Green Building Community

Take a Virtual High Performance Home Tour with ZeroEnergy Design

Rate It Green Team 0 Ratings 105 Discussions 6 Group posts

Posted by: Rate It Green Team


 

Check out ZeroEnergy Design’s Belmont, MA high performance home, and take this online tour at your convenience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwQjDvc_XSU!  ZED’s Matt Genaze and Auburndale Builders' Ryan McCarthy walk us through this energy efficient home, including design, systems, renewable energy, and more.
 
The owners of this 1960s split level home, located next to a nature preserve, were initially looking to build an addition and then remodel the existing part of this two-building home, but then ended up choosing all new construction instead. This evolution led to a eally interesting process. The owners moved into one building to renovate the other, and then decided they liked the new construction and also found the cost difference small enough to make it worth building new.
 
Matt talks about how net zero energy homes necessitate thoughtful design, healthy indoor air quality, and low cabon living, and it's essential to have a great team on the project.  Ways to achieve net zero include:
 
  • Proper solar orientation, according to passive principles (even if not Passive House)
    • Large glazing on the south, minimal on north, west and east
    • Maximizing the roof lies to capture the sun’s energy
  • A super insulated, airtight building envelope - in this case, two layers of exterior insulation with continuous air and vapor barriers
  • High efficiency mechanical systems to control interior conditioned air and prevent leaks.  Continuous home energy monitoring also helps the owners and team ensure proper performance and maintenance going forward. 
 
These factors can help the home reduce energy usage by about 80%.  Then solar arrays or other renewable energy systems will achieve the remaining 20%.  And, there's plenty of power to charge the EV! 
 
We look forward to learning more!  What are your questions?
 
 
 

Reply

 

Please be kind and respectful!

Please make sure to be respectful of the organizations and companies, and other Rate It Green members that make up our community. We welcome praise and advice and even criticism but all posted content and ratings should be constructive in nature. For guidance on what constitutes suitable content on the Rate It Green site, please refer to the User Agreement and Site Rules.

The opinions, comments, ratings and all content posted by member on the Rate It Green website are the comments and opinions of the individual members who posts them only and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies or policies of Rate It Green. Rate It Green Team Members will monitor posted content for unsuitable content, but we also ask for the participation of community members in helping to keep the site a comfortable and open public forum of ideas. Please email all questions and concerns to admin@rateitgreen.com