Construction of this house began on May 22, 2006 and is scheduled to be occupied by March, 2007.  The house incorporates technologies to reduce heating, cooling and maintenance costs.  As a result, the house will have operational costs that significantly below those of a typical new home.  Among the technologies being incorporated are

    * Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF).  The entire house is built out of Nudura brand ICF concrete filled foam blocks.  These have 12.6cm of expanded polystyrene which yields an R value of 22.4 for the finished walls.  The finished walls above grade are 9" thick with 4" of concrete.  The basement walls are 11" thick with 6" of concrete.

    * Ground Loop Heat Pump (Geothermal Heat Pump).  This system uses a four ton capacity Waterfurnace Synergy3 geothermal heat pump with three 150’ deep vertical.  The system uses a fluid to fluid heat exchanger to generate hot water to heat the first and second floors through a radiant sub-floor system.  The heat pump also generates hot water to heat the basement slab through embedded tubing.  A fluid to air heat exchanger also generates hot and cold air via ducting to the whole house.  The system will provides year-round supplemental heat for potable hot water, which alleviates the need for conventional water heating.

   * Radiant Heat - an integrated sub-floor with radiant heating panel system (Warmboard) is being used to heat the first & second floors.  The system replaces conventional sub-floor, radiant heating pans and can increase the heating efficiency of the house by as much as 30%.   

    * Energy-efficient Plumbing. The house utilizes flexible PEX (cross-linked polyethylene) tubing for potable water plumbing.  These tubes are run off of a central distribution manifold and every fixture in the house has a dedicated line back to the manifold.  In addition to reducing the loss of heat through conduction compared to copper, these lines are sized down to the level of the fixture they supply, rather than having to provide enough capacity for numerous fixtures.  This reduces the quantity of less-than-hot water that must be flushed through a line before the water reaches the desired temperature.