Empowerhouse project designed for Solar Decathlon USA
Despite the general concern that Green houses are more expensive then the regular homes, US students from Parsons The New School, NY and Stevens Institute of Technology, NJ designed an affordable house for low-income people.
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Felicia Nitu
la categoria
Energie Verde
Publicat la
24.09.2011
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EmpowerHouse project unites students from Milano, Parsons and Stevens Institute to design and build an affordable energy efficient house model for Habitat for Humanity. Our submission was selected to be presented in Washington, D.C. as part of the Solar Decathlon 2011 competition. I was involved in every stage of development, from the conceptual phase to drafting the construction documents.
From the very beginning we worked in a multi-disciplinary team with Passive House (PH) specialists. In parallel, I took a few classes to learn about PH principles (air-tight super-insulated envelope – no thermal bridging, passive solar heat gain and efficient mechanical system – heat or energy recovery system) and how to use energy modeling tools to get instant feedback to our
conceptual designs. The tools I used are Rhino-Grashopper-PHPP (PH planning package), Therm and Ecotect. We also worked with CASE to integrate PHPP into our Revit model but we only partially succeeded (we used the area take-offs from Revit for the PHPP calculations).
After multiple iterations of design schemes, the most energy efficient approach was to have two semi-detached single family homes that share one of their facades. That design minimizes the number of exterior walls and the risk of thermal bridging. The South facing windows are large, for solar heat gain in the winter, and with a shading system that covers 80% of the glazing in the summer time. Originally, we had smaller windows for the Eastern and Western façades and almost non-existent North facing windows.
During the design development phase, I focused on specifying, detailing, and building's shading system, the openings (windows and doors) in correlation with the energy performance of the houses. The challenge was to balance the energy performance of the house with the living experience we want people to have. The 12” deep TJI paneled walls allowed me to design splays for the windows and to use them as a shading strategy for the East and West façade (no additional shading strategy necessary) and as a non-glare strategy for the South and North façade.
For the final design, I was able to enlarge the windows on the East, West and North façades for a better interior experience. I succedded this by specifying different SHGC, R and U-values for the double pane argon in-fill glass and for the frame along with a non-thermal bridging window detail. In positioning each window I took into consideration not just the interior program requirements and overall experience, but also the solar exposure and surrounding obstructions (residues trees).
In partnership with DHCD (Department of Housing & Community Development in D.C.) we introduced EmpowerHouse to the Deawood community and initiated an open educational dialog about what it means to be Green. As one of the group leaders, I was the liaison to DHCD and DCRA (Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs). In this role I held several presentations to share with DHCD and DCRA our vision behind EmpowerHouse which also included community outreach. DHCD agreed to donate a lot in Deanwood for our project and I kept in touch with DCRA for their support and guidance about building permits.
