When Pat DeLeo, a retired vice dean at Boston College, and her husband, Richard Jenson, a retired mathematics professor who taught at the school, were ready to downsize their four-bedroom Massachusetts home, they were drawn to the concept of building very sustainably.
“It was the right thing to do at the time in 2015 when we started planning our retirement home, and the right thing to do now as we see more evidence of the impact of climate change,” says Ms DeLeeuw. , 71. “It’s a bigger challenge to build a home that is both aesthetically pleasing and can accommodate a set of solar panels, but the home turned out to be much nicer and warmer than expected.”
On a recent winter’s day, the house of DeLeeuw-Jenson was called Rivendell after J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth Elven village in the Lord of the Rings , Surrounded by a foot of snow covering the hillsides of Harvard University, Massachusetts, About 25 miles from Boston.
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“We have floor-to-ceiling walls of triple-glazed windows that let sunlight in and one foot thick walls for insulation,” says Ms. Delio. “The sun warms the Italian porcelain tile floor, making the home warm and inviting even in the heat of a New England winter.”
The DeLeeuw-Jenson home is a “net-zero” home, meaning it produces as much energy through renewable sources as it consumes, says Paul Lukez, director of Paul Lukez Architecture in Somerville, Massachusetts, a Rivendell architect. To achieve a net zero condition, the home must be designed for the benefits of passive solar energy, extremely well insulated, and include highly energy efficient appliances and systems.
“The science of building has improved a lot and it doesn’t take much to reduce 20% to 40% of a home’s energy consumption,” says Mr. Lukez. “Rivendell goes further and really produces more energy than it uses.”
The Home Energy Rating System, or HERS, a nationally recognized energy rating system, uses 100 as the baseline for a standard newly built home. A home with a score of 50 uses 50% less energy than a standard new home, and a home with a score of zero qualifies as a zero-rated home that produces the same amount of energy as it does. The Rivendell has a HERS score of less than 23, which means it generates 23% more power than it uses.
“Not everyone needs to go to the extreme level of sustainability that we did with our house, because it’s expensive to build a zero-to-nose house,” says Mr. Jenson, 74, who estimates the cost of building his home at $2.4 million, including clearing the land and setting up the structure. necessary infrastructure. However, he adds, “I think some versions of this type of building are the future of homebuilding.”
Building a yolk-free home is more difficult in areas with extreme weather, such as New England, than in places with milder weather. Ultra-sustainable homes can be designed to compliment any setting, as long as the owners have the appetite and budget to commit to eco-friendly design and construction.
Carbon neutral in California
Most newly built homes in California must have solar panels and meet net-zero standards, but MariSol Malibu’s Zero Series homes, under development by Crown Pointe Estates, are taking sustainability to a new level. Each of the four Zero Series homes will meet the stringent green building standards set by the International Institute for a Living Future for Zero Carbon Homes.
“These homes are 100% electric homes and use no fossil fuels,” says Scott Morris, director of carbon sequestration at Crown Pointe Estates at MariSol Malibu Zero Series. “All electricity comes from renewable sources, such as wind or solar, through the Clean Energy Alliance. We also used carbon reduction strategies during construction to reach minus 140 metric tons of carbon.”
This Malibu, California, home, priced at $28.5 million, is part of a series of homes that are completely free of fossil fuels, according to its developer.
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The Zero Series homes are built with sustainable timber, 30% of which is sourced from California forests. The developer has also reduced the need for recycled concrete and cement – as well as high-density recycled cellulose insulation, and an aluminum fixed seam roof made of 99% recycled content.
“We hope this project will focus attention on building technologies to reduce carbon rather than focusing primarily on solar and wind energy,” says Mr. Morris. “We see this as a case study of pushing building codes to reduce embodied carbon, because building efficiently doesn’t cost more. In fact, our concrete choice has saved money and has a significant environmental impact.”
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The focus on sustainability required no sacrifice of luxury. Zero One, a 14,429-square-foot, six-bedroom, nine-bath ranch-style home, is located on 2.48 acres and has a price tag of $28.5 million. “We assume that our buyers will be ‘environmental warriors’ who want to spend their money for a purpose behind it,” says Mr. Morris.
The house has Tesla batteries and solar panels, a basketball court, and a saltwater pool, where the team has also added ways to save energy.
In addition to its eco-friendly construction, this Malibu home features lavish amenities and a massive, modern interior.
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A sustainable country getaway in Florida
Flora and fauna surround the 42-acre “Rancho Da Florida” in Myakka, a Gulf Coast town in Manatee County, Florida, that has received Emerald certification, the highest national standard for green building.
“The house is designed for the benefits of passive solar energy, with a butterfly-shaped roof and an orientation designed to keep the house cool, along with good insulation and solar panels,” says Jerry Sparkman, director of Sweet Sparkman Architects in Sarasota, Florida. “It is modeled after historic ‘dogtrot’ Florida homes, with indoor and outdoor areas connected by breezes that allow east and west breezes to flow through the spaces like a wind tunnel and keep them comfortable even in hot weather.”
The property, which was recently listed for approximately $8 million, includes a one-story main house of approximately 3,300 square feet, including three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Built in 2019, the house overlooks the lake, pastures, horse barn, pond for livestock and farm animals including cattle, pigs, goats and chickens. The manager’s house and separate guest studio are also on the grounds.
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The 3,300-square-foot home is in Manatee County, Florida.
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“There’s more outdoor space than indoors in the main house, and it’s a contemporary interpretation of Florida architecture,” says Mr. Sparkman. “You can see through the house across the entire landscape. We installed huge motorized screens across the western exposure to control insects and to reduce the heat in the summer.”
The house was designed with floor-to-ceiling windows, with poles on the west side that are as wide as tall windows to reduce heat gain and keep the house cool, says Mr. Sparkman.
The central interior structure includes a kitchen with a 13-foot-wide island, as well as a dining and living space that opens to the outdoors, where there is an outdoor kitchen, dining and living area. A courtyard with an outdoor hot tub surrounded by locally sourced wood screens connects the main part of the house to the sleeping spaces. Floor-to-ceiling windows along corridors to bedrooms overlook gardens, lake or pasture.
“The house is oriented towards the Earth to maximize views and take advantage of the benefits of passive solar energy,” says Sparkman.
Constructed of brick and concrete, the house is durable and maintenance-free, and has solar panels, glass walls, hurricane-resistant windows and an airtight thermal envelope that results in a HERS minus 31, which means the house produces 31% more energy than it consumes.
Aerial view of Manatee County, Florida.
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Net zero in sub-zero climates
DeLeeuw-Jenson’s Massachusetts home had a balancing act of bringing in the most sunlight while protecting from the harsh cold.
“The house is designed to harness the sun’s east-west path to generate electricity and has small scale heat pumps, which is a great technology that allows you to control the temperature in different parts of the house,” says Mr. Lukez. “They have a wood stove to supplement the heat pump when it’s cold out.”
The energy-efficient home in Harvard, Massachusetts, known as Rivendell, produces more energy than it uses by incorporating one-foot-thick walls for insulation, triple-glazed windows and solar arrays.
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Mr. Jenson says they mainly use the wood stove for cosmetic purposes because heat pumps, triple-glazed windows and insulated walls keep the house warm. He says their fresh air circulation system is a “heat saver” that traps heat before sending spoiled air outside.
“We worked with solar engineers to position the house correctly, but we also orientated the house around an old stone farm wall and the unique rock formations on the land,” says Mr. Lukez. “We created balconies to see the rocks and treetops and designed the rooms to frame multi-layered views of the landscape.”
The roof’s shape was sculpted to incorporate solar panels and create a roof with a deep spur that provides shade from the summer heat while allowing the winter sun to penetrate deeper into the space to warm the house, says Mr. Lukez.
“The master bedroom faces the courtyard front to get light in the morning, and we used shards and different shapes of glass windows, especially in the corners of the house, to bring in light at different times of the day and in different seasons,” says Mr. Lukez. “The light is free, so it is important to know how to Better use it.”
This article first appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of Mansion Global Experience Luxury.