Thermal Mass -
Energy Savings Potential in Residential

Europeans have interesting observations about homes in America; they are amazed at the lack of thermal mass. Not many of us in America have ever seen a 3 foot wide rammed earth wall. Thermal mass is a concept not overly stressed in our educational systems nor embraced by architects or the housing industry. Does it matter? Or are there hidden opportunities? Thermal mass is any material that has the capacity to store heat. Not to be confused with insulation, thermal mass is a solid that is effective at soaking up heat, retaining it, and then releasing it slowly which provides excellent thermal comfort. Examples include concrete floors, interior brick, masonry fireplaces, stored water, and adobe walls. Everything has mass, but not all mass is equal. Carpet has a thermal admittance index number of .07, whereas granite has 2.1, water has 1.9 and brick has .72.  In Europe the International Energy Association (IEA) Sustainable Solar Housing demonstration projects show the importance of thermal mass and chronicle their findings in a $108 book called Sustainable Solar Housing: Strategies and Solutions. Thermal mass is one of the lesser understood nuances of green building, but it is credited as being part of the solution in the quest for the low carbon house.
   www.greenspec.co.uk/html/lowcarbon/lowcarbonthermalmass.html

Stateside, our friends at Oak Ridge National Labs ran extensive tests on various wall systems and climates. Short answer: the average potential whole building energy savings from incorporating thermal mass can be between 6 and 8%. Long answer:    www.ornl.gov/sci/roofs+walls/research/detailed_papers/thermal/index.html

Europeans take their thermal mass seriously. See this UK web site for a host of resources.
   www.sustainableconcrete.org.uk/main.asp?page=113

Information on thermal mass in housing can be found in The Concrete Centre guide: 'Thermal Mass for Housing' which is free to download from
   Concrete Centre web site at www.concretecentre.com/main.asp?page=0

For more information, please contact GWS @ 1-888-488-0206 or visit our web site www.gwssi.com.

LEED-Homes Statistics

The ratings system from United States Green Building Council (USGBC) was officially launched at GreenBuild earlier this month; 336 homes were certified under the pilot program, with 8,204 pending.

Are you Giving the Gift that Keeps on Consuming?

A flat screen plasma TV can use $130 of electricity per year and up to $200 with all the components added such as TiVo recorders, surround sound, DVD. The current Energy Star label isn’t very helpful when making television purchases because it only evaluates how much power the TV sets use in stand-by mode. By November 2008 the new Energy Star Tag program will measure the actual kilowatt use of a TV when in use. To put it in perspective, a refrigerator uses $60 per year; the common 28-inch cathode ray tube TV uses $30 per year. An annual utility cost of $130 for a plasma TV can be as much as two months of operating costs for the entire house! Figures based on 35 hours per week and 12¢/kw hr. (Wall Street Journal, pg. D1, Dec. 13, 2007)
Consumer electronics account for 15 -20% of household electricity use today, up from 5 percent in 1980 according to the EPA. Unbelievable but true, televisions account for 4 percent of the nation's annual residential electricity consumption. Plasma screens are the Hummers of the living rooms!