Boston Magazine has just finished its Design Home 2014 and we were thrilled to see Coastal Windows & Exteriors contributed to making the house 100 percent energy efficient.
The Zero-Energy home features 24 of Coastal Windows & Exteriors’ Preservation casement windows that contribute to the energy efficiency of this new home by retaining the sun’s warmth. The new Design Home was completed last month and was open for house tours to benefit Children’s Hospital.
The Zero-Energy home was designed by BrightBuilt Home, the firm created by Kaplan Thompson Architects, with the goal of providing more beautiful, healthy and low-energy homes for the American homebuyer. Zero-Energy homes are structures with zero net energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is roughly equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site. In order to have a Net-Zero home, the home design must be high-performance with regard to energy efficiency with an average of 30 percent less than today’s typical new stick built homes and require 50 percent less energy to operate. These plans are capable of affordably achieving this goal in residential design thus netting zero energy annually.
In order to meet these guidelines and deliver windows that would support the Net-Zero standard, Coastal Windows & Exteriors needed to create a glass package and window unit that would work together to achieve net-zero status. (A standard glass package, even a superior one like Preservation windows that won Energy Star Partner of the Year, needed to be reconstructed to meet these high benchmarks). Coastal Windows & Exteriors met with Preservation’s engineers to come up with an exclusive first-class glass package to WOW the BrightBuilt Homes architects.
The Design Home is located at 39 True Road, Salisbury, Massachusetts. For more information on what it takes to create a Net-Zero Energy home or to view the Design Home, visit www.bostonmagazine.com/designhome.
