A reality based cost-benefit analysis of high performance residences: Part II
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This research initiative attempts to determine, from real construction cost estimates, the cost challenge and expected payback period associated with building a high-performance residence in Victoria, BC. This was accomplished through: a simulated tendering process with local contractors, an energy analysis of a case-study residence (Part I of this research initiative), and an in-depth study into the variables governing time-to-amortization. The contractors provided quotes for an as-built “above code” residence (ACR), and a “minimum-code” residence (MCR) with the same floor plan (Note: The as-built above-code residence was not built or designed to any specific performance standard; however, it was found in Part I of this research initiative that when compared to the new BC Step code that it performed at a step 3 designation, bordering on step 4 performance). The results of the tendering process were then compared to the as-built construction costs of the residence. When compared to the MCR, it was found that the ACR has a cost challenge of approximately 22.5%, an energy advantage of 22.5 kWh/m 2 /year, and a payback period of over 79 years when a fuel inflation rate of 2% is considered. However, many of the components in the ACR assemblies were either for aesthetic appeal (metal-roofing), or comfort (floor-cavity insulation), and therefore it was possible to reduce the cost challenge to just 2.1%, while maintaining an energy advantage of 15 kWh/m 2 /year and step level 3 designation. This was dubbed the hybrid-residence as it employed a combination of above-code and minimum-code construction assemblies. Based on a simple mortgage increase calculation, it was found that the reduction in operational costs produced by the energy-efficiency measures for this residence services 87% of the mortgage increase taken on by the home buyer.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".