let’s see I proposed been facing some
serious issues the 21st century and no i
don’t mean the election results from
last night but do you know how much
water you’re wasting and i’m using the
term wasting in a loosely form when you
would it surprise you if I tell you it’s
about eight gallons and these eight
gallons could provide fresh drinking
water for child in Africa for about two
days the energy that were using to heat
up those six gallons could provide
electricity for a child in Africa for
about five days roughly so I’m needed to
talk about issues issues related to
energy water and waste by creating a
sustainable environment there are the
issues we heard about sustainable food
supply right but let’s focus on those
first two live in the future I propose
that we need to generate our energy on
site so we can put solar panels on the
roof we can put a pin generator on the
roof of depending where you live how we
can use geothermal heat to provide maybe
heating and cooling of your home and you
can either use solar energy to create
hot water for your home to live in the
future I propose that we need to collect
all on water so when you said on site
appropriate collection mechanisms we
have appropriate sanitation mechanisms
and we can use and store it in the
future to live in the future I propose
that we recycle everything that we
manufacture meaning the company that
manufactures has to take all products
back we’re using maybe composting
toilets we’re using anything that’s
related to food waste locally for
composting so those are some nice ideas
I think you would agree with me so the
question is by when is this happening
and would it surprise you if I tell you
that the future is today meet the renew
house the renew house stands for
retrofitted net zero energy water and
waste home it’s a home that was built in
nineteen twenty-eight and it’s located
it just a little bit east of the
mcdonald’s at the intersection of
stadium and northwestern campus or close
to campus it’s owned by the two Research
Foundation and we have listed we’re
currently in our fourth year with
another four years to come the four
client says it says about 2,800 feet of
on the basement floor
first floor and three bedrooms on the
second floor we renovated this as I
mentioned by using only local resources
and we have real occupancy but I mean by
that is three of my graduate students
using this as a playground right living
there and the three bedrooms upstairs
and then using the basement as a fully
functional laboratory and we are fully
instrumented or the monitoring system i
will talk a little bit more about that
in a little bit here’s some photos from
the inside you will see we have a
beautifully renovated inside kitchen
open labs kind of open space environment
you have an open living room and we even
have something that the industry called
the BioWar that means we’re not using
chemical filtration systems to review
the air inside the house we have the air
going through the bio wall taking our
VOCs and using as a filter and then is
conditioned either heated in the winter
coat in the summer and then returned to
the space so it provides what we call a
very comfortable in a very personal
living environment is a photo of the
building or the house when we renovated
it on the outside we took all the
paneling off and then we sprayed it with
a very new spray foam with a very high
insulation value that are those are
values that are listed there we also
spread out the Attic we replaced all
windows with triple pane windows as well
as
other doors with a high installation was
everything is very League tight to make
it very high efficient to reduce our
heating loads in the winter and our
cooling loads in the summer after we did
this of course we put the paneling going
on so we want to be net zero energy
right so how do we is that here how’d
you get to net zero energy you need to
produce energy right we’re doing this
with solar panels on the roof but as you
easily no Sun is not shining all day all
right so you need storage we lucky we
can use the grid as a storage so I
during the day we have over production
which we’re feeding into the grid and
then at nighttime we’re taking that
electricity back off the grid out for
the needs inside the home Duke Energy
was nice enough they gave us a great
rate we can sell them the electricity
exactly at the rate that would buy me
back so that’s a cost neutral for us but
we not only have the solar panel sabor
photovoltaic panels we also have
integrated warm water so these panels
are a brand new design as a PV and then
the thermal components on the back side
we’re in the summer time we can heat up
water almost to shower temperature not
necessarily in the winter but we can
still produce warm water but the sun is
shining in the matter that water goes
into these three storage tanks that you
see on the bottom left and it has a dual
function as I mentioned we can use it
for
oh where we can also reverse the flow
and in the wintertime when it’s snowing
you can heat up our panels and melt the
snow off so we have electricity
production in any kind of weather we
have a ground source heat pump that
means we have three more holes that have
all 280 feet deep vertically to and in
the winter we can pick up heat from
there that is boosted with the heat pump
to provide the living a comfortable in a
living environment in the summer we
taking the heat from the house and
putting it back into the ground we also
try to be net zero water we put a metal
roof on the house and we’re collecting
all water that goes into the downspouts
and into large to storage tanks that are
put into the ground that you see on the
photo from those storage tanks the water
goes into the house for an extensive
filtration system to prepare rainwater
to drinking water quality that water is
used in all faucets as well as in the
shower heads and from there it was
actually back into the basement into a
secondary preparation system it’s at
this point called gray order I we’re
preparing the gray water one more time
not to drinking water quality but to a
quality that allows us to use it in the
toilets and then after that it’s
actually discharged to the colonization
of the city finally we would like to
mention we are fully instrumented all
right so we can we can measure
temperatures
the humidity and air flow throughout the
entire house we can measure the
electricity that we use at every outlet
of every appliance in the house we can
use the water news at every faucet at
every shower head in every toilet of the
house I started out by asking this woman
she knows how many gallons of water she
uses all right so let me go back this is
our shower study I can tell you exactly
how much you use for the pre-wash for
face washing I can tell you if you
should use shampoo and conditioner two
and one because it takes less water than
shampoo and conditioner separately
alright so I hope I showed you a little
bit of the glimpse of what we’re doing
with the new in your house and I hope
that you can see that you can live
already a very sustainable today thank
you very much [Applause]