Our contractor used our house as an opportunity to apply for status as an Energy Star builder. It worked. He’s now an Energy Star approved builder, and we have a 5+ star Energy Star home. In the process we discovered a big difference in the projected energy usage by our Energy Star certified rater using REM/Rate and our certified PassivHaus consultants who used the PassivHaus spreadsheet.
This is the first post in the performance tracking category . I plan to add more sophisticated tracking devices in the future, but for the moment I’m simply tracking our monthly power meter and solar generation meter readings, as well as our total water usage.
As Larry mentioned in the last post, we have ordered our appliances and they are due to arrive in the next 2-3 weeks. I’ve been researching appliances and keeping an eye on prices for the past 2 years; constantly updating our short list as new models came out and old ones were discontinued. There is an endless variety to choose from, but we were able to narrow our choices down to fit a few key criteria:
