Passive Home Project

Introduction:

This is known to be the passive home project that the Lacey STEM freshmen were assigned during the 2020 pandemic of the Corona Virus. This project introduced new vocabulary like passive home, floor plan, and sustainability. These terms will be defined later in the page so please check it out! The overall purpose of this project was to teach how houses can be more "green". The class looked at insulators, locations, and alternate energy sources like solar panels. Each student was instructed to choose a few materials that their house was going to be made out of based on their chosen location. Once that was completed, students were instructed to make a floor plan on what their general house would look like. After that, the students were then told to make a wall section to show what the interior of the wall would look like. Finally, the students were told to do BTU (British Thermal Unit) calculations.

Defining Key Terms

In order to actually start this project it is important to know some key terms. This explanation will go over some of the most important terms like the term, passive house because this is what the whole project is about. A passive home is almost a fancy way of calling a building energy efficient. Moving on, there are green materials. These are materials that are materials that are common and renewable. Another term with a lot of meaning is alternate energy. This is a source of energy that is better for the environment other than fossil fuels. If you'd like to learn about more key terms, click on the link below to my document to see it in full screen. Or just scroll through the embedded document below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D5OQ2jvOank2olU2i51iQS89Xsk42mhSLzKj_yN8xWA/edit?usp=sharing

Materials and Alternate Energy:

In order to begin this step of the project, the students were told to pick an area of the United States where they would like their houses to be. The area that was chosen was El Dorado, Kansas . Here there are more sunny days than cloudy days. The temperature is mild but can get a little low. Also there are high speeds of winds in El Dorado. Before I chose the two new materials I had chosen structural insulated panels and clay. Little did I know that they were not very good for a passive home so I switched to two new ones. The two materials that were chosen for this project were engineered wood and cellulose insulation. Both of these materials seemed to meet the expectations for a passive home so they were picked. The alternate energy source that was chosen was solar panels. Since it is growing in popularity nowadays it seemed like the right choice for the type of area where there is more sunny days than cloudy days. To read more information about the alternate energy source and materials click on the link below or look through the embedded document below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xTW7gQFxyLRkpwTlYDyQ5doTd4OF9SXZoJfWOOE0zI0/edit?usp=sharing

BTU Calculations:

For this part of the project the students were about to find out whether or not their passive homes were successful. To find the BTU of your house you need to have three different variables U-factor, area, and degrees Fahrenheit. In order to find the U-factor you have to find the R value of the wall, ceiling, windows, or doors. There is a page linked below to give you the R value of different materials. Then to find the U-factor with the R value you need to do 1/R value. You'll most likely get something in the hundredths place. Once you have the U-factor, you need to get the area of your house in square feet. Once you have your area, then you need the Fahrenheit which is the desired temperature minus the actual temperature. Then you multiply all of those to get the BTU per hour. The image below shows the calculations for my project.

R-Value link https://drive.google.com/a/laceyschools.org/file/d/1yD33R5P1dWlOMYpteGQFRmdwOc_Kn7SH/view?usp=sharing