Spirit in Action
Net Zero-Energy, Non-CO2 Model Home - Jeff Knutsen
A "field trip" to an environmentally friendly model home near Waupaca, Wisconsin, built by A-A Exteriors, including a discussion of a number of technical options.
- Broadcast on:
- 25 May 2008
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, I'm going to take you on a field trip over to a net zero energy model home, which is also non-carbon dioxide producing. What with rising energy prices and the threat of global warming, it's an aspiration of many people to find ways to cut costs, attain personal and national energy independence, and to care for creation. Many folks think of attaining these lofty goals somewhere in the future, but Jeff Knudson of AA Exteriors wanted to show us that there is something we can do right now without waiting for future technical innovations. This is a field trip because I'll be talking to Jeff Knudson in his model home, located a little to the east of Wabaka, Wisconsin, just off Highway 10. I'll discuss with Jeff the details of the house and the technology that makes net zero energy construction possible and affordable. Of course, seeing is believing, but maybe in hearing my explorations of this building of the future, you'll be tempted to check out the possibilities for yourself. More so than in most of my Northern Spirit radio productions, I think it pay attention to the details of energy economy and sustainable alternatives. It's often said that the devil is in the details, but I think that we'll also find some angels in the specifics that make care of creation well within our reach today. We'll look at handy gadgets, observe a few energy-relevant demonstrations, and bone up on the knowledge needed to be a responsible energy consumer at the start of the 21st century. I take you now to a spirit in action interview with Jeff Knudson of AA Exteriors for a tour of their Zero Energy Model Home. Jeff, thanks for taking time out of your busy work schedule to talk to me today. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it. We're sitting here in your net zero energy, non-carbon dioxide house model home here. We're just outside of Wapaca, right? Just east of Wapaca on Highway 10. How long has this house been here, and why did you build it? We built it so we could walk the walk and talk the talk. We're in the energy efficiency business, we make buildings more energy efficient. And when we're in that business, we want to be able to walk the walk besides just talk the talk. So we built a net zero energy building, so this building produces 100% of the energy that it needs for a year. Now, three months out of the year, we're actually having to buy electricity from the power company. In the winter, the days are short, it's much colder out, and it's cloudy. So we're getting a triple whammy in December, January, and February. So December, January, and February, we actually have to pay the power company. And the other nine months out of the year, they actually pay us. So our net result at the end of the year is about $500. We haven't had the building for a full year yet, and we're always tweaking it. So we tell people they're on a journey for net zero energy, and we're still on that journey. This building's two and a half years old, and we're still tweaking it. We're making changes to make it more energy efficient and reduce our energy bill so we get bigger checks from the power company. Basically, we buy our electricity at night for a nickel, and we sell it on peak to the power company. That's at nine o'clock in the daytime till eight o'clock at night for 20 cents. So that's how we get our cash. That's how we get to $500 a year. We actually just produce all the energy that we need in one year, but because of that cash difference is how we get the money. The building was specially designed for this. It took us a year, and we built the building in any year and a half later. We were able to put on the solar panels. The retail cost to the solar panels is about $100,000. So in the journey for energy independence, you start with making a building as efficient as you possibly can. So we've started out with the foundation being R10 on the inside and R10 on the outside. So we've got an R20 on the foundation. The walls are on our two by six walls, which is an R19, and then we have an R1 and a half fan fold on it. Those numbers, they are 20s, the R10s. What do they compare to in a more traditional home? Okay, an R value of one is about the value of wood. Wood is between one and 1.25 depending on the value of the wood. So a normal person with a two by four wall has an R13 in his wall, and he normally has an R19 in the attic. Well, today's standards are much higher because energy is much higher than it used to be. So now everyone's building an R19 minimum, and they've been doing that for 20 years in the walls, and the attic now is up to an R50 or 60. We have an R70 in our attic here because it's very inexpensive compared to the energy costs. We have special windows in the building, which are in our 10, they're two and a half times better than the normal window and a storm window. We have actually cryptongass and it's a triple glazed window, but all that makes the solar system smaller. So when you put the whole package together, it gets very affordable, but you can't cut any corners along the way. You make a super energy efficient building, and then you take that energy efficient building, and then you can add the solar panels so you have no energy built. You said that what you have on your roof up here, and I saw a whole array of them. How many panels total are there? And why did you go with photovoltaic cells instead of some people have panels that pump water, or you heat some other kind of medium to transfer heat? Okay, we went with photovoltaics PV for short because we don't use any hot water. It's a model home, and it's a business. So we wash our hands a few times a day, but that's the only hot water being used in this house. Now, we do have a big sign that we light that makes up for our energy use so we can compare it to a normal home. Now, I have a geothermal system where it's actually geo-exchange. I'm taking the cold 50-degree water from the ground and then converting it to warmer water for the winter or colder water in the summer. Now, in the summertime, I do get free hot water because I have what's called a de-superheater. So when I'm producing air conditioning, which is producing cold, my byproduct is hot. So that hot is what is used to heat the hot water. So I get free hot water anywhere in the summer. A solar hot water system is much more economically feasible for a homeowner if it's a family of three, four, something like that. When it's one person, photovoltaics might be more economically feasible. When you say that you have the geothermal or the geo-exchange system, what does that mean? Could you explain that for our listeners? Okay, so basically, let's start in the summertime. The summer of the ground is 50 degrees. So I take this 50-degree water and run it through my geothermal system, drop it down to 40, 30, whatever I want. I can really control the humidity in my house by setting the temperature of the geothermal system. So I get a lot more control of my humidity by being able to control the temperature of the geothermal. So I'm starting with 50-degree air. Now, the normal person is running an air conditioner. He's starting with 90-degree air outside, and he's trying to make that into 40 or 50-degree air so he can cool his house. Okay, now in the winter, I am taking 50-degree water, warming it up to about 130, and then we use that to heat the house. While when it's 20 below out, somebody else is taking 20 below temperature, and they're trying to make that up to 130. So I'm always starting with a more constant source of energy. I'm always starting at about 50 to 55 degrees is what the ground temperature is. Does that mean that geothermal makes sense here in Wisconsin, where we have the larger extremes, where the temperatures go down below zero in the winter and they go 80 or 90 or whatever in the summer? It makes more sense for us than, say, if you lived in Portland, Oregon. Geothermal is three times more energy efficient than using electricity. So this wings make a difference, but it really doesn't matter. You can use geothermal in Arizona. In fact, it works very good in Arizona because you're always cooling and you're starting with 50-degree water. And if it's a more moderate climate, it's still going to be economically feasible, but it's more feasible the colder the temperature is. The more, you know, like in Alaska or north of the Arctic Circle, it'd be even more feasible because instead of being 50 or 60 below, you're starting with 50-degree water and changing it from that point. You said that the windows here, Jeff, are two and a half times as insulating as kind of your regular windows. Isn't the window a large portion of your energy loss in a regular home? I know you do this other job as part of your business where you seal a house. So where does the energy loss in a house really happen usually? Okay, the biggest energy loss in existing homes is the air and filtration, so it's the actual air moving in and out of the house. We have a way that's called the blower door that we can actually test the building and see how much air is leaking. Then what is done is called air sealing or home sealing. The federal government calls it home sealing. The state government to focus on energy calls it air sealing. Either one works, but we're actually tightening up the air barrier. So this is actually the energy moving on a super highway going right out to gaps, cracks, and holes between the inside and the outside of the house. These gaps, cracks, and holes are normally found up in the attic underneath the insulation and down in the basement up in the rim choices. So that would be the first step for energy efficiency. Then the next step would be insulation. Now, insulation is nothing more than a time delay of energy moving from the inside to the outside. So one, it's on a super highway, one, it's on a slow road out. So insulation is important, but it's not near as important as air and filtration. Then the next thing you get into normally is windows, because the windows are the lowest R value. As I said, most houses have an R13 in the walls. It's a 2x4 wall, and it's going to have an R13. The best window you can get today is going to be about an R12 to 15, something like that. That's always changing. So your biggest energy loss is the window itself, because a piece of glass has an R of 1. So if you have a glass and a storm, you have an R of 2. Now if you put argon gas in it, that'll double it. That'll make it an R4. If you put krypton in it, it'll double it again and make it an R8. Now if you make it a triple glaze instead of a double glaze, then you can get up into these R10s for the glass package, which is still your energy hole. So your windows are the energy hole and your doors. The house only has a couple of doors, so they're not as critical as the windows, but you do have a lot of windows. Building code requires new houses that are made today. The glass area has to be 8% of the floor space, or larger. So if you have 100 square foot house, you have to have 8 square feet of glass to make up for that 100 square foot room. Now I think of windows as helping in terms of providing energy efficiency in two ways. Number one, you can make them so they insulate better so heat does not get out or heat does not get in, depending on your situation. But there's also the question of sunlight coming in. In winter, it's great to have sunlight coming in. While I was driving here today, in my car, we had to worry about all that sunlight getting in. As you make these windows energy efficient in terms of not letting energy go through them, does that stop the heat from the sun coming in? Or what do you do in the summer here to prevent it from coming in in winter to help it come in? Basically, that's passive solar design. And for a passive solar design, if you have a three foot window, you're going to go one foot above the window, and then that eave is going to stick two feet out. What that does is when the sun gets high in the summertime, the eave blocks the sun. And in the wintertime, the sun goes down low in the sky, and then it can shine directly in. Now, everyone's concerned, there is a rating on windows. The u-value is the overall window. That's usually a u of about .2 or better. Those are the best windows, the lower the number, the better. When you're looking at solar heat gain, that's another formula that's in the window. I look at more at the u-value than anything else, and don't care about the solar heat gain. And the reason for that is you're going to get four hours to six hours maximum in the winter of solar heat. The other 18 to 20 hours, you have energy going the other way, because it's early morning, late evening, or night. And so the energy's going the other way. So it's most important to keep the energy in the house more so than the solar heat gain. We have four windows, four big windows facing south at the office here, and it'll get that room up to 90 degrees and heat the whole house on a cold but sunny winter day. So I'm getting plenty of solar heat gain from these windows that are on our tan. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff. Basically what I think you were saying is the passive solar heating is not the most important part of using the windows. That in fact insulation is more important, but still you do use passive solar here. Would I correctly understood? Yes. When you're building a zero energy home, you need to use passive solar, because this is free energy. I didn't have to buy these panels. I'm required by code to have so much glass area per square foot. I have a little extra glass area on the south. So this is free energy. This didn't cost me anything. I had to put in the window anyway. All I do is put in a really good window, have it facing to the south. That's free energy. So anyone can build a zero energy house. All you have to do is put a lot of money to it. Instead of having a 10 KW system, which is what this is, is 10,000 watts. This produces on a bright sunny day. You'd put in a 20,000 watt system and you'd spend another $100,000 on the building and you'd have zero energy. The other way is to make the house really efficient. Use some passive solar and now you don't need as big of a system and you make it affordable. The cost of this house was $150 a square foot. It's a 2,200 square foot house, which isn't bad when you figure out you've got to put $100,000 into a solar system to power the thing, plus a very expensive geothermal system. Now again, we're on Highway 10. It's a very busy road. And actually in a minute I'll open the door and you can tell the difference. But we have cellulose insulation, which is a sound barrier because it's very dense. It's dense packed cellulose. Now I also want to let you know that Krypton gas is a much denser gas. The stop sound is density. So by having Krypton gas and cellulose, we have a very quiet building. Right now you can kind of listen to the background and I'm going to go open the door and you'll hear the difference from the highway. And I'll stay right where I've been sitting and he's walking over to sliding door window. And now the window goes close. Wow, saves on your ears, doesn't it? You know, there's one technical thing, Jeff, that I didn't ask you that I wanted to come back to is, in this house you have not used any batteries. That is to say you've chosen to send your energy out to the electrical system and to bring it back in from the electrical grid when you need it. Why did you make that decision to not include battery storage? So essentially you could be off the grid, which is certainly a passion for some people. Well actually economically being off grid is more of a pipe dream than it is a reality. My solar system would cost almost twice as much if I was off grid. Environmentally I would have to buy a bunch of batteries and then in seven years you have those batteries recycled because you'd have to replace them. The power I produce goes right to the power company. If the building needs it first it goes to the building. If the building doesn't need it then it goes right to the power company. So I don't have to mess with any batteries. So basically I have a system here where the panels are going to last about 50 years and the inverters are going to last about 10 years. So every 10 years I replace an inverter or may have to replace an inverter and I don't have to do anything. It's a simple system that you don't have to do anything with. I never had to haul these batteries. I never had to carry them. I never had to replace them, maintain them at water to them a couple times a year and have a special vented room to take care of the gases that are being produced by the batteries. I noticed that there's no component of wind energy in your system here. Is that because what pack is not like Chicago the Windy City or is it just more expensive? Why did you not choose to include windmills as source of energy? Wind is very site specific and wind produces energy when it feels like it. I'm producing energy when the power company is paying me the most for it. So I'm producing it on peak. So I'm going to get a lot more money with the panels. Wind is also very proportionate. So the bigger the system the more it produces and the more economically feasible it is. Right now in we energy's territory that's the best place to have wind. You can put up a hundred KW system that would be ten times bigger than the system that I have right now. And cost wise it's only two hundred thousand dollars. So you're getting a system ten times bigger than my solar system for double the cost. So wind is very feasible when you're getting into a big scale system which is a hundred KW system. In the state of Wisconsin they have to pay retail up to twenty KW. So the other power companies only allow up to twenty KW of wind. Well twenty KW of wind is not very much and wind is also a high maintenance item. You do have to take care of a wind machine. You have to grease it. You have to oil it. You have to climb the tower and check it. I couldn't have wind here because of the airport. I'm in a zone right at the end of the runway basically from the Warpaca airport. So I couldn't have wind here because of that. I'm also down in the hole. There's a pond on the property which is the lowest part of the area. So to do wind I'd have to go way up in the air. If somebody's going off grid then wind and solar makes sense as a combination because God gave us those two resources that complement each other. In the winter when it's cloudy you get a lot of wind. In the summer when it's sunny you don't get a lot of wind but you get a lot of sun. So they complement somebody really nice for an off grid system. Off grid meaning you're getting your electricity. You're not connected to the power company. And if you're going to have a building and it's going to cost you know hundred thousand dollars to bring in electricity then it might be feasible to do an off grid system. But again you know the system that I have would have cost probably $150,000 rather than $100,000 to be off grid. So it's better to just feed it to the power company when you don't need it and it's a very simple system. We will build this house with the strength of our arms. With the love of our neighbors we will build this house. We will build this house as a shelter from our heart. With the open door of justice we will build this house. The house of here, the house just right. A house to keep away the darkest night. A house of hope. A house of peace. A house where all within may safely sleep. We will build this house with the strength of our arms. With the love of our neighbors we will build this house. We will build this house as a shelter from our heart. With the open door of justice we will build this house. A house that's built to remind us all of how we are connected with a great or small. A house of dignity. A house without shame. A house with walls bearing all our names. We will build this house with the strength of our arms. With the love of our neighbors we will build this house. We will build this house as a shelter from our heart. With the open door of justice we will build this house. It seems so simple. It seems so sweet. A roof up above you enough food to eat in this richest nation on this world of cares. How much do we need to have enough to share? We will build this house with the strength of our arms. With the love of our neighbors we will build this house. We will build this house as a shelter from our heart. With the open door of justice we will build this house. We will build this house. That tune was a gift from Sally Rogers and it's called We Will Build This House. I'm Mark Helpsmeet of Norton Spirit Radio and today for Spirit In Action we're visiting a net zero energy house that was built by Jeff Knudson of AA Exteriors right near Wapacka, Wisconsin. This field trip to visit Jeff's model home is also serving me personally as my wife and I are trying to sort out the possible approaches for improving the environmental footprint of our own home. There's a lot of alternatives, a lot of considerations, so I'm doing my best to understand the details which will get me and maybe you listening to this interview to the point where we can make informed decisions about caring for creation in our own homes. We're going back now to our visit with Jeff Knudson in the zero carbon dioxide producing net zero energy model home built by AA Exteriors and we'll head out to the garage for some demonstrations of what makes this house work. Well Jeff I'd like to look around in the garage that you've got built onto the system. You've got some experiments, demonstrations of some of the advantages of the technology you've used in this building. Over here you've got some lights and you've got some glass panels between it. I walk into the middle here and the lights click on and they're incandescent light bulbs because they're producing heat right. Well actually they're heat lamps and when you can feel one side and feel the other and tell the difference between a normal person as a window in a storm which is an R2 and then on the other side is the R9.09 to be technical. The glass that we use in this building is an R9.09 and you can feel how much that it is four and a half times better by the heat lamp not being able to go through the better window. Well I guess I can do that. I can put my hand right here. This side seems to be considerably cooler than the other side. So I guess this is the glass with the Krypton gas in the middle? Yes. Krypton is a much denser gas than argon so windows are twice as good with Krypton so I tell people our windows are so good we keep Superman out. Okay well let's step over to this thing. I see you've got some cellulose insulation here and you've got light down at the bottom and on this side you've got fiberglass which is what I grew up with in the houses that I know. And up here you've got some balls. Can we turn this on and describe to me what it's doing? Okay basically there's a little fan there and two lights and it's showing that air is moving right through the fiberglass while it can't move through the cellulose. It's also taking the heat with the air and going on this super highway right through the fiberglass so you can see that the temperature difference as this warms up more it'll get greater. Right now one says 70 and the other one says 80 if we give it another 10 minutes it'll be 70 to 90 so the air is moving on this super highway with the energy right outside of the building. So does this relate to the insulating the ceiling of buildings that you do? Does fiberglass insulation permit air to flow through just generally and better? Yes it does actually we use fiberglass filters for our furnace to collect the dirt going through the furnace while with cellulose it's more of an air barrier so if there's a little hole like every outlet, every wire going through they'll seal up those holes much better. The other thing with cellulose is this is also a green built home we never got into that. Green built meaning very environmentally friendly and much healthier. Low VOC paints, low VOC carpet, the cellulose insulation is a much cleaner product. It's actually recycled newspaper with borate in it which is actually something you can eat the borate so it doesn't hurt you at all. So unlike buildings with lead paint and stuff can we need the walls here you can eat the insulation and it won't necessarily hurt you. Hi this is true also if you use a low VOC paint when you're done painting the house doesn't smell we had the whole house we painted about a year or two after we had it. When we got it all done you could just barely smell the paint but it was a low VOC if you used a no VOC there wouldn't be any smell given out whatsoever. Both my wife and daughter got chemically sensitive from a carpet that we bought years ago and put in our living room. Very expensive carpet that doesn't mean anything on volatile organic compounds VOCs. And we put it in in the fall of the year when the house was closed up and by the end of the winter they were both chemically sensitive using Claritin to try and just survive. So this is a real issue people don't realize it but the carpets that you bring in the carpet pads the OSP and the paints are very high VOC compounds. Let's step over to this thing again it looks like two piles of insulation of some sort. What's this one about? Well this is showing how much quieter cellulose is and what we do is we have an alarm that we put on and if you put it in fiberglass it doesn't block any of the sound when we put it in cellulose it blocks all the sound. Let's listen Jeff to the energy saving weather blanket insulation. Again this one is cellulose and over there is a regular fiberglass. Okay so we've got an alarm thing here that you're going to turn on. Okay you're putting it in the fiberglass and now you're putting the fiberglass seal on. It sounds like the aliens are landing. Okay now you're going to put it in similar thickness of cellulose. You may think that he turned it off but no he's taking it off there it is. That's just with a couple inches or maybe three inches of cellulose. Wow that's quite a difference. That's quite a difference. Well let's look at one more thing here. You've got over here power indicators about what the solar panels are doing and today happens to be a very nice sunny day. It looks like you're getting a lot of power. How many panels again do you have on the roof and what's the power that we see coming in here? Okay we've got 50 panels on the roof and they're 200 watts a piece so 50 times 200 would be a 10,000 watt system. So that's how much we produce when it's full-blown going. Okay right now we're doing about 9,000 watts because it's a little hazy out today so we're not getting quite full power. Now one thing that I never knew about a solar system is when it's raining you actually get energy too. We had a press conference here and it was raining the day of a press conference and we were still getting 1000 watts out of the system. Yes we could get 10 times more on a bright sunny day but even on a cloudy rainy day we were still getting 1000 watts out of the system. And basically the solar system produces DC electricity, the DC electricity which is the same as a battery has comes down from the solar system and goes into what's called an inverter. This inverter changes the DC electricity to grid ready AC and then we send it back to the power company. In the case we have two meters, one meter for the input so when the power company is giving us electricity that's the input meter and then we have an output meter which is the outflow of our panels. So when we have extra electricity it automatically goes to the power company. This house operates the same as any other building this building operates the same electricity the electricity is always there. If the grid goes down the power company loses power my system shuts off. The reason for that is if I was still producing power alignment out on the line could get electrocuted from my power being produced by my panels. So the inverters automatically sense that there's no power coming in from the power company and shut down and then when the power turns back on they reactivate and start up again. Let's get right next to these panels here they show me the wattage what's this noise that's going on in here. This is actually the noise from the inverters and I have the inverters in the garage because the byproduct of the inverters is heat. So I'm actually heating my garage with my inverters this is a fully insulated garage. The building has three separate zones the house is one zone which is a cube then the garage can be heated separately and then above the garage is a bonus room so that's that guest bedroom that we all have and we never use. This way you don't have to heat it or air condition it until the company comes. The garage is completely finished so when I have a party I can pull two cars out of the garage and we have a lot more space for playing poker where the guys can get together here where all the women are in the kitchen. Doing the dishes and doing the cooking and all that kind of stuff but it gives you more space because environmentally you want to have a small of a building as you possibly can get away with. This is a 2200 square foot building but it does count the garage because it is finished. I have to say that as far as garages go this one is completely abnormal because it's not crowded with all kinds of stuff. Just give me the warm power of our sun give me the steady flow of what it all. Give me the spirit of living things as they return to play. Just give me the rest of power of our wind give me the comforting flow of a wood fire. What won't you take all your atomic poison power away? Everybody needs some power untold to keep them from the darkness and the cold. Some may seek away in the game control where it's fallen so make you stand alive. I know that times are at stake yours and mine and our descendants in time so much to mine so much to lose. I think that everyone of us has to choose. Just give me the warm power of our sun give me the steady flow of what it all. Give me the spirit of living things as they return to play. Just give me the rest of power of our wind give me the comforting flow of a wood fire. What won't you take all your atomic poison power away? [Music] [Music] Just give me the warm power of our sun give me the steady flow of what it all. Give me the spirit of living things as they return to play. Just give me the rest of power of our wind give me the comforting flow of a wood fire. What won't you take all your atomic poison power away? [Music] That was Holly Nier singing her song "Power" about some of the wonderful sources of alternative energy like the technology that can make zero energy carbon neutral homes a reality. We're visiting a net zero energy home today for spirit in action. You can, by the way, find a link to their website on my northernspiritradio.org website in case you want to drop by WAPACA Wisconsin for a visit. We've been out to the garage for some demonstrations of the technology and it's about time we delved a little into the motivations behind their project and work. Let's step back inside now Jeff and sit down and I want to ask you some more things about what led you to do this. You said that this house is a net zero energy non-carbon dioxide house. Why did you choose those two objectives? What's important about non-zero energy or non-carbon dioxide? We're pushing to the next level and the next level is carbon neutral. We used to call this a carbon neutral home, but solar today, two months ago, came out with an article that defined carbon neutral home. A carbon neutral home produces 20% more electricity than it uses. What that does is it covers the embodied energy to get all the materials there. The embodied energy for construction and the embodied energy to make all materials. The drywall, the wood, everything takes energy. That was their definition. We're striving to get there. Right now we're just net zero energy. Net zero energy means we produce 100% of the energy that we use in a year. When a year is over, we'll have produced as many kilowatt hours as we needed. The carbon neutral, or I call it non-carbon dioxide producing building, is that this is an all electric home. There is no gas here. There's no firewood backup. There's nothing. Most solar buildings and people that are striving towards net zero energy are using wood as a backup, using the wood for cooking, using the wood for backup heat in the winter and stuff like that. This does not. So I'm not producing any carbon dioxide whatsoever from this building. And again, I asked Jeff, why do this? Why is this important? What's the value of... Because we can obviously just take over another Middle Eastern country and grab their oil and then we can have all of the hydrocarbons that we need to produce our energy. So why do you do what you do with this house? Why are you aiming at this avoidance of both carbon dioxide and energy use? Well, we're at peak oil in the world, okay? In the 70s we hit the United States peak oil and oil went from 20 cents a gallon to a dollar. That was just the tip of the iceberg. Now we're at world peak oil. The world is out of oil. There's more demand than there is supply. Indian, China are requiring more oil because they're getting more industrialized. So everyone's fighting for this oil that's a limited supply. We're out of oil. We're ending the oil era. And the carbon neutral is global warming. And to stop global warming, I wanted to prove to everybody that you can do it. That, you know, there's a challenge out the 2030 challenge that says, you know, have carbon neutral buildings by 2030. And I'm saying, no, we can do this today. Anyone can do this today. If you put enough money to it, anyone can do it. If you do it right, it's economically feasible. I don't have any energy bills. This is my retirement. I have no energy bills here, and I get checks from the power company. Does that mean that when you retire, you're going to move into the south closed on the business and just move in here? Probably not. No. Probably just lease it out and use the income. But, you know, the income from the building and the income from the energy system. Because when you rent commercial buildings, energy can or cannot be included. Coming back, Jeff, to the reason why you're doing this, you pointed out we passed peak oil. We're already on decline there. I think it's more expensive. Is it a simple economic necessity? Carbon dioxide for global warming? Is it simply that we want to meet the 2030 challenge? Why are these things important? Because a lot of people believe we can just adapt some technology and when the economic situations are favorable, we'll put in the next technology that will save us from the problem. Why are you trying to be ahead of the pack? Well, I have a grandson. Okay. It's for him. That's why you're doing it all is for the kids. Some people think that since we live in Wisconsin, where a significant portion of the year of temperature is pretty low, global warming would be a good thing for us. You know, we can get that. It's your son planning and living here in Wisconsin. And is he going to say, you know, grandpa, why did you prevent the planet from getting warmer? Gee, it's warm out here. I think I have to sweat. My shoulders feel sloshy and my feet are getting wet. My concum pipe is drooping. My top hat doesn't fit. My knees are kind of shaky. I think I better sit. I might have a fever. I'm not sure what to do. I'm sure to call a doctor or call a vet. Find some ice cubes and some glue or just call a Ben and Jerry. They helped me out last year. I'd wish you a merry Christmas, but Gee is warm out here. I'd wish you a merry Christmas, but Gee is warm out here. Gee, it's warm out here. I'd better go. I've overstayed. I think I have wet my snow pants, but maybe we could find some shame. I can't control and play here. If there isn't any snow, you can't snow where it's at, so we gotta let the cone of snow. The old zone layers my missing and all one seems to care. That none of us will make it through if we don't clean up the air. I hate to melt away like this. I need your help, it's clear. I'd wish you a merry Christmas, but Gee is warm out here. I'd rather wish you a merry Christmas, but Gee is warm out here. There's a song about a little explored possible consequence of global warming, the premature passing of the snowmen, so common in the lives of the children here in the upper Midwest. The song is from Peter Alsop, and it's called Gee, it's warm out here, and I send that somewhat whimsical song out for Jeff Knudson's grandson and all the children. Jeff is my spirit and action guest today, and a very central reason that led him to build the net zero energy home we're visiting is his concern for future generations. I asked Jeff why he wouldn't maybe prefer some warming in our northern climb, and this is what Jeff told me. Well, it's actually more than global warming, it's actually called climate change, and that's what we're going through. We never used to have storms and bad weather like we have now. We're changing the way the climate operates, so instead of getting slow, steady rains, we're getting downpours of rain that doesn't do any good for the planet because you're not watering the crops because you're just pouring it down, it's running off and it's gone. We're getting hurricanes, we're getting tornadoes, so it's climate change. Some places might get colder. Some places it's mostly the planet getting warmer, but there are places that can get colder and stuff like that. We had a very cold winter this year, the coldest winter in a long time. For Wisconsin, getting a little bit warmer might be kind of nice for us, but it strikes me that you must be taking somewhat of a global view. Why do we worry about the people in Indiana and the people over in France and so on? What's your base, I guess, moral, ethical reason for looking at the big picture rather than just looking at the advantage one person might get of it, maybe your grandchild? Okay, it's the environment changing, so what's happening is the plants are dying because they can't live that far south, they're having to move further north, the birds. Things are switching, a bug used to normally come out and the bird would normally eat it, now all of a sudden the bugs come out two weeks earlier and the birds aren't there yet. So everything is moving north also so that as everything changes the vegetation is changing and going north and we're totally changing our planet by warming it up. And why do we care about that? Well, so we have a planet in a hundred years from now, this planet is getting warmer, if you look at all of Saudi Arabia and all over there, that used to be lush land. And that's where the oil came from, is all that vegetation got compressed, turned into oil, so that's all turned to desert. What happens with global warming is we get more deserts, we get less nice land. Part of what I'm driving at here, Jeff, is our concern only for us and the utilitarian environment around us, or is there some value to the plants, the insects, the birds in and of themselves, even if people were not here, would what we're doing be a bad thing? Yes, because that's the balance of nature and we're upsetting the balance, us as man, we just come in and tear everything apart and bulldoze down everything we want and use it the way we wanted. We've learned our lesson with the wetlands, we got rid of all the wetlands, now we have flooding. Now we're going back to making ponds and stuff like that so that you have to have a pond to get rid of your driveway and the parking lot. So you have to have a pond to put that rainwater somewhere to temporarily store it so it all doesn't hit the river at the same time to keep the Mississippi river from flooding. How long ago did you get into this stuff, Jeff? How long ago did you become interested in energy design, energy efficiency, care for the environment, care for creation, is the phrase I would prefer to use. How far back does this go in your history? Well, basically the 70s was when I studied extensively on renewable energy, wind, solar, biomass, and pretty much everyone was doing it back in the 70s. Gas went from a 20 cents a gallon to a dollar and everyone was paying attention. Now it's all happening again. So I studied it back in the 70s, mid 70s, 73 was when the oil embargo was so that's when everything kind of hit. So buildings built in 74, 75 usually have decent, better insulation levels than the lower ones. Okay, then about, I started this company back in 1998 called the Jeff Knudson Construction and then about five years ago we really got heavy into the energy field and have turned our focus to making existing buildings, whether the commercial, residential, or industrial, more energy efficient. And basically we guarantee people a 20% return on their investment by air sealing buildings, making the air barrier tighter. That's the best thing you can possibly do for energy efficiency is air sealing tightening up this air barrier. Second thing then is insulation. Third gets into windows, heating systems, solar, solar hot waters. There's several different ways to get alternative energy. One is biomass. This is like ethanol, biodiesel, taking methane gas from cows, using the manure to make methane gas and then run a generator. Then there's solar hot water where you produce hot water from solar. You can produce hot air from solar, which is solar hot air. You can produce electricity, which is photovoltaics, and you can also have passive solar. This is my passion. This is what I want to do economically. It's not great. Okay, but it's making the world better. And by making the world last longer, taking care of God's gift to us, which is the planet, which is everything around you. When you look around, it's just amazing the world that we live in. Any part of it you want to break down and look at. It just keeps going and it's just amazing. You look at the human body or you look at an insect and it just keeps going. It's just so complicated this world and so amazing it just never ends. Is this care for creation something that comes from your childhood, your upbringing, your family? Is this something that was nurtured in your family? Or did it burst upon you as an adult or are the roots deeper than that? Oh, it pretty much grew later. I was a litterbug when I was a kid. I had an environmentalist girlfriend that caught me on that. Started to turn me around and get me going the right direction on the environment. So you'd recommend that to straighten out our world, what we should do is have more women who turn their men around? That's the way of doing it. Or just everyone to get their heads turned around and saying this is our planet and we have to take care of it. It's God's gift to us and we need to use it as a value and as a gift. This is a gift to us. This is not something that we just hold those down and take care of any way we want to. What was your religious upbringing? What was the family culture that you grew up in? Lutheran. Missouri Synod Lutheran was what I was brought up into and then switched to Quaker about 10-15 years ago. Certainly, Missouri Synod Lutheran, there's a lot of concern for God's law and for being faithful that way. Did you draw on that at all in your movement in your lifestyle to be more in harmony with God's creation? No, not from the Lutherans. It was more hell and damn nation. If you don't do this, you're going to go to hell. So, that more came from the Quakers than it came from the Lutherans? The hell and damn nation, you know, the thing that you say you got from the Lutherans, maybe that's like global warming. Oh, maybe it is. You never know. So, have there been some concrete, I know, religious experiences that you've had related to this? Quakers, as certainly I know by being a Quaker myself, sometimes don't study the economics as thoroughly as they perhaps deserve to. I'm referring to some people, you know, other people certainly do pay good attention to that. And so sometimes Quakers follow their passion and say who cares about the economic cost of it. For you, I have a sense that maybe they travel together more obviously. Well, I mean, it's a business and we're, you know, a struggling business trying to make it in a recession. The advantage of it is that it's going to boom. I mean, energy keeps going up. So it's, you know, it will eventually get going. But more so, it's the right thing to do. And how I feel like at this time is to keep making buildings more energy efficient, one building at a time. So, Jeff, what is your vision for this business? If you want to go down in history, you know, what your business did, is it simply that you provided for your grandchildren? Or are you looking for a WAPACA to be transformed, or what would for you be a good epitaph that your work here has produced? I would like to see not only people making their buildings more energy efficient, but people building zero energy homes. This is an economically feasible, it's the right thing to do, it's the right thing for the planet, and if you do everything right, it's economically feasible. So all buildings should be built like this one, because you don't have energy bills, and that adds up, and you're able to increase your disposable income. You're able to have inflation proof, because as inflation goes up, so does energy, so do my checks from the power company go up. So, my vision would be to just show the world that this is the way to do it. There's only a few net zero energy buildings in the state of Wisconsin that do not produce any carbon dioxide. Most of them do produce carbon dioxide by burning wood. We don't have to burn wood. Well, Jeff, this is quite a house, quite an undertaking you've done. You're zero energy, non-carbon dioxide house. If people want to see this, I'll have a link on my website, northernspiritradio.org, to your AA Exteriors site. And again, this house is right next to WAPACA. If you want to drop in, I'm sure Jeff would be happy to have you drop in. Yeah, basically, we're right between Victory Church and Fleet Farm. Well, actually, there's a frontage road called Apple Tree Lane that's north of the highway. Our website, if you want to check out our website, is a-a exteriors.com, and we're open from eight to four almost every day. If you're coming from a distance, I'd recommend calling, because we have a training or something we'll not be here. So either myself, Jeff Knudson, or Lori, the general manager, will be here to show you the building and talk to you about it. And hopefully, a lot of the people will be changing their lifestyles to be more energy efficient. Energy independence for the individual and energy independence for the nation. Thanks, Jeff, for showing me your house and for helping inspire Wisconsinites to clean up our act. Well, thank you much for coming, and I hope we do some good. This has been a Spirit in Action interview with Jeff Knudson at the Net Zero Energy Model Home, his company built near WAPACO, Wisconsin. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website. NorthernSpiritRadio.org Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world alone. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)