody who's got actual traction in the field is offering improved insulation as a solution. The reason Passivhaus is a good example is simple: they claim a 90% reduction in carbon, and when they tried to get LEED certified, LEED said "actually you increase carbon, we're not certifying you." You're listening to marketing, and trying to hold it up as engineering. Every time you attempt to google for this, please do yourself a favor, and check whether the text you're looking at is word for word identical to their marketing materials. Try a university study. None of them say it's a benefit, and there have been tons. Respectfully, no, weird houses that make carbon worse aren't going to fix this either. Thanks for understanding.
  - midasuni 4y ago
    I lived in a new house for 5 years from 2016. We keep the house warm (21-22), but even then the radiators were rarely on, insulation was great. On the other hand in summer temperatures overnight we’re still in the 28-30 range in the west facing rooms even at midnight.
- ajuc 4y ago
  > Reducing energy consumption is as important as generating and storing energy. Only if the efficiency is 100%. In practice it's lower than that, so reducing consumption is better than increasing production.
- tailsdog 4y ago
  The point is that in some situations it can be more cost effective to generate additional energy than implement energy saving measures such as insulation improvements. My house was built in the 1600's it's very difficult to insulate properly.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    Real Question: I see posts like this often on HN. Why not tear down these houses and rebuild with energy efficient ones? I know... blah. blah. blah. historical this and that... but do you want to suffer from 40+C summers? This is the price of history! Think about it. Really really! Please start tearing down these horribly inefficient houses that are "historical". We already do it for office buildings!
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      The issue is that it's ridiculously expensive. You have to pay an inflated price for an existing, perfectly fine home. Then you have to pay to have it demolished. Then you have to pay to build a brand new home. It's going to cost >2x what the resulting home is actually worth. When the old homes decay to the point that they need to be torn down, then they will be. But destroying perfectly good houses is just too expensive in this market.
jnsaff2 4y ago
I wish you would expand and clarify the point you are trying to make. Currently it sounds like you are angry at a group of enthusiasts. I think for me and the OP it’s quite clear that optimizations can be made on production and consumption side. And in their circumstances financial reality says that increasing production is much cheaper, while possibly providing extra cash that would enable investment for reducing consumption, which in turn would lead to more income.
- Helmut10001 4y ago
  Thanks for the nice summary! I couldn't phrase it better.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > I wish you would expand and clarify the point you are trying to make. The problem with people enthusiastically proposing renewables as the cheap solution to our energy needs is the thousand "little" details like the one above. Whose only mention is in the comments like "your math is wrong, invest in insulation". No. The math isn't wrong. Bo, the consumption is correct and shouldn't "should be lower". Because it's directly indicative of the reality. Yes, you have a couple of enthusiasts who can sink another X kiloeuro into rebuilding their house. For the absolute vast majority of users it's not a viable option. So yes, the answer to "PV energy is almost enough in summer and not nearly enough in winter" isn't a dismissive "you're doing insulation wrong". Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201039
  - beebeepka 4y ago
    Venting is fine but but is there a point you are trying to make? Besides the "some people blah blah" strawman? I shouldn't put solar panels on my roof because it would not fix someone else's problems? What kind of logic is that?
    - magic_hamster 4y ago
      I think they're trying to say that insulation (and probably other factors) is not just one person's problem but an issue of a huge scale, which is true. If solar works for you, then that's great, but for a lot of people (the majority?) it wouldn't work, or at least not without spending a very large amount of money to retrofit your house for it. I think it's a good point even if stated quite poorly.
hgomersall 4y ago
Well yes, but generally renewable enthusiasts are also saying "we need to improve our housing stock". That's another of the opportunities to improve people's lives that will come through necessary change.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  surely 'improving housing stock' will require a lot of energy expenditures that might not be easy to calculate what the actual benefits are.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    Housing energy models are well established - things like PHPP, which though a bit of a dog to use is well validated and cheap. Low and negative carbon techniques are also available - things like mycelium insulation, which notionally outperforms EPS (and even that pays for itself from a carbon perspective very quickly if used properly).
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  - vasco 4y ago
    You make some good points in the middle of the edgy writing, but how do you think people get to the point of proving out new technology? You'd be shouting at the magic black gold people too back in the day. How would it light people's houses and require a full grid installation, and fires and blackouts, when candles already fix the real world problem.
    - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
KingOfCoders 4y ago
Not sure how "better insulation" is something "renewable enthusiasts conveniently forget". We need better insulation either way.
- illiac786 4y ago
  I think what this person meant is the renewable enthusiasts treat insulation as something easily done whereas it will take 100 years to insulate the majority of houses in Europe in my view…
  - lrem 4y ago
    Much of eastern Europe, so not particularly rich or well run countries, went from zero (due to cheap Russian gas in Warsaw pact) to ~everything insulated (because trying to cut dependency on a mortal enemy) in less than two decades.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      I'm from Moldova. No, they didn't go to "everything is insulated" even in the wildest dreams.
      - beebeepka 4y ago
        The EU paid for lots of insulation here in Bulgaria. Mostly blocks of flats, of course. They were ugly and really needed it. Hope you guys enter the union soon
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    Thank you. I couldn't have phrased it this well
  - yayachiken 4y ago
    I know you are just illustrating an opinion and not meaning it literally, but I want to stress how ridiculous your number of 100 years is in reality. The expected economic lifetime of a building in Germany is approximately 100 years. Which means that on average, the house will be torn down and rebuilt after at most 100 years, because additional upkeep would not make economic sense. This means that if you do not change policy except mandating modern standards for new buildings (which is already done) and do literally jack-shit, the normal economic activity will have the problem sorted out in that timespan. For reference: Of 22 million buildings in Germany, "only" 12.5 million are built before 1977. The German government aims at having pretty much all buildings energetically renovated in 2050. The biggest problem is that 1. there are many house-owners who literally do not give a shit even if they can save lots of money by an investment. Not everyone is economically minded and there is no political will (or legal basis) to force these people for their own good. And 2. for bigger apartment buildings etc. it is hard to do an invasive renovation while the units are occupied, limiting the scope of renovations to something that can be done in-place or one unit at a time or without affecting tenants.
blablabla123 4y ago
> With all due respect these are the kinds of "tiny" details that renewable enthusiasts conveniently forget. I mean generally it is well known that you cannot just put a lot of PV/Wind and things will work. A smart grid is needed, buffers and ideally great insulation although that is arguably important for every form of energy. Also at-home PV setups are meant to earn money/offset the energy bill. Autonomous energy supply is an after-thought that is interesting enough but has obviously not been possible with any other energy source before actually.

dvh 4y ago

In a worst case scenario (no gas, no grid electricity), he could heat only one room instead of entire house.

stewbrew 4y ago

How is this a tiny detail. We live in a passivhaus. We hardly ever heat. Improving insulation of old houses is an important aspect here. Reducing energy consumption is as important as generating and storing energy.

JohnHaugeland 4y ago
- stewbrew 4y ago
  I don't see how this relates to this discussion other than by spamming this subthread.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    I appreciate that you don't see how a direct answer to your question, where you asked what you don't understand and it was spelled out for you, doesn't relate to the discussion. I agree, your attempt to make the world's energy problems about the way you live personally in a Passivhaus doesn't relate to this discussion. That was kind of my point, as well as the point of several other people who've replied to you so far. You might as well ask why everyone doesn't just live in an igloo. It's because they don't work in the places that most people live, like downtown. And if you try to ask the company "hey, I see that you claim you reduce carbon by 90%, why wouldn't LEED certify you, they only require 30%," the company will quickly change the topic. I'll try it a little differently. "If your solution doesn't work for 99.99% of humans, your solution just doesn't work." No, I wasn't selling anything. This wasn't spam. But, you knew that. I was making a good faith attempt to answer the question you asked.
- ratww 4y ago
  The point is not that everyone should live in a passivhaus. The point is that better insulation can help reducing energy consumption. Not best: better. Those are two different words. No, you don't need a passivhaus, but the passivhaus example, which barely needs heating, is useful for demonstrating the efficiency of insulation.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    > The point is that better insulation can help reducing energy consumption Yes, that's a wonderful tidbit that fans love to say. It's also about as relevant to the discussion at hand as giving tips of how not to spill your coffee on the deck to keep it dry is to a sinking boat. You can't solve climate change with better insulation. Sorry. Part of the problem with the discussion about climate change is that people who've never actually looked at the numbers feel the emotional need to take the position of an expert and explain what will help. And yes, if a car is rolling down the hill at you, at some level, technically, throwing a grape at it will slow it down. But not enough to matter. When you take the time to put your solution in the specific context of the discussion, and take a look at how big the impact is, you realize "oh wait, no, this actually isn't a valid line of thought." You might as well try to solve the national debt with a ten dollar bill. You're missing way, way too many zeroes. In order to stop climate change, we must go carbon negative. Energy reduction does not change carbon dynamic spread, and cannot solve the problem without reducing our energy spend to zero. I enthusiastically recommend that you read some work by the academics before continuing. These are not new ideas, and they have been roundly and thoroughly debunked for decades. It turns out that yes, we have thought of insulation. This was not a curve ball. Owens Corning has so thoroughly advertised it to us that by the time I said their name, we all shared a memory of their mascot, its song, and their theme color. There is a reason that absolutely nobody who's got actual traction in the field is offering improved insulation as a solution. The reason Passivhaus is a good example is simple: they claim a 90% reduction in carbon, and when they tried to get LEED certified, LEED said "actually you increase carbon, we're not certifying you." You're listening to marketing, and trying to hold it up as engineering. Every time you attempt to google for this, please do yourself a favor, and check whether the text you're looking at is word for word identical to their marketing materials. Try a university study. None of them say it's a benefit, and there have been tons. Respectfully, no, weird houses that make carbon worse aren't going to fix this either. Thanks for understanding.
- midasuni 4y ago
  I lived in a new house for 5 years from 2016. We keep the house warm (21-22), but even then the radiators were rarely on, insulation was great. On the other hand in summer temperatures overnight we’re still in the 28-30 range in the west facing rooms even at midnight.
ajuc 4y ago
> Reducing energy consumption is as important as generating and storing energy. Only if the efficiency is 100%. In practice it's lower than that, so reducing consumption is better than increasing production.
tailsdog 4y ago
The point is that in some situations it can be more cost effective to generate additional energy than implement energy saving measures such as insulation improvements. My house was built in the 1600's it's very difficult to insulate properly.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  Real Question: I see posts like this often on HN. Why not tear down these houses and rebuild with energy efficient ones? I know... blah. blah. blah. historical this and that... but do you want to suffer from 40+C summers? This is the price of history! Think about it. Really really! Please start tearing down these horribly inefficient houses that are "historical". We already do it for office buildings!
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    The issue is that it's ridiculously expensive. You have to pay an inflated price for an existing, perfectly fine home. Then you have to pay to have it demolished. Then you have to pay to build a brand new home. It's going to cost >2x what the resulting home is actually worth. When the old homes decay to the point that they need to be torn down, then they will be. But destroying perfectly good houses is just too expensive in this market.

jnsaff2 4y ago

I wish you would expand and clarify the point you are trying to make. Currently it sounds like you are angry at a group of enthusiasts. I think for me and the OP it’s quite clear that optimizations can be made on production and consumption side. And in their circumstances financial reality says that increasing production is much cheaper, while possibly providing extra cash that would enable investment for reducing consumption, which in turn would lead to more income.

Helmut10001 4y ago
Thanks for the nice summary! I couldn't phrase it better.
dmitriid 4y ago
> I wish you would expand and clarify the point you are trying to make. The problem with people enthusiastically proposing renewables as the cheap solution to our energy needs is the thousand "little" details like the one above. Whose only mention is in the comments like "your math is wrong, invest in insulation". No. The math isn't wrong. Bo, the consumption is correct and shouldn't "should be lower". Because it's directly indicative of the reality. Yes, you have a couple of enthusiasts who can sink another X kiloeuro into rebuilding their house. For the absolute vast majority of users it's not a viable option. So yes, the answer to "PV energy is almost enough in summer and not nearly enough in winter" isn't a dismissive "you're doing insulation wrong". Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201039
- beebeepka 4y ago
  Venting is fine but but is there a point you are trying to make? Besides the "some people blah blah" strawman? I shouldn't put solar panels on my roof because it would not fix someone else's problems? What kind of logic is that?
  - magic_hamster 4y ago
    I think they're trying to say that insulation (and probably other factors) is not just one person's problem but an issue of a huge scale, which is true. If solar works for you, then that's great, but for a lot of people (the majority?) it wouldn't work, or at least not without spending a very large amount of money to retrofit your house for it. I think it's a good point even if stated quite poorly.

hgomersall 4y ago

Well yes, but generally renewable enthusiasts are also saying "we need to improve our housing stock". That's another of the opportunities to improve people's lives that will come through necessary change.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
surely 'improving housing stock' will require a lot of energy expenditures that might not be easy to calculate what the actual benefits are.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  Housing energy models are well established - things like PHPP, which though a bit of a dog to use is well validated and cheap. Low and negative carbon techniques are also available - things like mycelium insulation, which notionally outperforms EPS (and even that pays for itself from a carbon perspective very quickly if used properly).
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
- vasco 4y ago
  You make some good points in the middle of the edgy writing, but how do you think people get to the point of proving out new technology? You'd be shouting at the magic black gold people too back in the day. How would it light people's houses and require a full grid installation, and fires and blackouts, when candles already fix the real world problem.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago

KingOfCoders 4y ago

Not sure how "better insulation" is something "renewable enthusiasts conveniently forget". We need better insulation either way.

illiac786 4y ago
I think what this person meant is the renewable enthusiasts treat insulation as something easily done whereas it will take 100 years to insulate the majority of houses in Europe in my view…
- lrem 4y ago
  Much of eastern Europe, so not particularly rich or well run countries, went from zero (due to cheap Russian gas in Warsaw pact) to ~everything insulated (because trying to cut dependency on a mortal enemy) in less than two decades.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    I'm from Moldova. No, they didn't go to "everything is insulated" even in the wildest dreams.
    - beebeepka 4y ago
      The EU paid for lots of insulation here in Bulgaria. Mostly blocks of flats, of course. They were ugly and really needed it. Hope you guys enter the union soon
- dmitriid 4y ago
  Thank you. I couldn't have phrased it this well
- yayachiken 4y ago
  I know you are just illustrating an opinion and not meaning it literally, but I want to stress how ridiculous your number of 100 years is in reality. The expected economic lifetime of a building in Germany is approximately 100 years. Which means that on average, the house will be torn down and rebuilt after at most 100 years, because additional upkeep would not make economic sense. This means that if you do not change policy except mandating modern standards for new buildings (which is already done) and do literally jack-shit, the normal economic activity will have the problem sorted out in that timespan. For reference: Of 22 million buildings in Germany, "only" 12.5 million are built before 1977. The German government aims at having pretty much all buildings energetically renovated in 2050. The biggest problem is that 1. there are many house-owners who literally do not give a shit even if they can save lots of money by an investment. Not everyone is economically minded and there is no political will (or legal basis) to force these people for their own good. And 2. for bigger apartment buildings etc. it is hard to do an invasive renovation while the units are occupied, limiting the scope of renovations to something that can be done in-place or one unit at a time or without affecting tenants.

blablabla123 4y ago

> With all due respect these are the kinds of "tiny" details that renewable enthusiasts conveniently forget. I mean generally it is well known that you cannot just put a lot of PV/Wind and things will work. A smart grid is needed, buffers and ideally great insulation although that is arguably important for every form of energy. Also at-home PV setups are meant to earn money/offset the energy bill. Autonomous energy supply is an after-thought that is interesting enough but has obviously not been possible with any other energy source before actually.