Almost ten years ago, Built Green, an environmentally-friendly residential building program of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, began a project to develop the first net energy townhome complex in the United States. The project was created to revolutionize green housing and prove that green building could be done affordably. To date, […]
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“You can judge your impact on the planet by how much energy you use.”
Chris Dorsi characterizes a dozen countries around the world in terms of electricity consumption, or kWh per year. Dorsi argues that you can continue to enjoy the creature comforts we’ve come to expect in the […]
There has been a lot of hoop-la and craziness around passive homes, net zero energy homes, and super energy efficient homes. I’ve been amazed at how easy it can actually be. My friend is building a house that will burn less then a cord of wood per winter. His building cost? Around $100 to $110 per square foot. Yes, he did do a lot of the work himself. However, if a contractor would do it, the price would still be on par with normal construction.
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Before we talk about building a super insulated home, first you need to understand how to design a super efficient shell. The below 26 minute free video lesson is from Marc Rosenbaum’s 10 week, “Zero Net Energy Design” class, where students learn how to design a zero net energy home in 10 weeks.
Here’s how he did it.
1 – Keep the house small. Less resources, cheaper, and less energy use. At 1600 square feet the house will use about a half of cord of wood be winter. We’re burning mainly maple which is 20 million BTUs per cord. Thus, he’ll burn 10 million BTUs per winter. This averages around 55,000 BTUs per day. Don’t believe me, this house will use the tiniest wood stove he could find.
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A lot of residential and light commercial renewable energy work is starting to be picked up by general contractors, like Jamie Leef of S+H Construction in Cambridge. Why? General contractors are in a unique position to pick up this work because they’re used to managing projects, sales, and it supplements their existing business.
Beginning in September, I am going to be working with one of my best friends in Maine to create their renewable energy division. My friend Gilbert took over his father’s residential construction company. It’s a small local company in coastal Maine that has a repuation for building high quality, energy efficient homes.
I’m going to keep a journal of the journey on Heatspring Magazine because many of the issues we’ll be dealing with are common for everyone in the industry. What am I going to be discussing? Everything that a small business must do to make money; establishing our marketing and sales strategies, performing site visits and creating sales proposals, applying for incentives, the design process and lastly, the installation process. My goal is to be 100% open and share everything we learn. I have absolutely no fear that me sharing this material will mean less business for us. In fact, I feel it will sharpen our business strategy, writing has a tendency to do this, and it will help other contractors like yourself. Read below to get this specifics. If you like this idea, have any questions, or are working on a similar project, feel free to leave a comment or ask me on HeatSprings facebook page.
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