Over the years I’ve tried to fill in our coverage with more substantive, or how-to, information on topics relating to sustainable homes. One topic that I’ve been itching to cover is energy-efficient windows, and I’m happy to announce that Minnesota-based Marvin Windows and Doors has agreed to share their expertise with Jetson Green for a series of articles loosely titled “Energy-Efficient Windows 101.”
This is short notice, but readers near Toronto may be interested in knowing that the latest miniHome by Sustain Design Studio, the Bunkie 36, will be at the Fall Cottage Life Show this weekend from October 26-28, 2012, at the Toronto International Centre. The 420 square-foot cabin starts in price from about $87,500 (well-equipped) and can be permitted as an accessory building in Canada.
This is the Passive House Retreat in New England built by Aedi Construction with architecture and Passive House consulting by Boston-based ZeroEnergy Design. I was able to trade emails with ZED, including Stephanie Horowitz AIA CPHC and Jordan Goldman CPHC, about the energy performance of the home over the last year, and they said actual performance exceeded all predictions — including Energy Star and PHPP usage calculations. The home averaged 412 kW per month for all energy consumption.
The Solar Homestead by Appalachian State University was the People’s Choice winner in the Solar Decathlon 2011, and now virtually anyone in the world can get the same home from North Carolina-based Deltec Homes. Deltec, a pioneer of round prefab, will build and ship the self-sustaining home, and send royalties from their sales back to the university located in Boone. This is apparently “the first time a Decathlon winner is being made available to the consumer,” according to Deltec Homes.
Connect:Homes is a Los Angeles-based manufacturer of prefab homes founded by Jared Levy and Gordon Stott (formerly with Marmol Radziner) on a mission to reduce the delivery costs associated with modular construction and make sustainable homes more affordable. To make that happen, Levy and Stott spent the last three years designing, prototyping, and patenting a system to cost-effectively deliver prefab homes, and they put their awesome prototype on display at Dwell on Design 2012.
Project Profiles
