Nutrition Labels For Houses
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 04.10.08
Michelle Kaufmann studied the energy profile of her Sunset Breezehouse and compared it to the nation's best selling house design, and stuck results on a house version of the classic nutrition label. The Breezehouse performed surprisingly well, given the amount of glass. Michelle talks about the labelling concept:
"By quantifying the advantages of a sustainably designed home we can express that information in universal, easy to understand terms using something as simple as a label (like the ones we created above and below) in the same way the advantages and disadvantages of food are expressed through nutrition labels."
"There is no reason not to hold the houses in which we live to the same standards as the food we consume....Homebuyers need more information about the homes they are buying when they are buying. There should be a way for them to have easy access to information like how efficiently a home will use energy and water, how healthful and eco-friendly its materials are, and the price of a home needs to be discussed in terms of long-term monthly costs rather than the hardly relevant upfront cost." More at ::Michelle Kaufmann's Blog
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There's a little bit of cheating going on in this analysis - why would you use higher heat and lower cooling set points in the prefab but not in the traditional house?
Also - LED lighting? Can anyone afford that for their whole house?
Why orient the standard house East/West?
The decrease in energy intensity of the optimized house is a testament to the power of good design, but this is not an apples to apples comparison, as one might think. How bad would the traditional house be if energy efficiency measures taken on the prefab were applied to it? That's something I'd like to see.
This is a pretty blatant rip off of the play on nutrition label the USGBC developed for LEED.
To reduce sustainability to the false simplicity of nutritionism is to discredit it and throw any notion that we will ever be sustainable out the window.
I was gonna say - USGBC created this framework. Check out their website.
I like it.. I mist actually looking at writing these up for the houses we build
though I will say.. I don't know of a conventional house that's been built with single pane windows for a LONG time.. thats just ignorant
ok wait.. nevermind I like the idea of the "nutrition label" I missed the article, saying that a house has "2800 sq ft" of living space when 1000 of it is outside is freaking stupid.. we don't all live in california. no mention of upfront cost, I'm with tom why orient the house east west? do they just turn houses a specific way in cali? I don't really know "ACH" metric but I'm willing to guess they aren't using any wrap on the house or sealing the windows at all.. this is crap except for the label
We also used this strategy for the University of Maryland LEAFHouse entry to the 2007 Solar Decathlon from 12 Oct - 19 Oct. Over 150,000 people visited the Solar Decathlon, and many people who saw our labels spent a fair amount of time perusing them, and commented on how helpful they were to their understanding of LEAFHouse.
See our website: http://solarteam.org/page.php?id=782.
We began our development of this concept in late 2005, and had no knowledge of USGBC's work to develop a similar concept. LEAFHouse nutrition labels are different from either Michelle Kaufman's or USGBCs. The concepts may be similar, but LEAFHouse labels offer detailed information about more than energy use or meeting LEED requirements. In any case, as these USGBC, MKD, and LEAFHouse have demonstrated, the nutrition label concept is a great way to reach a general public to communicate in a concise way.
I hope that by the time we see these labels, the values will be given in SI- system. I have trouble coverting by power consumption to monkeybreaths per donkeybladder or whatever other imperial units one might use.
LOTS of criticism here. SWEET! Let us not overlook the fundamental concept though (not Michelle’s shameless self-promotion. The other concept.).
Creating SOME kind of logical benchmark that empowers both educated consumers/citizens, as well as less interested consumers to be able to conceptualize their home and/or lifestyle carbon footprint seems like a good idea.
How about some suggestions on how to make this idea work more logically, while maintaining the simplicity of the label idea. Anyone…???
Also doesn't appear to indicate context i.e. proximity to public transport, or some other facets of 'walkable urbanism', say. Even LEED and Green Star, as basic as they are, take that into account a bit. Tricky to claim sustainability without taking that into account.
2 issues:
1. Single glazing? Give me a break. I can't imagine that this could be code legal in most states.Gross mischaracterization.
2. Not everyone want to live in a box.