If a 20% deposit was a requirement all along, ‘starter’ townhouses would have never cost $250K plus to begin with. This whole price inflation of the past decade was fuelled by cheap credit and low deposits.

I did google it for a while. Even the “zero energy homes” used geothermal heat pumps.

Sorry dude, not trying to pick a fight, but that’s a heater.

That being said, in my opinion, Germany is the world leader in energy efficiency in buildings, but they still have to obey science. Heat flows from hot to cold, so if it’s below zero outside, the heat will flow from the inside of the home to the outside (unless there is a perfect insulator, which is a vacuum, so that’s gonna work), and you will have to replace it with something generating heat from the inside. Solar heating only works in the day, when sunny and not overly coldy out.

Perhaps with enough PV panels to store electricity in batteries to run both the geothermal heat pump at night, and supply other forms of heat, you could have a house that doesn’t use fossil fuels, but there’s still heaters using energy.

“all electronic devices convert 100% of their electricity to heat ”
- No. A portion goes to light. The rest, yes would be released as some sort of kinetic energy

“That can heat a building – in fact overheat it – esp. when one has passive solar heating in an all-glass structure.”
- Yes if we talking about an office building where the internal loads (people, electrical) and the solar loads coming through the south facing windows exceeds the amount of heat flowing through the building skin (roof, walls, floor) to the ambient. But what about at 3am when the computers are off, the people are home, and sun isn’t shining? You got it, the heaters turn on (whether that be geothermal, or a good old fashioned boiler).

“Annualized geo-thermal can heat homes thru the winter – by using a >100 tons of heat storage in a sand bed under the home – or in dirt / rock; at least in more moderate climates.”
- I totally agree. But, a home using geo-thermal heating is not considered a home that doesn’t require heating. It’s a form of heating. It’s not a magic… it’s a heater. Plus they don’t work well everywhere, and there is a pump on them that requires energy.

“In labs which I run the heat is generated almost equally by people, computers and lights”
- I am well aware of this from my HVAC classes in university, my co-op experience at NRC doing thermal testing of glazed window units, my reseach and CMHC, and from my professional experience as an HVAC engineer in Calgary, that larger office buildings need to be air-conditioned in the winter during the daytime (which requires energy to run the chillers, pumps, cooling towers, condensors what have you), but I cannot see how a German family is going to heat their home in the night, in winter, by inviting over 100 people, turning on all the lights, and having a huge amout of electronics running. The obvious solution is, and every German home has it, is to have a heating system.

That being said, German homes have heaters, whether it be district heating, or geothermal etc…

And I realize one can get passive solar gains in the winter, but not at night, when it gets REALLY cold, and you are going to have 15 kW of electronic equipment running just so you don’t freeze.

Sorry, I just don’t but an arguement that German homes are so fantastic they don’t need to be heated. They do, and they are.