Can We Build in a Brighter Shade of Green?

[groovedaddy]

WHEN Barbara Landau, an environmental and land-use lawyer in suburban Boston, was shopping for insurance on the energy-efficient home she and her husband were building in the woods just outside of town here, she was routinely asked what sort of furnace the home would have.

“None,” she replied.

Several insurers declined coverage.

“They just didn’t understand what we were trying to do,” Mrs. Landau recalls. “They said the pipes would freeze.”

They won’t. A so-called passive home like the one the Landaus are now building is so purposefully designed and built — from its orientation toward the sun and superthick insulation to its algorithmic design and virtually unbroken air envelope — that it requires minimal heating, even in chilly New England. Contrary to some naysayers’ concerns, the Landaus’ timber-frame home will be neither stuffy nor, at 2,000 square feet, oppressively small.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/business/energy-environment/26smart.html?th&emc=th

[madokie]

1. When we bought this place

and I took it down to the bare outside walls and rebuilt it with all new plumbing and electric, rearranged the interior walls and built it back when we went to insure the insurance companies asked us were we using natural gas for heat because they didn't see a propane tank outside anywhere. When I told them that we were using a wood pellet stove they said oh you have to have a back up. I said what for and they said what if you ran out of pellets or the electric went off, those things have to have electric to run you know. So I asked about electric and they said if it was hard wired in that would be ok. So to appease them I installed an electric furnace which we'll never use and they came out and inspected the house and was fine with it. I told them I wasn't putting gas in my home so they allowed us to have wood pellets with electric backup. how stupid on their part was that I ask? Some insurance people are simply stupid methinks.

For back up I have a welder/generator that I connect to the house to run things in a power outage of which we've had to use the last two winters for a short time when the unusual ice storms took the power lines down. No big deal for me though.