Meder, S.

Texas A&M University

REASSESSING RESIDENTIAL DESIGN IN HAWAII 
Design, Construction, Building Analysis and Publishing Design Guidelines for a Passive-Design, Model 
Home on Hawaiian Homelands 
 
Stephen Meder      Director   Center for Smart Building and Community Design                   Honolulu, 
       University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program           Hawaii 
           University of Hawaii School of Architecture
ABSTRACT 
 Hawaii is more reliant on fossil fuel for its 
electrical generation than any other state in the 
nation. Hawaii has the highest electrical costs in the 
country and one of the most pleasant climates in the 
world. The per household consumption of energy has 
been steadily increasing over the last decade, and 
much of that is due to a growing dependence on air 
conditioning to make Hawaii’s homes comfortable. 
This paper will describe a project where the State 
Department of Hawaii Homelands, the University of 
Hawaii School of Architecture, the Committee on the 
Environment for the Honolulu Chapter of American 
Institute of Architects, the Hawaii Building Industry 
Association with support from the US Department of 
Energy and the State of Hawaii Energy Office came 
together to address the issue of developing 
affordable, comfortable, cost effective housing design 
for a climate where heat and humidity can challenge 
the success of a passively designed home.  
 
 The project partners combined their resources 
and expertise to ensure that the project had a tangible 
outcome. There were four major phases to the 
project. The first was to research and draft a passive 
residential design guideline. The second was to 
design and construct an energy and resource 
conserving, comfortable and attractive model home 
based on those guidelines. The third was to monitor 
and analyze the design’s performance in terms of 
comfort and energy use. A team of researchers 
monitored the model home against a control home, of 
typical design, on the next block. The fourth phase 
revised and published the guidelines and conducted a 
series of statewide workshops for architects, 
developers and the general public.  
 
 The purpose of this project was to elevate the 
standards of residential design state-wide with a 
particular emphasis of delivering comfortable, energy 
conserving, cost effective homes to low-income 
families in the community.  
 
 This paper will describe the project’s process and 
products. It will articulate the research methods and 
results. The author will illustrate the design 
guidelines, discuss the design of the model home and 
provide information that demonstrates the home’s 
ability to bring comfort and over $700 savings per 
year, to a family of four, through effective passive 
design in Hawaii.  
 
BACKGROUND 
 Work force and affordable housing are 
disappearing commodities in Hawaii. Currently the 
median home cost in Honolulu is $613,500.1 In 
addition to the high housing costs, the electricity 
costs in Hawaii are the highest in the country. These 
factors combined with the fact that the predominating 
design standards for residential developments leave 
home owners more comfortable standing next to their 
house than inside it. Although it can be argued that 
this scenario encourages more frequent contact 
among neighbors, it should be a voluntary interaction 
and not one forced out by thermal discomfort 
especially in a location that possesses one of the most 
pleasing climates in the world. Furthermore, the 
design approach that neglects the considerations of 
building orientation, the building envelope’s solar 
heat gain mitigation potential, natural ventilation and 
daylighting opportunities, often increases the demand 
for higher energy consumption by elevating the need 
for air conditioning, and electric lighting while 
reducing the possibility for solar hot water 
applications and diminishing the overall comfort and 
quality of life within the residence. This condition is 
especially problematic in homes that are built for 
low-income families.  Rather than having a 
comfortable, cost effective and energy efficient 
home, these families are occupying unnecessarily 
uncomfortable homes and spending more on a 
monthly basis, currently as much as an additional 
$700 per year, to do so.  A core group from the 
University of Hawaii’s School of Architecture and 
the Honolulu Chapter of the American Institute of 
Architects’ Committee on the Environment decided 
to do something about this situation. They contacted 
various stakeholders to form working partnerships. 
They also applied for, and received, a US Department 
of Energy grant to partially fund the project. The 
concept was to conduct research and to provide 
educational outreach material and design guidelines 
to the design professions and general community. 
                                                 
1 Honolulu Board of Realtors, Multiple Listing 
Service, February 2006 
ESL-HH-06-07-05
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Symposium on Improving Building Systems in Hot and Humid Climates, Orlando, FL, July 24-26, 2006 
The guidelines were then employed to design and 
construct a home that was comfortable and energy 
conserving. That home was monitored and analyzed 
for comfort and energy use. A primary intent of the 
research/design team was to positively impact the 
low-income housing approach in Hawaii. The 
Department of Hawaiian Homelands (DHHL) will be 
one of the highest volume homebuilders in the state 
within the next decade. Its prime goal is to develop 
housing for low-income Hawaiian families. This was 
an opportunity to introduce these design concepts to 
this large developer, to have their client families 
experience more comfort and substantial monthly 
savings and by demonstrating these principles, this 
project, in the long-run, has the potential to create 
local jobs, add money to the state economy, reduce 
Hawaii’s dependence on fossil fuel and effect large-
scale energy conservation by increasing the use of 
solar hot water systems and maximize the energy use 
in other areas of the home.  
 
DESIGN GUIDELINES 
 The design guidelines were entitled, “Field Guide 
for Energy Performance, Comfort and Value in 
Hawaii Homes”. See Figure 1. 
 
 
 
 Figure 1.  Design Guidelines- Cover 
 
 The Field Guide is divided into four basic 
sections. The first section provides an introduction to 
the issues of human comfort, thermal transfer 
methods, an overview of climatic and site analysis 
and initiates the combined concepts of comfort, 
building design and energy savings. The second 
section of the guideline offers specific design 
strategies for orientation, envelope design, glazing 
and material choices for thermal and solar control, 
and natural ventilation strategies. See Figure 2.   
 
 
 Figure 2.  Integrating Roof Design Illustration  
   From Guidelines 
  
     Section three presents further energy conservation 
methods such as solar hot water applications and 
articulates the benefits of utilizing energy efficient 
lighting and appliances. Section four offers 
information on energy efficiency financial incentives, 
provides information for federal and state tax rebates 
and utility incentive programs and discusses some of 
the larger benefits of energy and resource efficient 
residential design and construction. The Field Guide 
was designed to be very user friendly. It is 
graphically rich and accessible to a variety of 
audience types. The prime target groups are 
architects, contractors, developers, policy makers and 
homeowners. The research and design team, through 
a series of outreach efforts, made attempts to get the 
Field Guide information to the potential home buying 
sector, hoping that that group, once more aware of 
the principles, would verbalize their informed 
opinions to developers and thereby elevate the quality 
of housing coming to the market. It should also be 
noted, that at this point the research team realized 
that there was a fundamental disconnect between the 
local lending institutions and the benefits of energy 
conserving residential design. The group catalyzed 
discussions between the local electric utility, EPA’s 
Energy Star program and the local banks. From this 
effort an energy efficient mortgage program was 
established for Hawaii. This allowed homeowners 
that were building or buying homes to qualify for a 
higher mortgage amounts, since the monthly savings 
from energy conservation in the home would give 
them more cash to invest every month.  
ESL-HH-06-07-05
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Symposium on Improving Building Systems in Hot and Humid Climates, Orlando, FL, July 24-26, 2006 
 
 The information in Field Guide became the basis 
of design for the model demonstration home that was 
built on Hawaiian Homelands in Honolulu, Hawaii.  
 
MODEL HOME 
 Hawaiian Homelands typically builds single-
family developments with a density of around 10 
units per acre. This model home was one of the larger 
units that DHHL provides. The lot area is 8,146 sq. ft 
and the home is a 4 bedroom, 2 ½ bath with 1,259 sq. 
ft. enclosed, and 586 additional square feet of porch, 
laundry and garage. Additional partners were 
required to materialize and construct the building. 
Honsador Lumber Corporation contributed much of 
the building materials. The Building Industry 
Association of Hawaii and Randy Lau of design Built 
Systems Inc., contributed construction expertise and 
labor. Nick Huddleston provided architectural 
services beyond the grant amount and the Hawaiian 
Electric Company Inc provided additional support. 
The modest single story home is compatible with the 
neighborhood in both scale and aesthetics. The 
building design followed the guidelines. See Figure 
3. 
  
 
 
 Figure 3.  Model Home 
  
 The design includes positive orientation to 
improve natural ventilation, solar control and 
daylighting opportunities. It utilized reflective 
exterior surfaces and radiant barrier in the walls and 
roof to mitigate radiant solar heat gain.  There was no 
insulation used in the envelope to reduce conductive 
heat gain except for the 1/8” air space provided by 
the air bubble layer between the two foil surfaces of 
the radiant barrier. For the purposes of the building 
performance analysis this 1/8” layer was not 
separately calculated.  Windows were strategically 
sized and placed to maximize cross ventilation. Solar 
hot water panels were placed on the South facing 
slope of the garage roof. Energy Star and energy 
efficient appliances and lighting were used 
throughout the residence. For the month between the 
completion of construction and the owner moving in, 
the residence was open as a demonstration home to 
the public. The model home got a lot of airplay on 
local radio and television shows. During the open 
house period it was visited by many state agency 
department heads, policy makers, architects, 
developers and close to 5000 members of the public.  
 
BIOCLIMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE MODEL 
HOME 
 The purpose of the monitoring process was to 
quantify the effectiveness of the design strategies that 
were incorporated into the model demonstration 
house. With very few exceptions, all of which are in 
less populated areas at higher elevations, Hawaii, 
across the state, is completely a cooling climate. In 
the winter, the Honolulu temperatures rarely dip 
below 700 F at their lowest and the highest 
temperatures in August and September do not 
typically rise above 900 F. The relative humidity 
hovers year round between 68 to 78% and the 
Northeast trade winds are relatively constant between 
9 to 12mph. A monitoring study was conducted to 
quantify the physical comfort levels within the home. 
The demonstration model home was compared to a 
reasonably identical home one block away. The 
second home is referred to as the “control house”. 
Onset Computer’s HoboXT and H8 data loggers were 
used to record temperature, relative humidity and 
light levels. Anemometers from Solomat were used 
to collect instantaneous wind velocity readings. 
Temperatures were logged externally and at five 
interior locations in each of the homes over a three-
month period from September 19th to December 15th 
see figure 4.
ESL-HH-06-07-05
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Symposium on Improving Building Systems in Hot and Humid Climates, Orlando, FL, July 24-26, 2006 
 Control  
Model 
 
Ave.  Ext.
Control house and model house dining room temperatures and  
average exterior temperatures from 9.16- 9.19 
 Figure 4. Temperature Monitoring Data of Exterior and Both Test Houses 
  
 In addition to the temperature readings, relative 
humidity and instantaneous air movement recordings 
were taken and illumination levels in the living room 
areas were also logged.  
 
 The heat mitigating and natural ventilation 
components that were designed into the model house 
and absent from the control house, are generally 
passive technologies, relatively inexpensive and have 
shown, through this study, to be quite effective. 
Neither the model nor the control house has any 
insulation in the roof or the walls. The roof and the 
South, West and East walls of the model home 
include a layer of radiant barrier. The exterior 
surfaces of the roof and walls of the model unit are of 
lighter colors and are therefore less heat absorbing.    
 
 The model’s exterior wall surfaces have a 
reflectance of just over 60% and the control house’s 
walls have a reflectance of 40%. Both homes 
ventilate the attics with venting in the blocking 
between the roof rafters just above the wall top plate, 
but the model home increases the ventilation with a 
continuous ridge vent that runs the length of the roof. 
Natural ventilation in the occupied areas is improved 
in the model home due to the increase of window 
openings and the availability of ventilation paths 
throughout the occupied spaces. A skylight has been 
installed at the end of the hallway in the model house. 
It has a fixed evacuation-venting screen. The skylight 
is responsible for some direct heat gain but does 
encourage the evacuation of collected hot air in the 
house and provides illumination to what would 
otherwise be a darkened hallway. The model home 
does also include ceiling fans. Reports from the 
owner indicate that the ceiling fans are used only 
during the hottest times. It was impossible to 
determine, through the analysis of the logged data, 
when the ceiling fans were in use. The results of the 
testing indicated that the model home consistently 
outperformed the control house for providing a 
comfortable environment for the inhabitants. The 
exterior temperatures and the relative humidity are 
the same for both homes. The control house’s attic 
space consistently heated up and quickly exceeded 
the exterior temperatures on a diurnal basis. The attic 
temperatures in the control house were more than 26 
ºF above the outside temperatures where the model 
home’s attic never exceeded 6.03ºF increase over the 
outside. Therefore there was a 20ºF difference 
ESL-HH-06-07-05
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Symposium on Improving Building Systems in Hot and Humid Climates, Orlando, FL, July 24-26, 2006 
between the two attic spaces during the hottest times 
of the day. During the hottest times of the day, the 
temperatures in the model house’s living area were 
cooler than the outside temperature and as much as 
nearly 9ºF cooler than the living room of the control 
house. The graphs show that the control house’s 
living room temperatures are typically running 6-9 ºF 
above the high range of the bioclimatic comfort zone 
whereas the model home’s living room temperatures 
run in the middle and in the high range of the comfort 
zone and only slightly and infrequently do they 
exceed the comfort zone during the active hours of 
the daytime or evenings. The increased air movement 
in the model house expands the comfort zone for the 
inhabitants there while the lack of ventilation in the 
control house leaves the residents feeling 
uncomfortable due to the increased temperatures. 
The bedroom located in the west corner of each 
house yielded impressive data. Both bedrooms are 
the same size, configuration and location. The control 
house bedroom was consistently warmer than both 
the exterior temperatures and the model house’s 
bedroom temperatures. The greatest difference in 
both cases was that the control bedroom was nearly 
17ºF hotter than the exterior and the model bedroom 
temperature. Furthermore, the model bedroom 
consistently stayed cooler than the exterior 
temperatures when they increased above an 
equilibrium point of 82ºF. The difference is attributed 
to the higher reflective exterior surfaces, use of 
radiant barrier, increased ventilation and reduced attic 
heat gain in the model home. See Figure 5.  
  
 
17.68
11.67
17.06
10.13
8.87
1.99
60
70
80
90
100
110
120
Exterior Attic Top-
position
Attic Bottom-
position
Back Room Dining Room Living Room
Location
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Te
mp
er
at
ur
e 
Di
ff
er
en
ce
 (
*F
)
Control House
Model House
Temperature
Difference
 
 
 Figure 5.  Comparison of Control House Temperatures versus Model House Temperatures for September 17th at 
5:15PM 
 
The time of the data in figure 5 was selected because 
it is the time of the day that the respective families 
arrive home and gather. The “backroom” on the chart 
is referring to the bedroom on the Southwest corner 
of each of the houses. The lighter band running 
horizontally behind the bars on the chart represents 
the comfort zone.  
 
 
 
ESL-HH-06-07-05
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Symposium on Improving Building Systems in Hot and Humid Climates, Orlando, FL, July 24-26, 2006 
CONCLUSION 
 This is quantitative evidence that the model 
home is providing a more comfortable environment 
due to the design approach than a typical house on 
Hawaiian Homelands or in most of Hawaii’s 
residential subdivisions. The building’s envelope is 
performing as designed. The model is mitigating heat 
gain, encouraging natural ventilation, and is allowing 
more, useful natural light to penetrate the interior.  
 
 Overall the model house is an effective 
demonstration of passive design strategies in 
Hawaii’s warm, humid climate. Temperature 
differences between the control and model house are 
as high as 20ºF in the attics, nearly 6ºF in the living 
room and as much as 17ºF in the bedroom. The 
model home provides a cool, bright and airy 
residential experience. Even when the temperature 
exceeds the comfort zone, the natural ventilation 
airflow across the skin cools the inhabitants. The 
design strategies that the model home demonstrate 
are reducing this family’s monthly utility bill by 
about 40%, creating more comfortable interior spaces 
and improving their overall quality of life.   
 
REFERENCES 
Charles Eley Associates 
Ceiling Insulation for Your Home  
State of Hawaii, Department of Business Economic 
Development and Tourism 1999. 
 
National Renewable Energy Lab 
Cooling Your Home Naturally 
Technical Information Report, 1996 
 
Richmond-Powers, M. 
Tips to Keep Your Attic Cool 
Environmental Design & Construction, 
September/October 1999 
 
Stein, B., Reynolds, J., 
Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings 
Wiley and Sons, ninth edition, 2000 
 
Wasley, H. J., Utzinger, M. 
Vital Signs Glazing Performance 
School of Architecture and Urban Planning, 
University of Wisconsin  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
ESL-HH-06-07-05
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Symposium on Improving Building Systems in Hot and Humid Climates, Orlando, FL, July 24-26, 2006 


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Reassessing Residential Design in Hawaii: Design Construction Building Analysis and Publishing Design Guidelines for a Passive-Design Model Home on Hawaiian Homeland

https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/1969.1/4641/4/ESL-HH-06-07-05.pdf

Reassessing Residential Design in Hawaii: Design Construction Building Analysis and Publishing Design Guidelines for a Passive-Design Model Home on Hawaiian Homeland

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