What is the most efficient style of house?

Question

Ranch, Colonial, etc. Please site links or articles if possible. Thank you.

Answer 1

The particular style isn't the issue, any can be built green, it's just a matter of what building materials and systems you use.  

Answer 2

There's a style of house called 'passive house' or 'passiv haus' which is extremely energy efficient by design.  See link below.

Answer 3

Depending on where you live, the octagon shaped house will capture the best angles of the sun, and give the best choice of wind flow,

However houses of cement blocks offer better insulation from both heat and cold.

Answer 4

It's not the style of house, but the thought that goes into the design that makes all the difference.  Site the house properly, and you can use passive solar and passive cooling, or active solar as well (with possible hot water solar heating?)

Insulated Concrete Forms are very energy efficient!

See  http://www.building-your-green-home.com/...

These forms can be used regardless of your house style.

Planning ahead can be a huge energy saver.  For more great ideas on planning your home to be energy efficient, see the following page on energy efficient home design.  

http://www.building-your-green-home.com/...

There are other pages on the site to help with site selection, saving energy, foundation, etc.

Hope this helps!  

Answer 5

Any home that is carbon neutral is the "most efficient". So how does one accomplish building a carbon neutral home? That is a much more complex question.

To learn more about the details, along with videos, specific instructions and the ability to comment and discuss or ask questions; go to website below.

Answer 6

Look into straw bale homes

Answer 7

I would probably say a ranch style house because only a single level.

Answer 8

Where a house is can strongly influence efficiency. We set out to build a low cost passive heated solar design, and it has worked well over 30 years. Without auxiliary heating or cooling in southern Ontario we can tolerate its highs and lows in temperature.

We don't. We often burn some limb wood in an evening, up to 4 cu metres in a winter.

The most efficient house may be one set down into the earth on the north-east and north west, so that cold wind is picked up and moved over top of the roof.

The south east and south west sides will then be passive solar intake, ie glass walls with optional sun-shelter.

There can be many extra features to smooth out the day/night temperature swing.

Our design was to build a house with a material cost of $20k, so our only features are venetian blinds and concrete floor and interior walls. this is not the extreme in efficiency. But it gives us very good cost benefit ratio.

A house is most efficient as expposed outer wall space is minimized, but particularly north, north-east, north west, in southern Ontario. Since we have no exposure in those directions we have a minimum. By maintaining a square, slab on grade single story, we have not minimized our roof exposure and so have needed to insulate the ceiling very heavily.

We do not suffer from cold winds blowing from south west or south east. So we have also not optimized those directions other than for some earth embankment. This has not been a big problem, but we have grown tall hedges to block west wind and east wind.

There were many options that might have been more efficient but much more costly. However, an earth embanked nearly square passive solar design with high walls to allow for deep ceiling insulation comes close to what I would recommend.

But you then want to have a budget more than my 20k to get best efficiency.

Answer 9

It has less to do with the house style and more to do with certain features. You can make any style house more efficient by it's orientation to the sun, use of passive solar, thermal chimney's, Thermal mass, prevailing winds, and a variety of other factors. It will also depend on location of the home, insulation, type of glass in windows, location of windows etc.

Planet Green a TV channel has several shows on green homes, some of them are aobut renevations while others are about building a home from scratch.