Energy-Saving Ideas From 3 Cheap Green-Built Homes
A 2012 publication named In the Ground Up: Sophisticated Green Homes, edited by Peggy Tully, files a 2008 design competition of the exact same name. Contest entrants were asked to envision affordable, green single-family houses for the Near Westside area of Syracuse, New York.
Seven finalists were chosen from the greater than 50 entries obtained, and also three of the finalists’ designs were realized. This ideabook concentrates on these three houses, which are 1,100 square feet and $150,000 each, and the lessons they offer about green residential buildings.
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The competition targeted at the Near Westside area of Syracuse for more reasons than proximity to Syracuse University. As Mark Robbins, dean of the university’s College of Architecture describes it, the”From the Ground Up competition seeks to provide another version for disinvested urban residential neighborhoods located throughout the United States through the introduction of affordable green houses.” Yet, as could be seen, as Michael Sorkin picks up on in his article in the book, the winning houses are highly individual forms that have a scale similar to existing houses in the area but stand out strongly from them.
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The R-House
Architect: Architecture Research Office and Della Valle Bernheimer
Enforcement engineer: Transsolar
Who lives here: Maggie Maurer, a single mother of 3
That’s intriguing: The home is built to stringent Passive House standards.
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The R-House (shown beside the orange TED House, arriving next) takes its name from”R-value,” a component of thermal resistance which measures the thickness of the material divided by its thermal conductivity.
This is an apt moniker, considering the way the architects made the house to meet Germany’s Passivhaus (Passive House) fundamentals: It’s airtight, superinsulated exteriors with minimal thermal bridging, highly insulated windows and heat-recovery ventilators.
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Following Passive House fundamentals, the architects made the consequent exterior envelope 16 inches thick, using a worth of R-70. From inside to outside, there is 2-by-6 wood framing (2-by-12 framing at the roof) using blown-in fiberglass insulation (drywall is mounted on the inside face of the studs, plywood on the outside side), then EPS (polyurethane ) insulation and eventually corrugated metal siding mounted on furring strips.
Uniquely, rather than using wood studs, the walls and roof are framed with truss joists (TJI members) that are normally used as beams. Triple-glazed windows with argon filling would be the last ingredient in developing a superinsulated exterior.
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Windows are minimized, such that joints between window and wall assemblies are reduced. The windows are also located to take advantage of sunlight (south west is up on the ground plan, for reference, so the street elevation faces north), bringing as much light as you can into the double-height space that contains nearly half the house.
The architects boast that”a single mechanical unit… quietly circulates air throughout the house,” thereby reducing”electrical consumption by roughly 70 percent in comparison with the standard Syracuse home.”
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A blower door test was conducted to determine the levels of air infiltration at the outside. In the test a fan is attached to the front doorway to differentiate between indoor and outdoor pressure, and an assessor walks round the building using a smoke adhere to see where any gaps happen. (It is good to see such low-tech testing at one time of highly technological green building.)
The group then made repairs toward gaining Passive House certification — thus far just 52 projects in the U.S. are certified, and just two in New York state.
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The two-bedroom, two-bath house was purchased by Maggie Maurer (displayed here) and her boyfriend Peter Waack. Maurer, a mom of three, is really a Building Performance Institute–accredited building adviser, meaning she is residing in one of the greatest examples of exactly what she devotes her working hours .
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The TED House
Architect: Onion Flats
Energy consulting: MaGrann Associates
Who lives here: Steven Morris and Sara O’Mahoney, a young couple who owns a bicycle shop in the city
That’s intriguing: Onion Flats won the competition, then entirely redesigned the house after taking a Passive House certification training Program.
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Like the R-House next doorway, the TED House is designed per Passive House standards, but that did not occur until later Onion Flats won the competition, right before the project was moving in for permits, in fact.
As the architects put it,”Following our Passive House trainingwe had been embarrassed by such a wimpy shell” of R-19 in the walls and R-30 in the roof. They changed from batt insulation and R-1 windows to closed-cell spray foam, densely packed cellulose, a zip-panel air barrier, 4-inch EPS insulation, a metal panel rain screen and R-10 windows.
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The house did superbly in the blower door test, far better than the LEED Platinum residence they recently finished within their hometown. While the cost for the shell went up over their competition entry, it led to reduced mechanical needs. Or, as they describe it,”TED has the equivalent of a fur jacket, rather than a windbreaker, standing between it and the unpleasant Syracuse winter” This keeps the cold out but also keeps the heat in, requiring hardly any heat to be produced.
The floor plans illustrate 1 way that Onion Flats sees the house being added to — a bedroom off the stair could reverse the two-bedroom, two-bath into a three-bedroom residence.
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As the photograph above attests, the house is striking for the dramatic three-story space that extends from the kitchen to the loft below the solar chimney which covers the house. Warm atmosphere and humidity are exhausted on peak of the house, taking care of the inner’s cooling needs in the summer.
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Steven Morris and Sara O’Mahoney, who own a bicycle shop in the city, bought the house with the support of Home HeadQuarters, a home provider that gave them down payment assistance and tax incentives. They say their house is”cheaper than our apartment was — and it is a million times simpler.” Notice the trays over the kitchen doors, in which the couple is developing some food via the help of the glass transom.
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Live/Work/Home
Architect: Coookfox Architects
Environmental consultant: Terrapin Bright Green
Who lives here: John and Kathy Miranda, a semiretired couple
That’s intriguing: The Residence is pictured as a mixed-use version for integrating work into urban and suburban houses.
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While lots of modern and modern residential buildings is criticized for not looking homelike, the architects of the Live/Work/Home made the conscious decision to design a house that could be mistaken for a commercial building. In their decision to incorporate work into the home program, they expect , as they say,”entice new residents and utilizes, helping to repopulate the urban neighborhood.”
The retractable front screen shown here can preserve privacy and filter sunlight, but it might also serve as a way of signaling once the work part is available for business.
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Rather than blending parcels, as done on similar projects, the architects worked with one lot, meaning the consequent single-story plan is a linear one. They found inspiration in vernacular longhouses, specifically the Haudenosaunee one in the Syracuse area. An outside corridor goes from the front porch (previous photograph ) to the rear porch. Hinged panels, perforated in tree-like patterns such as front facade, can be opened and closed to let in light and preserve privacy.
The plan is explained by the architects as a loft, such that the main open space could be opened up entirely or, as is shown here, partitioned with casework for bedrooms.
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Keeping with the $150,000 budget, the house is completed simply. A wall confronted in oriented strand board divides the loft space in the service regions — kitchen, storage, bathroom, laundry. Added all-natural light enters the house through solar tubes. Their orientation across the ceiling echoes the perforated panels of the outside.
The outside walls supporting the walls are made from structurally insulated panels which combine with the insulated glass and reflective roof to make an efficient envelope, even if not as tight or superinsulated as another two houses.
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The flexible zone at the rear of the loft is accommodated by sliding panels which also replicate the outside retina display. Notice the paths on the ground and the ceiling which allow for as much area to be open or closed as the owners desire.
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John and Kathy Miranda, shown here, are semiretired. They purchased the Live/Work/Home after living in an apartment in downtown Syracuse and love its design.
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In addition to the three houses discussed here, the handsome publication — a part of the New City Books series — gifts another four finalists, and it comprises essays by Mark Robbins and Michael Sorkin, said previously, and by architectural historian Susan Henderson.
What’s valuable about the book is the way it goes from the competition in 2008 to the current occupancy of the houses; it does not restrict itself to one facet of the process. This big-picture demonstration goes together with the large idea of realizing houses from a design competition whose timing coincided with the housing crisis and the doubt it generated.