We’ve added a page for both the minneAppleseed Team and the Apple Seed Project on this website. You can find them under Pages in the right hand navigation of this blog.

The site photos we took in the eco-village are now available online for download. Please use this link to download them to your desktop (please right-click the link, and select “download linked file”).

Please join the group for our next meeting at Karges Faulconbridge on Friday, October 24, at 11.30 AM.

Agenda for the meeting

Greetings and updates: 15 min

Update Hawthorne Eco village: 15 min

Community updates: 10 min

Sponsorship: 15 min

Design/ engineering: 20 min 

Open item: 15 min

Send a note if you would like to add or modify our agenda.

One of the basics being addressed as part of the passive house design process is establishing a baseline of factors such as energy use and green house gas generation. The US EPA has already compiled some energy use information and conversion factors that will help in the baseline development.

Average Annual CO2 Emissions for an Average Single-Family Home:
Average CO2 emissions: 24,900 lbs/year (11.3 metric tons/ year)
Average Carbon emissions: 6,800 lbs/year (3.1 metric tons/year)
Average kWh: 11,965 kWh/ year (124 mmBtu/ year, delivered)

Source: RECS, 2001
The average single-family home adds more than twice as much greenhouse gas (CE) emissions to the atmosphere as the average passenger vehicle.

Today, Jeff Skrenes, John Harrington and I met at the Eco-Village to identify potential building sites. We identified 5 potential sites, which we will further evaluate. Find images after the break. (more…)

One of the important factors in this effort is our commitment to do all we can to make the house affordable. First we need to clarify what we mean by affordable. The numbers in the linked file below are a little out of date (2006) but they provide a clear indication of the estimates we’re using to achieve an affordability target. Basically, we’re trying for a “sale price” of about $150,000. This means a family earning between $45,000 and $50,000 should be able to afford to buy it. We think it will cost about $275,000 to build, so we need subsidy and sponsor donations totaling about $125,000. These estimates don’t include

appleseed_affordability

Here is a series of links to different resources outlining what a Passive House is and how it works.

• What is the Passive House Standard?
• How does a Passive House work?
• What are the benefits of a Passive House?
• What are the differences between Passive House and Passive Solar Design?
• Passive House Metrics, Zero Energy and Carbon Neutrality