Stonegate Green House

Stonegate Environmentally Friendly Home and Now an Energy Star Award Winning Home.

Stonegate News. August 24, 2009

 

The Award  Winning Energy Star Home located on Hole # 6,  earned the best energy efficient rating ( 5 stars plus) given out by Energy Star for both Efficiency and Pollution Prevention.

 

The Uniform Energy Rating System used starts at 500 (worst entry level rating) to 35 (best rating). Stonegate’s home earned a 41 rating.  What all this means is clean saved energy costs to homeowner. 

 

 

 

 

Stonegate Community and Golf Club  has earned the reputation for being a  great steward of the land.  Going Green with home construction only makes sense. 

Today’s home buyers are asking for more green features as a means of lowering costs, becoming more environmentally friendly, and adopting a healthier lifestyle.

Green features are becoming one of the top three priorities, after price and location.

Green features focus on energy efficiency, water efficiency, resource efficiency and indoor air quality and include such elements as Energy Star appliances, low-flow shower heads, carpets and paint with low volatile organic compounds, and building materials procured from local suppliers.

This site will be updated throughout the building process with brief explanations of what and why is happening.

So please follow our progress on this web site.

This home will be for sale. 

The Site

The site was carefully selected to provide for the best use of natures energy. First the natural landscape needed limited clearing. The site provides for excellent southern exposure with uninterrupted sun exposure. The Sun energy will be collected by  the Solar Collectors for heating the homes hot water. Also with the angle of the winter sun, the home will naturally heat itself with Passive Solar Heating.  See site below.

                            

Rear View 6th hole                                             Pre-clearing Street View

 

 After clearing Street View

 

The picture below shows the forms for the footings in place.  The wood from the forms will be stripped and  reused around the windows and the doors in the framing process.  See picture below.

 

Forms for Footings for a 1805' Home.

The Cement Footings have 1/2" Steel Re-Bar 8" high and 30" apart to connect to the Building Block Cement Poured Wall.

 

Cement Footings

 

The pictures below shows the construction of the Building Block Insulating Concrete Forms. When all complete the home's foundation will have a R Factor of 50. Normal construction provides an R Factor around 28.     www.buildblock.com

  

 

Sealed at Footing with Expanding Foam Adhesive inside and out.

Above shows the inside of the Building Block. 1/2' Steel Re-Bar is installed every 4" inches horizontally and 10' high vertically 30' apart.  Both are installed around the entire Foundation.

 

 

Above shows the Cement pouring process. The Vertical Re-Rod extends above the wall.  The wood on the outside of the Building Block Wall is just for pouring support.  When all said and done the home will have a 11" Foundation Wall.

Green Materials:  Keene Lumber Company of Muskegon Michigan is providing the materials along with expertise of Green Building.  www.keenelumber.com 

 

 

 

 

Extra and unused materials are brought to the Recycling Station.

 

Below the cement wall is stubbed for an in and out heat recovery ventilation unit. 

 When a home is built that is super insulated you need to account for air pressure.  The heat recovery unit allows the air to come in the home close to room temperature, the same process is used on cooled air.  ie.. The air a homeowner paid to heat or cool is not lost through air exchange.

 Below the smaller stubs in the lower right hand corner are for the Geo Thermal Heat Loop.

The Larger stub  on the right hand side is for Grey Water Recycling.

The other large stub to the left of the Grey Water Stub is for the Septic System.

The curved stub on the left is for electrical.

 Below the Ledger Board for the first floor is fastened directly to the concrete wall. This allows for no loss of insulation at the floor system. ie.. no air gaps.

 

Above shows the transition from the lower level to the first floor.  The lower level wall and first floor wall is one solid cement continuous bonded wall.  This is consistent to the roof line. The same 1/2' re-bar  grid used in the lower level continues through the full height of the wall.

 

Above shows the above grade level.  The same insulated Building Block process as the basement has will create a main level insulated cement wall for a superior R factor.

View from the South.

 

Southwest view.

HOT NEWS:

The State of Michigan's Energy Department  has announced that Stonegate's Energy Efficient home has earned the States Energy Star Rating.  Only 5 homes in the State were awarded this rating.  The rating is based on efficiency and innovation in the design and construction of new houses.  Phil Johnson, the General Contractor will accept this award in Lansing next month.

 

 

 

Coming soon:

The projected cost for Utilities.  This home is being built so efficient that the monthly utility savings are going to be remarkably lower than a traditional built home.

Green note:

The Lumber used for the interior walls is known as LSL (Laminated Strand Lumber)  It is the greenest framing lumber available, it uses 99.9 % of the tree when harvested.

Geothermal Heat Pump System

A geothermal heat pump system is a central heating and/or air conditioning system that actively pumps heat to or from the shallow ground. It uses the earth as either a source of heat in the winter, or as a coolant in the summer. This design takes advantage of moderate temperatures in the shallow ground to boost efficiency and reduce operational costs. It may be combined with solar heating to form a geosolar system with even greater efficiency.

Geothermal heat pumps are also known by a variety of other names, including geoexchange, earth-coupled, earth energy, ground-source or water-source heat pump. The engineering and scientific community tend to prefer the terms "geoexchange" or "ground-source heat pumps" because very little of the heat originates from true geological sources.Instead, these pumps draw energy from shallow ground heated by the sun in the summer. Genuine geothermal energy from the core of Earth is available only in places where volcanic activity comes close to the surface, and can usually be extracted without the help of a heat pump.

Like a refrigerator or air conditioner, these systems use a heat pump to force the transfer of heat. Heat pumps can capture heat from a cool area and transfer it to a warm area, against the natural direction of flow, or they can enhance the natural flow of heat from a warm area to a cool one. The core of the heat pump is a loop of refrigerant pumped through a vapor-compression refrigeration cycle that moves heat. Heat pumps are always more efficient than pure electric heating, even when extracting heat from air.

But unlike an air-source heat pump, which extracts or exhausts heat to or from the outside air, a ground-source heat pump exchanges heat with the ground. This is much more efficient because underground temperatures are relatively stable through the year. Seasonal variations drop off with depth and disappear below 10 m due to thermal inertia.  Like a cave, the shallow ground temperature is warmer than the air above during the winter and cooler than the air in the summer. A ground-source heat pump extracts that ground heat in the winter (heating) and exhausts heat back into the ground in the summer (cooling).

The system cost is much higher than conventional systems, but the difference is usually returned in energy savings in 3–10 years. System life is estimated at 25 years for the inside components and 50+ years for the ground loop. As of 2004, there are over a million units installed worldwide providing 12 GW of thermal capacity, with an annual growth rate of 10%.If deployed on a large scale, this technology may help alleviate energy costs and global warming.

 

The coils below will be place in the gound 6' below the grade.