Green building is not just about putting efficient equipment in a home. It’s about the systems and processes of the assembly. It’s how the furnace is installed. It’s how the duct work is installed in the home. It’s how the framing is assembled. Every single structure we build is advanced framed.  Advanced framing means 24 inches on center.  It means hollow corners so, you can get insulation into them and not be cold spots. All the headers are used with narrower materials so you can insulate it and it’s just little things like that that make up a much better insulated shell and again, relates to a much more comfortable environment for the homeowner.

We install all of our HVAC systems inside the condition space. That means inside the home and our efficiency is exponentially better than any system you’ll ever install in the garage. The next step in the process is insulating and air ceiling. In this particular home we used a company called AeroBarrier. AeroBarrier creates an air tight environment. They spray tiny foam particles that fill holes and gaps as large as a half-inch by adhering to each other to seal up these openings. Then we can drive that air exchange down to 0.3 or 0.4 which is phenomenal. The purpose for a tight home is to control air flow. How this benefits our homeowners is it minimizes incoming airborne contaminants as well as air loss. Air loss from a home affects the occupants comfort and energy performance. We manage air flow in the home with the tight exterior and fresh air exchange, which creates a healthy, comfortable indoor environment.

Pyramid Heating and Cooling installed the WaterFurnace geothermal system in this home. These systems utilize the constant temperatures in the earth by circulating water through ground loop piping systems buried in the earth. It’s a very durable plastic that’s used for the tubing. It’s virtually indestructible and once they’ve tested that system and they lay it in the ground, you basically turn your back on it.

One of the things that we’ve adopted for every structure we build is we use a vented rainscreen. Code only requires a crinkle wrap weather barrier.  Wherever that crinkle wrap gets compressed, you’re going to trap water. A true vented rainscreen we feel is the best practices and is what every structure built in our climate zone should have.  What that consists of is you have furring strips that are placed vertically every 12 inches roughly around the perimeter of the home. So you have constant air flow behind your siding all the time.

One of the main components to the net zero on this home is the solar. This home was designed and built with 44 panels provided by Sunbridge Solar that will produce about 13.2 kilowatts of electricity each year. Based on the modeling of this home, the solar is expected produce more power than the family will use. The roof was designed with a large South facing plane to accommodate the immediate need for solar panels as well as room for future expansion. The home also has a 9.3 kilowatt LG battery backup system that will power the home during outages and allow for self-consumption of the solar electricity at night

We certify all of our homes to the National Green Building Standard. One of the requirements of the NGBS is that we only utilize a third party verifier and the verifier is involved from the inception of the home. They do energy modeling to determine that the performance that we’re trying to achieve for the home is on target with the right installation measures, the windows, the heating and cooling systems and so forth.