Enertia Homes and Reblog

OK...so I saw Enertia Homes the first time on the GreenHD network and thought it was uber cool.  That was at least a year ago.  Well, for some raeson, I just remembered about it and started looking at it.  It's a pretty awesome concept.  Here's the link to the MFR website:  http://enertia.com/

They are located in NC and they produce very low energy (maybe net-zero in certain locatiosn) homes paired with solar hot water and solar PV.  The homes use a doube-envelope system to heat and cool the house in lieu of an HVAC system.  Well..in NC, I'm sure we'll at least want a dehumidifier.  Oh...and if you have a picky spouse...then maybe you'll want a small HVAC system.  However, you could go ahead and install a small geothermal system to minimize those costs...maybe even help the hot water generation too.

On the website, they do have information on energy usage for a house in Durham, NC.  They spent a total of $572 over the year for the home (~$48/month).  That's not too shabby...

And heres a reblog from another fellow blogger about the homes. 

http://sustainablog.blogspot.com/2007/07/enertia-home-modern-marvel-or-lot-of.html

As they've said...there's not a lot of data on these homes...and then there's apparently a fire risk too.

I may just look into beefing up the insulation in my walls using this retrofoam stuff.  It can be installed into existing wall cavities that already have insulation in them.  That's pretty cool...but it really depends on how much is costs to install and if there's any ROI.  If you consider my average utility bill is probably around $70/month...then even reducing it by 50% would save me $420/year.  If installing the retrofoam cost me $7,000 to install (probably not unrealistic...I had a quote to encapsulate my crawl space that was $7,000 which included the liner, dehumidier, spray foam, etc.  A second quote with everything but the spray foam was $2800..so $4200 just for the spray foam in my crawl space) then the ROI is 16.7 years. 

Given that, it would be more cost effective to go solar as I said in my previous posting.  That would give me an ROI of 9 years...