[Retric]

It’s rather pointless to go through the effort of building a house if you don’t expect to live in it for very long. So, the minimum standards should only be relevant to people building homes for sale.

As to insulation, it’s very cheap to add some form of solar heating outside of the arctic but cooling always takes energy.

[jaclaz]

What you expect may be different from what will eventually happen, and since the vast majority of houses are actually built by people that intend to sell them (builders), those make the market price, and - at least now - a passive house valued 30% more than average market is not easy to sell or rent, maybe this will change, maybe not.

[Retric]

You can very much rent a passive house for significantly more by including heating and cooling costs into the rental price. People can’t see what your heating bills are but they can compare with other properties that include heating.

Actual price differences at time of sale should be nowhere close to 30% not only because that’s an insane difference in construction costs but also because land isn’t free. A 200k house on 200k of land vs a 260k house on 200k of land isn’t a 30% difference in final price.

[jaclaz]

Still it remains 60K difference, or 20 years at 3K.

[Retric]

Assuming it is actually 60k, where in reality insulation is cheap. Having giant windows is useful for passive heat gain, but their mostly installed for aesthetics not practicality. Which means aesthetics are also increasing home values.

In terms of pure economics an extra 15k in insulation and 15k for a solar hot water system gets you further at much lower costs by actually providing hot water for showers not just lowering heating bills.

[jaclaz]

I think you are downsizing the project, from investing 60K to save 3K/year to investing 30K to save 1.5K/year.

[Retric]

No, I am saying you would save that much money more cheaply via other methods.

Sure, saving 3k/year on heating costs for a single family home is extremely high. An average 1,800sf house in Massachusetts on $1.87/therm natural gas is only projected at $1,243 / year in heating bills for 2021/2022. That said you can always build a larger house, so saving 3k/year isn’t impossible it’s just much easier when you include better methods to collect sunlight than covering a side of your house in giant windows which have low R factors because their giant windows.

PS: Insulation alone can only make so much difference. In other words you might save 1000$/year going from R10 to R20, but then going from R20 to R30 doesn’t also save you another 1,000$. Very quickly you’re better off collecting energy rather than reducing heat loss.