Passive Houses

The New York Times last week had an article on passive houses, which require very little energy to heat.

The houses may be too radical for those who treasure an experience like drinking hot chocolate in a cold kitchen.

I personally would miss those experiences. For me, the cost of natural gas is the way to rationalize keeping the house as cool as I like it.

The main idea behind the passive house is to minimize heat escaping from the house while still maintaining a flow of fresh air from outside. This is done by sinking heat from air being blown out of the house to a air being pulled into the house.

There must be limits to the temperature of air this would work on. If you want the temperature inside to be 70˚F [21˚C] while it’s -10˚F [-23˚C] outside, unless the heatsink is ideal, the air coming in will be much cooler than the air going out. The article says the system deals with this using a heating element that uses no more power than a hairdryer. A hairdryer running 24/7 for a month, however, would use well over $100 worth of electricity. Keeping a passive heating system cost efficient depends on not using the heating element too much.

Another problem with this system would be if for some reason you opened the doors in winter and let the house get below freezing. The house is good at not losing heat, but there’s no system to add large amounts of heat if necessary. This really isn’t an objection because I’ve never heard of someone opening the doors and windows in the dead of winter till their house freezes.

At least some elements of a passive house will find their way into mainstream construction. People will learn to accept their foibles just as people accept the need for a CO detector with natural gas heating. We should incorporate passive heating principles into all building design now before oil and natural gas get very expensive.

Winter Solstice

At noon on Dec 18, 2008, I measured the length of the shadow cast by a 12.125 inch ruler. It was 28 inches.
arctan(12.125/28.0) = 23.41˚.

That means the sun is 23.41 degrees above the horizon. I live at 43˚ north. The earth is inclined 23.5˚. So if the north pole is pointed directly away from the sun, at midday I expect the sun to be 90 – (43 + 23.5) = 23.5 degrees above the horizon. Noon isn’t precisely midday, so it was a smidgen lower. If the weather is cloudy for the next few days, I might not see the sun this low in the sky till next year.

This is how the winter holidays got started, and I think it’s a good reason to eat some treats and stop to remember the big picture.

Prices Down Despite Monetary and Fiscal Stimulus

Prices are down at a time when the Fed and Treasury are doing everything they can to stimulate the economy? It’s amazing. The past January I thought they were doing too much, and would have inflation. Look how the 10-year Treasury yield is declining.

I still think they’re overdoing it, and we’re going to see inflation. But today there’s no sign of it. People are buying 10-year bonds with 2.5% yields. Obama may be right to borrow money for infrastructure projects, especially if the infrastructure projects are aimed at breaking our oil addiction and are politically easy to turn off once the economy improves.

Low Treasury Yields Don't Mean We Can Ignore Deficit

The yield on the three-month Treasury hit zero percent briefly. This indicates caution and or pessimism on the part of investors.

The NYT article Investors Buy U.S. Debt at Zero Yield has this comment:

If there is a silver lining to the Treasury market’s gyrations, it is that the United States can borrow money more cheaply from investors, whether they be the governments of China or Japan, or big fund managers. That could help Washington finance various programs intended to revive the ailing economy.

This silver lining is obvious to anyone with plans for a big stimulus package. We should be careful about anything that increases the structural budget deficit because if inflation shoots up, which I suspect it will, these Treasury yields will shoot up too. It will kill the politicians’ plans of tax cuts and new spending programs.

I would suggest the Treasury sell lots of long-term bonds to lock in on these rates, but the Fed is working on a program to drive down long-term rates. It doesn’t make much sense to have the Treasury and the Fed fighting each other.

I am loathe to support any stimulus package, but since the Fed can’t do much more in the area of monetary policy, maybe it’s right to try a fiscal policy solution (i.e. stimulus = borrowing money). We just have to remember in a few years when the economic cycle turns around to do an anti-stimulus in the form of new taxes to retire the debt we’re taking on. I don’t think that will happen, so we need to be judicious with any fiscal stimulus.

Senator Dodd Sells the Auto Bailout on Face the Nation

Senator Christopher Dodd was on Face the Nation last Sunday, arguing for a bailout for the automobile industry.

There’s a credit issue, here, that we’re not really talking about. Consumers cannot buy cars. You have to have a rating -- almost a perfect credit rating to go buy an automobile today.

--Senator Dodd, emphasis added.

Senator Dodd accidentally hit on the main problem. The unstated premise is that consumers have no money. The problem is not lack of easy credit to allow people to buy stuff even if they’re broke. In fact, easy credit is what got us into this mess. The root problem is people being broke.

It’s a moot point, but I disagree with Senator Dodd’s claim that it’s hard for people to get into debt these days. I’m pretty sure if you’re broke, have a job, and have a small down payment, a car dealer can arrange financing even without a perfect credit record. It blows my mind that the US Senate is working on helping to get people into consumer debt.

At another point arguing in favor of a bailout, Senator Dodd claimed that one in ten jobs in related to cars. That certainly sounds plausible to me. Think about what that means. One in ten of us spend a significant portion of our labor maintaining one portion of our transportation system. I would think if we put our minds to it, we could find other means to get people where they need to go without 10% of working society’s effort. If we had a more labor efficient system of transportation, some of that 10% could be making more toys and gadgets, distributing food and education to the needy, or whatever the economy demands.

I am not saying there should be some massive government takeover the of the transportation system. I’m simply saying our current system is not that efficient. Having one in ten of us working on it is not something to be proud of and is not something to use billions of dollars of government money to continue. 10% is a lot of effort to spend, not event counting a potential bailout, on something that results in tens of thousands of fatalities a year, time wasted in traffic jams, and all the indirect costs such as road rage, sedentary lifestyle, and detachment from communities. I don't want to spend any government monies propping up this system.

The Cost of Cars Is One Reason to Make Alternative Transportation Options a Priority

If we were designing our basic transportation infrastructure "from scratch" there is no way we would do it based on having everyone drive cars to do their daily business.

Read the bullet points from No Impact Man's True Cost of Our Cars.

Despite the costs, some people like door-to-door car service, and we should try to make it available to them. We should also make sure alternatives are available to people who aren't keen on spending 17% of their income owning and maintaining something they don't enjoy.

Wisconsin-based Plexus Rated Best Electronics Assembly Company

Plexus Rated Best Electronics Assembly Company by Circuits Assembly Magazine: The Plexus Rx

Quick: Name the best-performing publicly held EMS company. Jabil? Not anymore. Benchmark. Wrong again. Flextronics? Not even close.

That would be Plexus.

The 28-year-old EMS company has shown gross margins of 10.9% over the past three years and a compound annual growth rate of 14.4%. This despite having what in some circles would be considered excessive overhead: too many engineers and a footprint heavy on North American operations.

I've always heard good things about Plexus, but I haven't worked with them. I have worked with another WI-based electronics assembly company, Pensar, and they are the best company I've ever seen when it comes to being flexible on prototype builds. BTW, they're busier than ever these days, despite the economic slowdown in other industries.

Maybe the secret ingredient for these companies is lots of hard-working Wisconsin employees.