HUDSON – Sevag Pogharian's Net Zero house is nothing short ofawe-inspiring. Nestled in Hudson's affluent Alstonvale suburb, his creationgleams in the skyline. Upon first sight, the impressive copper chimney mountedhigh on the roof's peak plays havoc with the eyes, momentarily distracting fromthe the sleek, modern lines of Pogharian's unique design.
Pogharian's Net Zero house is one of 12 projectsnationwide, chosen from a total of 72 homebuilder teams that submittedapplications in July of 2006. The invitation came from the CanadaMortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) under the EQuilibrium housing initiative.
“When I first read the competition guidelinesthree and a half years ago my jaw dropped – a net zero energy house, a housethat returns energy – I didn't know it was possible," Pogharian told the Hudson/St.Lazare Gazette during aninterview and guided tour of the house.
“I don't normally participate in competitions,but when I got the invitation I just leaped into it even though I knew nothingabout it. My interests in organic architecture, important to me once upon atime, came flooding back.”
The goal of CMHC’s EQuilibrium initiative is todemonstrate a new approach to housing in Canada, designed to lower homeowners’energy bills by reducing energy consumption and delivering electricity back tothe grid. The homes will also promote water conservation, healthy indoorenvironments, durability, and reduced pollutant emissions as outlined by theEQuilibrium sustainable housing competition guidelines.
Perched on 30,000 square feet of land,the Net Zero house evokes comparisons to a church, built long and narrow tocapitalize on southern exposure, the copper chimney curiously resembling a belltower. It seems somehow appropriate for the design to embody faith andsalvation.
The house stands in stark contrast to its neighbours. The dark redbrick and unusual façade, soon to be adorned with ornamentation- a fishpond, and French balconies- command attention. The goal of the MontrealZero team was to change the way residential design is approachedby redefining beauty and reconsidering traditional design to embrace newtechniques rather than simply adding energy-efficient features to aconventional design
Pogharian, a graduate of McGill's School of Architecture, challengesdevelopers to rationalize design choices in favour of preserving theenvironment. He and the 11 other EQuilibrium initiatives are laying thefoundation for a cleaner, energy-efficient, technologically advanced alternativefor residential housing.
Pogharian's message is simple and clear: “We can live verycomfortably while consuming a fraction of the energy – it just requiresthought.”
Pogharian broke ground 18 months ago despitevarious set backs. “There have been a lot of technical and social challenges,”he confided. “To build here in Alstonvale, you need approval from the town andthe local architectural review committee. The town posed no problem,” hesaid, adding it only takes one person to derail a project. “We had somedifficulties in getting approvals because the house isn’t presenting its widefacade to the street.”
Pogharian, acting as developer, architect, andgeneral contractor, all the while operating SPD, his own design-build firmspecializing in custom homes, is fully invested in the project, bothemotionally and financially. “It's a lot of hats to wear. Sometimes thestress and anxiety becomes overwhelming,” he admitted.
The project became more ambitious than thecontest outlined, exceeding competition requirements. Because it becamemore ambitious it drew a lot more interest. Among the major contributors areHydro-Quebec, Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Concordia University and MIT,where Pogharian earned his Masters degree.
“The first stage of the competition was to puttogether a team. I went on the Internet and did a search for who has done thissort of thing before. I found an engineering firm in Massachusetts that builtthe first net zero house in conjunction with MIT 25-30 yearsago, contacted them and, after a lot of coaxing, they finally agreed tocome on board.”
Because the global future with energy andwater is so bleak, Pogharian and his team were intent on demonstrating a netzero energy lifestyle is possible without sacrificing quality or elegance inlifestyle. The house, airtight and well insulated, relies almost exclusively onpassive heating and cooling techniques to achieve a healthy balanced indoorenvironment.
Imagine that your hydro bill is $12/month. Youlive in a house that generates all the energy it needs and returns back to thegrid whatever it took. Additional energy will be used to charge yourelectric car to meet your local transportation needs. The exteriorlandscaping is edible, supplemented by a net zero greenhouse to sustain most ofyour family's food needs during the winter months.
If you can picture it, you've just seenPogharian's dream – his vision of a net zero lifestyle. The CMHC has set agoal that by 2030 every new house will be net zero energy. “We need to pullthat closer: by 2020, 80% of new homes should be net zero,” Pogharian insists. “Iwill never do another conventional house. Anything I do will have to integrateat least passive solar. It’s a must. We have to somehow make it mandatory.”
Plan and design accordingly is all Pogharianasks of developers and contractors. “The way we build houses is so shameful,with little consideration for where north or south is, or where the winds comefrom,” he reasons. “It makes no sense to put a garage on the south side, or bigwindows on the street just for appearance if it’s the north side,” headds, stressing the importance of passive solar technology.
“When I first saw the contribution of passivesolar to the annual performance of the house, I was shocked. I was almosttempted to go to past clients and apologize to them for not integrating passivesolar into their houses,” Pogharian professes.
The path to net zero energy is veryclear. The goal is to reduce the energy needs of the house. First, exploitpassive solar design techniques (south-facing windows). Second, the buildingenvelope has to be air-tight, and third, reduce the internal demand load of thehouse – appliances, light fixtures, etc. Don't throw anythingaway. Recover heat from air thrown out and from shower drain water beforeit is thrown out.
Next, generate enough energy to become net zero.The way in which energy is generated makes it net zero. The Alstonvale houseuses a very new approach called Photovoltaic (PV) thermal, a hybrid between PVand solar thermal. In one installation the sun’s rays are converted intoboth electricity and usable heat.
“Over half of the space heating needs comedirectly from the sun. For the rest, some comes from the building-integratedPV thermal system, and the rest is given off by the internal workings of thehouse,” explains Pogharian. The PVs (solar panels) on the roof will produce allthe energy needed for the house and for the car.
“The building controls will not be simpleprogrammable thermostats. High performance controls take on a larger importancebecause all the elements work tightly together,” Pogharian notes. “Based on theamount of sun, temperature in and out, the building will determine its energymanagement strategy.”
The main wall facing the south windows is amasonry wall. “Whenever there is sunlight in the heating cycle, if you don'tneed the heat you want to have thermal mass so that it can absorb the heat andlater on it will slowly radiate it back out,” he explains. This type of passivesolar energy has been with us for years, dating back to the old horse and buggystories of men packing heated bricks in the carriage to keep the passengerswarm on both legs of their journey.
The insulation is radically different in the NetZero house from a conventional house. There are two inches of high-densitypolyurethane sprayed between the brick and the sheeting. In a few weeks thecavities will be filled with low density polyurethane, creating a highlevel of insulation and air tightness not typically seen in standardconstruction. Pogharian admits the initial cost is higher, but in the long runit means big savings.
The floors will be ceramic with radiant heat.The air pulled through the heat exchanger transfers heat from the exchanger tothe liquid circulating through it and is brought to the mechanical room – theonly room in the basement.
If the liquid is hot enough it will dump theheat into a big reservoir, 4500 litres of water, which acts like a big batterythat stores heat. The heat is then distributed throughout the house with afloor hydronic system. If the liquid is not hot enough to dump directly intothe reservoir, two small heat pumps will work on it to bring the temperature upbefore dumping it in.
One sunny day in winter will store enough heatto allow the house to coast for two and a half days.
Sounds ingenious? That's because it is. “Thereis no one-stop shop to learn the techniques,” says Pogharian. At least notuntil now. His design and hard work stand to be that shop in the future, thefirst to bring all of these elements together under one roof.
“This house requires 7000 kilowatt-hours ofenergy compared to 40,000 comparable kilowatt-hours in a conventional house. Allof that is produced by the PV modules and returned back to the grid,” he says,adding, “It's all just plain sunlight.”
The house, 2700 sq ft of habitable space, plusmechanical room and garage, will be finished in the spring, and will be openfor a seven-month period for tours.
It will then be lived in for 12 months by afamily of two adults and two kids. All simulations were based on this make-up. Duringthat 12-month period the house will be monitored extensively to measure how itis performing to see where the simulations went wrong. Over 200 parameters willbe monitored – possibly the only house in the country being monitored thatextensively.
“The supervisory control system will have apredictive element,” explains Pogharian. “This ‘smart house’ will fetch a 24-hourweather forecast and determine its energy cycle based on that. If thecontrol system knows it will be a sunny day, it may decide not to usehard-earned energy to heat the house when, if it waits two hours, it will beginto heat by itself.” The control system was a Concordia Universitycontribution.
In essence, the grid is being used as a bigbattery. The house is always taking and throwing energy into the grid.
“It would cost almost nothing to integrate passivesolar into a house – it just requires thought at the level of design whenbuilding,” Pogharian suggests. To make a conventional house net zero wouldrequire $200,000 dollars of photovoltaic. To make this house net zero, it costonly $40,000.
Passive solar plays a big role in cooling andheating a house. With sun screens to prevent unwanted heat, and windows onthe west and east sides to create a draft when the windows are open, no airconditioning is needed.
“The windows on the west will be motorized andin the solar chimney the east-facing window will be motorized. Negativepressures will want to suck air out of the house that will create a huge draftup and out when windows are open,” Pogharian says, explaining the house hasenough thermal mass that when you cool it at night, it will be perfectlycomfortable in the day time.
Another key feature of Pogharian’s Net Zerohouse is a rainwater harvesting system used to flush toilets and use rainwaterfor irrigation. “There is a very intimate connection between energy andwater – every cup of potable water that we consume has a lot of embodied energyin it. It takes a lot of energy to purify water and pump it to where it isneeded,” he remarks. This house will consume 20% of the potable water that acomparable conventional house will consume.
Pogharian also wanted to use grey water, but tomake it potable there is a significant cost and complexity associated withit. For this project he decided not to go in that direction.
Domestic hot water will come from a separatesolar thermal system on the patio door, much like an awning. In summermonths, due to excess heat, there is a heat dissipater to get rid of the excessthat could easily be used to heat a pool.
“This house was extremely difficult to build,but the second one will be much easier, and the third and so on,” saysPogharian, not deterred by the stress of it all. “If I had known the challengesI would have to face, the whole project would have probably ended up in therecycling bin,” he says with a chuckle.
“The story I want this project to tell is this: itis possible to live a very gracious and elegant lifestyle while consuming afraction of the energy and a fraction of the water we now consume. Living in aproject like this will involve zero sacrifice,” says a confident Pogharian. Withhome-scale agriculture, no combustion, and an electric car, all it would takeis a shift in lifestyle.
In the not too distant future, the utility grid,now just a dumb grid, will know where there is a problem, what the demand is,who is generating and throwing energy into the grid, and how to readjust itselfto redistribute the power, Pogharian explains. The grid, in the future, willcommunicate with houses.
“If the grid is having trouble meeting thedemand being placed on it by all the users, it will tell a house like this,with an electric meter installed allowing for bidirectional communication, ‘Iam having trouble. What can you spare.’ Appliances like a clothes dryer will beable to communicate with the meter – the meter will tell you ‘If you useelectricity now, the price is this, if you use it later, it will cost less.’Depending on the settings, it will decide when to dry the clothes.”
The future will be built on this type of demandmanagement.
Hydro-Quebec is currently running a pilotproject in four cities in Quebec experimenting with timely use.
Pogharian is making history. His passion for anet zero lifestyle is opening doors to change. “We need to start thinking andbehaving in a way that demonstrates rational thought. Energy in Quebec isviewed as a social good,” he says, emphasizing the need to be proactive inpreserving natural resources.
The house will open for tours in spring, 2010for seven moths. Pogharian will then launch a contest to pick a family tolive in the house for 12 months while it is being monitored.
Pogharian's Net Zero house is one of 12 projectsnationwide, chosen from a total of 72 homebuilder teams that submittedapplications in July of 2006. The invitation came from the CanadaMortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) under the EQuilibrium housing initiative.
“When I first read the competition guidelinesthree and a half years ago my jaw dropped – a net zero energy house, a housethat returns energy – I didn't know it was possible," Pogharian told the Hudson/St.Lazare Gazette during aninterview and guided tour of the house.
“I don't normally participate in competitions,but when I got the invitation I just leaped into it even though I knew nothingabout it. My interests in organic architecture, important to me once upon atime, came flooding back.”
The goal of CMHC’s EQuilibrium initiative is todemonstrate a new approach to housing in Canada, designed to lower homeowners’energy bills by reducing energy consumption and delivering electricity back tothe grid. The homes will also promote water conservation, healthy indoorenvironments, durability, and reduced pollutant emissions as outlined by theEQuilibrium sustainable housing competition guidelines.
Perched on 30,000 square feet of land,the Net Zero house evokes comparisons to a church, built long and narrow tocapitalize on southern exposure, the copper chimney curiously resembling a belltower. It seems somehow appropriate for the design to embody faith andsalvation.
The house stands in stark contrast to its neighbours. The dark redbrick and unusual façade, soon to be adorned with ornamentation- a fishpond, and French balconies- command attention. The goal of the MontrealZero team was to change the way residential design is approachedby redefining beauty and reconsidering traditional design to embrace newtechniques rather than simply adding energy-efficient features to aconventional design
Pogharian, a graduate of McGill's School of Architecture, challengesdevelopers to rationalize design choices in favour of preserving theenvironment. He and the 11 other EQuilibrium initiatives are laying thefoundation for a cleaner, energy-efficient, technologically advanced alternativefor residential housing.
Pogharian's message is simple and clear: “We can live verycomfortably while consuming a fraction of the energy – it just requiresthought.”
Pogharian broke ground 18 months ago despitevarious set backs. “There have been a lot of technical and social challenges,”he confided. “To build here in Alstonvale, you need approval from the town andthe local architectural review committee. The town posed no problem,” hesaid, adding it only takes one person to derail a project. “We had somedifficulties in getting approvals because the house isn’t presenting its widefacade to the street.”
Pogharian, acting as developer, architect, andgeneral contractor, all the while operating SPD, his own design-build firmspecializing in custom homes, is fully invested in the project, bothemotionally and financially. “It's a lot of hats to wear. Sometimes thestress and anxiety becomes overwhelming,” he admitted.
The project became more ambitious than thecontest outlined, exceeding competition requirements. Because it becamemore ambitious it drew a lot more interest. Among the major contributors areHydro-Quebec, Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Concordia University and MIT,where Pogharian earned his Masters degree.
“The first stage of the competition was to puttogether a team. I went on the Internet and did a search for who has done thissort of thing before. I found an engineering firm in Massachusetts that builtthe first net zero house in conjunction with MIT 25-30 yearsago, contacted them and, after a lot of coaxing, they finally agreed tocome on board.”
Because the global future with energy andwater is so bleak, Pogharian and his team were intent on demonstrating a netzero energy lifestyle is possible without sacrificing quality or elegance inlifestyle. The house, airtight and well insulated, relies almost exclusively onpassive heating and cooling techniques to achieve a healthy balanced indoorenvironment.
Imagine that your hydro bill is $12/month. Youlive in a house that generates all the energy it needs and returns back to thegrid whatever it took. Additional energy will be used to charge yourelectric car to meet your local transportation needs. The exteriorlandscaping is edible, supplemented by a net zero greenhouse to sustain most ofyour family's food needs during the winter months.
If you can picture it, you've just seenPogharian's dream – his vision of a net zero lifestyle. The CMHC has set agoal that by 2030 every new house will be net zero energy. “We need to pullthat closer: by 2020, 80% of new homes should be net zero,” Pogharian insists. “Iwill never do another conventional house. Anything I do will have to integrateat least passive solar. It’s a must. We have to somehow make it mandatory.”
Plan and design accordingly is all Pogharianasks of developers and contractors. “The way we build houses is so shameful,with little consideration for where north or south is, or where the winds comefrom,” he reasons. “It makes no sense to put a garage on the south side, or bigwindows on the street just for appearance if it’s the north side,” headds, stressing the importance of passive solar technology.
“When I first saw the contribution of passivesolar to the annual performance of the house, I was shocked. I was almosttempted to go to past clients and apologize to them for not integrating passivesolar into their houses,” Pogharian professes.
The path to net zero energy is veryclear. The goal is to reduce the energy needs of the house. First, exploitpassive solar design techniques (south-facing windows). Second, the buildingenvelope has to be air-tight, and third, reduce the internal demand load of thehouse – appliances, light fixtures, etc. Don't throw anythingaway. Recover heat from air thrown out and from shower drain water beforeit is thrown out.
Next, generate enough energy to become net zero.The way in which energy is generated makes it net zero. The Alstonvale houseuses a very new approach called Photovoltaic (PV) thermal, a hybrid between PVand solar thermal. In one installation the sun’s rays are converted intoboth electricity and usable heat.
“Over half of the space heating needs comedirectly from the sun. For the rest, some comes from the building-integratedPV thermal system, and the rest is given off by the internal workings of thehouse,” explains Pogharian. The PVs (solar panels) on the roof will produce allthe energy needed for the house and for the car.
“The building controls will not be simpleprogrammable thermostats. High performance controls take on a larger importancebecause all the elements work tightly together,” Pogharian notes. “Based on theamount of sun, temperature in and out, the building will determine its energymanagement strategy.”
The main wall facing the south windows is amasonry wall. “Whenever there is sunlight in the heating cycle, if you don'tneed the heat you want to have thermal mass so that it can absorb the heat andlater on it will slowly radiate it back out,” he explains. This type of passivesolar energy has been with us for years, dating back to the old horse and buggystories of men packing heated bricks in the carriage to keep the passengerswarm on both legs of their journey.
The insulation is radically different in the NetZero house from a conventional house. There are two inches of high-densitypolyurethane sprayed between the brick and the sheeting. In a few weeks thecavities will be filled with low density polyurethane, creating a highlevel of insulation and air tightness not typically seen in standardconstruction. Pogharian admits the initial cost is higher, but in the long runit means big savings.
The floors will be ceramic with radiant heat.The air pulled through the heat exchanger transfers heat from the exchanger tothe liquid circulating through it and is brought to the mechanical room – theonly room in the basement.
If the liquid is hot enough it will dump theheat into a big reservoir, 4500 litres of water, which acts like a big batterythat stores heat. The heat is then distributed throughout the house with afloor hydronic system. If the liquid is not hot enough to dump directly intothe reservoir, two small heat pumps will work on it to bring the temperature upbefore dumping it in.
One sunny day in winter will store enough heatto allow the house to coast for two and a half days.
Sounds ingenious? That's because it is. “Thereis no one-stop shop to learn the techniques,” says Pogharian. At least notuntil now. His design and hard work stand to be that shop in the future, thefirst to bring all of these elements together under one roof.
“This house requires 7000 kilowatt-hours ofenergy compared to 40,000 comparable kilowatt-hours in a conventional house. Allof that is produced by the PV modules and returned back to the grid,” he says,adding, “It's all just plain sunlight.”
The house, 2700 sq ft of habitable space, plusmechanical room and garage, will be finished in the spring, and will be openfor a seven-month period for tours.
It will then be lived in for 12 months by afamily of two adults and two kids. All simulations were based on this make-up. Duringthat 12-month period the house will be monitored extensively to measure how itis performing to see where the simulations went wrong. Over 200 parameters willbe monitored – possibly the only house in the country being monitored thatextensively.
“The supervisory control system will have apredictive element,” explains Pogharian. “This ‘smart house’ will fetch a 24-hourweather forecast and determine its energy cycle based on that. If thecontrol system knows it will be a sunny day, it may decide not to usehard-earned energy to heat the house when, if it waits two hours, it will beginto heat by itself.” The control system was a Concordia Universitycontribution.
In essence, the grid is being used as a bigbattery. The house is always taking and throwing energy into the grid.
“It would cost almost nothing to integrate passivesolar into a house – it just requires thought at the level of design whenbuilding,” Pogharian suggests. To make a conventional house net zero wouldrequire $200,000 dollars of photovoltaic. To make this house net zero, it costonly $40,000.
Passive solar plays a big role in cooling andheating a house. With sun screens to prevent unwanted heat, and windows onthe west and east sides to create a draft when the windows are open, no airconditioning is needed.
“The windows on the west will be motorized andin the solar chimney the east-facing window will be motorized. Negativepressures will want to suck air out of the house that will create a huge draftup and out when windows are open,” Pogharian says, explaining the house hasenough thermal mass that when you cool it at night, it will be perfectlycomfortable in the day time.
Another key feature of Pogharian’s Net Zerohouse is a rainwater harvesting system used to flush toilets and use rainwaterfor irrigation. “There is a very intimate connection between energy andwater – every cup of potable water that we consume has a lot of embodied energyin it. It takes a lot of energy to purify water and pump it to where it isneeded,” he remarks. This house will consume 20% of the potable water that acomparable conventional house will consume.
Pogharian also wanted to use grey water, but tomake it potable there is a significant cost and complexity associated withit. For this project he decided not to go in that direction.
Domestic hot water will come from a separatesolar thermal system on the patio door, much like an awning. In summermonths, due to excess heat, there is a heat dissipater to get rid of the excessthat could easily be used to heat a pool.
“This house was extremely difficult to build,but the second one will be much easier, and the third and so on,” saysPogharian, not deterred by the stress of it all. “If I had known the challengesI would have to face, the whole project would have probably ended up in therecycling bin,” he says with a chuckle.
“The story I want this project to tell is this: itis possible to live a very gracious and elegant lifestyle while consuming afraction of the energy and a fraction of the water we now consume. Living in aproject like this will involve zero sacrifice,” says a confident Pogharian. Withhome-scale agriculture, no combustion, and an electric car, all it would takeis a shift in lifestyle.
In the not too distant future, the utility grid,now just a dumb grid, will know where there is a problem, what the demand is,who is generating and throwing energy into the grid, and how to readjust itselfto redistribute the power, Pogharian explains. The grid, in the future, willcommunicate with houses.
“If the grid is having trouble meeting thedemand being placed on it by all the users, it will tell a house like this,with an electric meter installed allowing for bidirectional communication, ‘Iam having trouble. What can you spare.’ Appliances like a clothes dryer will beable to communicate with the meter – the meter will tell you ‘If you useelectricity now, the price is this, if you use it later, it will cost less.’Depending on the settings, it will decide when to dry the clothes.”
The future will be built on this type of demandmanagement.
Hydro-Quebec is currently running a pilotproject in four cities in Quebec experimenting with timely use.
Pogharian is making history. His passion for anet zero lifestyle is opening doors to change. “We need to start thinking andbehaving in a way that demonstrates rational thought. Energy in Quebec isviewed as a social good,” he says, emphasizing the need to be proactive inpreserving natural resources.
The house will open for tours in spring, 2010for seven moths. Pogharian will then launch a contest to pick a family tolive in the house for 12 months while it is being monitored.
