For the second year in a row, a Zero-Energy Plans.com home has won an Energy Value Housing Award. This prestigious award is co-sponsored by the US Department of Energy and the NAHB Research Center. In order to qualify for one of these awards, a home must not only be energy efficient, but must also be affordable. This year's entry is our YF-1 plan, which scored the lowest (most energy efficient) HERS rating we have ever seen on a home of similar size without any energy generating equipment installed. It uses about forty percent of the energy of a home built to the stringent Washington State Energy Code, and is in about the same cost per square foot range as any of its poorly performing neighbors. Our YF-1 plan received a Silver Award at the awards ceremony at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas on January 18th 2010. Our YF-1 plan achieved a HERS rating of 41 (see article below for the meaning of HERS rating), at a cost per square foot of just $101! US Park Service chooses Zero-EnergyPlans.com Plan for Employee Housing Zero-Energy Plans LLC. has entered into a contract with the US Park Service to develop a version of our RC-1 Plan for use as a residence for seasonal employees at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Eastern Oregon. This new version will have a full-sized stairway to a larger upstairs, and will also be fully accessible, to meet rigorous Federal standards. Once the energy efficiency of this design is proven on-site, it is the hope of the Park Service to repeat the project across the country, as a demonstration of how affordable true zero-energy homes can be. All design and specification work is now complete, with bidding in January or February, for construction beginning in early Spring 2010. The preliminary HERS score for this home is a -15, with only half of the available roof space covered with PV panels. Is it really possible to get to a minus 100? We are working on it! Energy Bills less than $100 PER YEAR! We received word from the owners of the prototype of the S-1 plan that their first full year of complete energy bills, including the 1977 sf house, the detached garage with 360 sf apartment above, including all appliances, heating, cooking, etc., was LESS THAN $100! So much for theories about the rainy Pacific Northwest not getting enough sun! This was accomplished through the careful attention to every energy-saving detail of the design and construction, and the use of just 3.0 KW of photovoltaic panels on the roof, with a grid-tied system. How about creating enough energy with your house to power up your car as well? The RC-3 plan, soon to be available for viewing on this site, will produce up to 50% more energy than it uses, providing you with enough power to operate a small electric car. We expect to be able to make minor changes to some of our other plans to achieve similar results. Our NAHB Green Building for Building Professionals teaching schedule is now shown at the bottom of this page. For more information or to sign up for the class, contact your local Home Builders Association, or for any of the Washington State locations, contact amandaf@biaw.com. ZEP founder wins BIAW Builder of the Year award In recognition of the teaching and promoting of Green Building practices, and other service he has performed for the Building Industry Association of Washington, Ted L. Clifton was awarded the coveted 2009 "Builder of the Year" at an awards ceremony and dinner in Vancouver, Washington on Thursday November 5th. ZEP receives National Green Building Award Our construction company, CVH Inc., received the NAHB National Green Building Project of the Year, Single Family - Concept/Research Award at the Green Building Awards Ceremony and Dinner in Dallas, Texas on May 8th. This awards program is an annual event, showcasing the most advanced and innovative Green Building projects across the nation. The Awards Dinner and Gala is the kick-off event for the National Green Building Conference, which ran May 8th through 10th. We hope you were able to attend this years National Green Building Conference. We learn of new products and techniques every time we attend, and this year was certainly no exception! ZEP wins Built Green® Washington Award! On March 5th, 2009, CVH Inc. was presented with the Built Green® Washington "Net Zero Energy Home of the Year" award for the S-1 plan, designed by Zero-Energy Plans LLC. The awards presentation was made at the kick-off dinner for the regional MBAKS Built Green® Conference in Bellevue, Washington. In attendance were top Green Builders from around the region, including our founder, Ted L. Clifton, his business partner David Wallace, and this years top EVHA award winner Scott Bergford, of Scott Homes, Olympia Washington, who also took home the Built Green® Washington Small Home of the Year Award. Congratulations, Scott! Two ZEP homes featured in Built Green® Washington Video A new instructional video titled "Built Green 101" has been posted on YouTube by Built Green® Washington. The video is about thirty minutes long all together, which requires it to be posted in several segments, due to the YouTube restrictions of ten minutes per video. The video was narrated on the front porch of the YF-1 home, with several shots from within the home demonstrating various Built Green® features. One of the segments features ZEP Designer Ted L. Clifton and one of his happy customers, extolling the virtues of his near-zero-energy home, the S-1 home. You can access all of these segments at http://www.builtgreenwashington.org/142/built-green-101-videos.htmlOur YF-1 home was recently certified as five-star Built Green®, with a HERS rating of 41, without the use of PV or other power generating means. What have others been saying about our Zero-EnergyPlans.com web site and plans? Please send in your comments using our "Contact Us" page! "LOVE your plans and will select one for purchase! We would love to SHOW CASE your plan here in Oregon with our Solar and Wind System attached!!" from Sherry in Oregon "Your homes are beautiful! ...Your information helps VERY much, thank you." from Mary in Ohio. "I appreciate all your expertise and guidance." from Les in Washington. "Thanks for all the help with the plans... I think this house is just what we need" from Doreen in Connecticut. "Thanks for the quick reply, the house looks very nice inside." from Russ & Kathy in Washington. "Your floor plans are great!" from Heidie in Idaho We appreciate all your positive comments, please keep them coming! ZEP Wins Gold At 2009 Energy Value Housing Awards! On Monday, January 19th at a Gala Award Presentation, we were presented with the Gold Award in the Custom Home, Moderate Climate, 2009 Energy Value in Housing Award. This presigious award is co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the NAHB Research Center. The EVHA Awards recognize the top designers and builders of energy efficient homes in the United States of America. Receiving this prestigious award clearly sets Zero-Energy Plans, LLC apart as being among the elite designers and builders of energy efficient homes. The home that won this award is no different than any of the other homes on this site. The same attention to detail, the same construction techniques, and the same material selections have been used as effectively in all of our home designs.
What is the Payback Period for a Zero-energy Home? We have just completed a study of home costs, resale values, and energy savings, comparing a code-built home to a near Zero-Energy Home. Our study shows that in just one year, the near Zero-Energy home will provide a return on investment of almost 1% of the original purchase price, over and above financing costs. All of the additional Energy Saving and Generating features would be completely paid for in less than 14 years, even though they have a productive life span of at least twenty-five years! Over the life of a thirty-year mortgage, the owner of a near Zero-Energy Home would pocket an extra $86,000 on a home that he would have purchased for $300,000 as a code-built home, but elected to spend about $40,000 more (including 3KW P.V. panels) on the specific energy features our home plans include! This is over and above the re-couping of the original $40,000 investment! Our study concludes that a Zero-Energy Home will pay for itself from day one! We are nearly finished building a spreadsheet that will allow you to calculate the costs and savings of using each of our plan sets to create your own True Zero-Energy Home, vs a home of similar size and design built to code. Watch our zero-energyplans.com website for this free download! The new federal tax credits for solar power and ground source heat pumps make it even more attractive to go true zero-energy!
ZEP Wins Local Project of the Year Honors At the June 16th SICBA General Membership Dinner, another of the plans on the Zero-EnergyPlans website was awarded Project of the Year honors. The S-1 plan was given the Project of the Year for Residential projects under 2,000 s/f in recognition of it's oustanding energy performance and timeless design. This plan now joins our R-1, Comm-1, D-1, B-1, and SD-1 plans as Project of the Year Award Winners!
Three new plans have been added to our Web Site on 12/10/08. We have had a number of inquiries for both larger, and smaller plans than we have previously offered, and the CL-1 and RC-1 plans should fit that bill nicely! The new C-5 plan is right down the middle. I think you will like all three of these new offerings. We also are continuing to develop more Artic Versions of our plans, popular in Alaska and Canada, even in the upper mid-west. They cost very little more to build, and can pay off the additional construction cost very quickly!
National Association of Home Builders Green Building Conference Our Chief Designer, Ted L. Clifton presented a seminar on the High Performance Energy Remodel at this years National Green Building Conference. The Conference, held this year at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas ran from Friday, May 8th, through Sunday May 10th. Ted's seminar was the only packed house at this years conference. Ted described techniques he has used to upgrade typical homes of the '60s or '70, that currently use up to 300% of the energy of todays homes. The end products of these High Performance energy Remodels are expected to use less than 50% of the energy of today's code-built home. This seminar will be available as an audio tape through the National Association Of Home Builders. Ted will be available as a guest speaker to present this 1.5 hour program to builders, remodelers and designers groups for a nominal fee. Please hit the CONTACT US button above, to request dates and times. The program has been approved for 1 AIA clock-hour.
Closed Crawl Spaces? You Bet! Many of our customers from hot climate and mountainous areas have asked about using Crawl Space Foundations with our plans. This will work fine with most of our plans, but you should almost always use a Closed Crawl Space, not a traditional Vented Crawl Space. By using the ZEP Closed Crawl Space Calculator you will be able to calculate the amount of insulation needed to result in a dry, clean crawl space, saving you energy and money. The second section of the calculator helps you estimate the additional cost of creating the Closed Crawl Space, and allows you to estimate the Payback Period! This interesting tool is not designed to calculate the exact dollar amount you will save, as that will change radically from location to location, depending on your specific weather conditions. Relative humidity is a very complex issue, so at best the ZEP Closed Crawl Space Calculator will help you get close to the design values you will need. What we do know for sure is that it has worked for us in Western Washington for almost fifteen years!
Commercial Builders Council Appointment On January 21st 2009, our chief designer, Ted L. Clifton was named Commercial Builders Council Liaison to the Remodelers Council Green Building Committee of the National Association of Home Builders. This appointment recognizes Ted's knowledge and commitment to Green Building techniques and methods, both in New Construction and in Remodels.
S-1 Gets Powered Up! On June 12th of 2008, the PV panels were activated on the roof of the Zero-Energy Plans Garage-2, supplying electrical power to the S-1 home. We will be monitoring the electrical production throughout the next year, our models show that the electricity produced should more than offset the electricity used by this home, making it a true Zero-Energy home. Even without the PV panels installed, the S-1 home only used about $79 worth of electricity in it's first full winter month of operation. Note that this is an all-electric house, so this includes heat, hot water, appliance loads, and lighting loads. Very cool! The March and April bills were only $56 and $47. Our current computer model shows that this house will return a several hundred dollar check to the owners each year from the Power Company! The S-1 Home just received a HERS Index Rating of 32! This is one of the lowest ratings we have ever even heard of for a full-sized family home! The lower the rating, the more efficient the home. We have also received a five-star Built Green® certification, the first home certified to the five-star level in our area. The S-1 home was selected by Built Green® Washington as the 2008 Net Zero-Energy Home of the Year. An awards celebration was held on March 5th in Bellevue, WA. What is a HERS Index Rating? The Home Energy Rating System (HERS) is a system designed by the US Department of Energy using highly specialized software to model the Energy Efficiency of a home. The more efficient the home, the lower it's number on the HERS Index. A true Zero-Energy Home would rate Zero. The average existing home today rates about 130, and today's code minimum home rates about 100. All of our homes rate less than 50, (without PV, or other power generating equipment) which means that they will each use less than 50% of the energy of a code-built home. The HERS rating system uses a very sophisticated software program called Rem-Rate. This program analyzes the insulation levels in each of the walls, floor, and roof. It takes into account the energy efficiency of the windows and doors, how well the home is air-sealed, and finally what heating and cooling equipment, appliances, and lighting systems are used in the home. The program can then determine how much energy will be required to supply the home under average use per year. Energy production equipment is then taken into consideration, such as solar photo voltaic panels, or wind generators, to come up with the final number for the house. It is our goal to take the HERS number far enough below zero that the home can produce enough energy to offset the energy used to build, and then finally to recycle the home at the end of it's life-cycle. If we can also power the transportation systems used by the occupants, we will have really accomplished something important!
New ZEP Partner Company Bellingham, WA custom home builder TC Legend Homes is now offering their customers the full line of Zero-EnergyPlans.com home plans. They feel that this is the most comprehensive way to assure that they are offering their customers the latest and best in energy efficient homes. For more information on TC Legend Homes, go to www.tclegendhomes.com. The RC-1 plan was supplied to our site by TC Legend Homes, we are expecting more good plans to come from this very well qualified design/build firm. New Partners recognized on Web Site You will notice a new pull-down menu on the Home Page tool bar titled More Plans. Over the last year, we have built relationships with several other designers of Energy Efficient Homes. One such Designer is Jim Chauncy of Sunterra Home Design in Bend, Oregon. We proudly offer you the link to his web site through our own. We have reviewed his plans and his credentials, and are confident that you will get the real deal from Sunterra Home designs. Jim has won Two EVHA awards in his career! Green Building for Building Professionals Class Schedule: (all classes run from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM both days) Building Industry Association of Clark County, Vancouver, WA; January 28th & 29th, 2010 Skagit-Island Counties Builders Association, Burlington, WA; February 18th & 19th, 2010 Olympia Master Builders Association, Olympia, WA; March 11th & 12th, 2010 Lower Columbia Contractors Association, Longview, WA; September 16th & 17th, 2010 Building Industry Association of Clark County, Vancouver, WA; November 11th & 12th, 2010 Building Codes & Standards Class Schedule: Two classes completed in 2009, none yet scheduled for 2010 |
