12月7日VOA聽力：密閉衡宇勤儉能源本錢
We may not be aware of it, but ordinary familyhomes in the U.S. and, indeed, the rest of the worldare not energy-efficient.
Most of their energy goes to heating and cooling,and a lot of it is wasted, as warm and cool airescape through fireplace chimneys and thin or poorly fitting windows and doors, and becauseof inadequate insulation.
A passive house loses almost none.
“Imagine a thermos," said real estate developer Brendan O'Neill. "You have insulationeverywhere, and it’s basically completely sealed. And so the idea is to build a house not unlike athermos. So the windows are sealed and triple-glazed. There’s insulation completelysurrounding the building. We make it as airtight as possible.”
A 147-square-meter (1,580-square-foot) passive house, recently presented by O'NeillDevelopment Corp. as a demonstration unit just outside Washington, was prefabricated andbrought to the site in two boxes.
“Once it’s set and put together, it takes roughly three or four weeks to go ahead and finish theareas of drywall that weren’t done, to put down carpeting if it’s not in the room, to put in finaltouches," O'Neill said. "If everything is set in place, you put a house like this together in aboutthree to four months.”
The total cost of building it was $325,000, or about 17 percent more than constructing anordinary house. But its estimated utility bill is only around $20 monthly, or one-tenth theamount for the average house of the same size.
While passive houses have been around for a long time, the idea has never taken root in theU.S.
“There was no driving force to push it," said David Peabody, an architect who designs passivehouses. "I think climate change is now becoming a larger issue. And I think building codes [are]catching on to that. So people are becoming more conscious of energy.”
Peabody said the cost of building passive houses could come down.
“What really makes sense for truly affordable housing," he said, "is to do duplexes andfourplexes. Because then you’ve got that bigger volume, you got less exterior walls, and thoseexterior costs come way down."
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