Your home can reflect your style and your family, but it can also reflect your values. Building for a sustainable future can also focus on comfort and energy savings.
Addison Homes won the 2023 Bridge Award for Green Building (Custom Builder) for a Lake Keowee home that incorporates readily available materials and methods as well as a variety of high-performance products and practices to achieve a sustainable home – or as Todd Usher, Founder of Addison Homes, says, “a high-performance home.”
“It really all starts with following the best practices that building science tells us work and building a better home,” he says. “That really starts with the building envelope, the insulated shell of the home and making sure it’s extremely well insulated and extremely well airtight. This allows us to do a few things. First, if it’s air-tight and well insulated, we won’t lose or gain much heat through that insulated shell. And then it allows us to control the interior environment, so we can make it very comfortable.”
In addition to controlling heat transfer, Usher says a well-insulated, air-sealed building envelope allows for much easier control of indoor air quality.
“When we build this well-insulated, airtight structure, we use very good windows – because that becomes a weak link in this structure – so we can provide the occupants with an incredible level of comfort, an incredible level of efficiency in terms of energy use, and also an incredible level of indoor air quality that results in health.”
The lake house is built on a sloped lot, which allows for a basement. The homeowners also wanted a master bedroom on the main level, as well as a few additional options that would allow them to stay in the home for years to come, such as space for a future elevator and at least a step-free entry. . Construction methods such as precast and insulated walls for the basement, advanced framing upstairs that allows for additional insulation, and foam board cladding of the home increase the comfort level and make the home quieter.
Features include LED lighting, carpeting made from recyclable nylon, and a hot water recirculation system with a smart logic controller that “learns” occupants’ hot water usage patterns and circulates the hot water through the recirculation loop during working hours. of the day owners are most likely to need it.
Usher said green homes are sometimes equated with gloomy, windowless environments, but nothing could be further from the truth.
“We actually strategically placed some skylights on the back roof of the house that descended into a large vaulted room and flooded the main living area with natural light, which is really, really nice,” he said. “And, of course, there’s a lot of glass in the back, looking out over the lake.”
Find out more at addison-homes. with.
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This article originally appeared on Upstate Parent: Towards green: sustainable construction prioritizes style and comfort
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