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All this beauty and brains, too: The 2006 New American Home qualifies as an Energy Star home. Photo by James F. Wilson
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By Rich Binsacca
By all appearances, The New American Homes 2006, the premier idea home built in conjunction with the 2006 International Builders’ Show, is simply a showpiece of the latest and greatest building products. At nearly 7,000 square feet under roof and another 1,000-plus among covered outdoor areas and with a target market of semi-retired seasonal owners, the home presents an obvious opulence.
But its good looks can be deceiving—or at least suggest inaccurate frivolity. Behind the walls and built into almost every system, product and finish of The New American Home 2006 is a thoughtful and concerted commitment to resource efficiency, energy savings and durability. Employing tankless water heaters, high-performance (and impact-resistant) windows and doors, certified sustainable wood flooring and low-VOC paints—among a long list of other "green" features—the house earned certification from the Florida Green Building Coalition and qualifies under federal Energy Star standards.
At every turn, there’s an example of how the house marries modern convenience with environmental consciousness. "This house proves that opulence doesn’t have to be abusive," says builder Alex Hannigan. Working with W.C.I. Architecture and Land Planning in Sunrise, Fla., a design firm known for its commitment to achieving resource efficiency, and under the guidance of the IBACOS consortium of the federal Building America Program, The New American Home design-build team took advantage of every opportunity to lessen the impact of the home’s considerable footprint without sacrificing its marketability.
Case in point: Set on a 159-foot-wide lakeside lot, the house runs long and narrow to maximize a spectacular rear view of the water; nearly every room on both floors looks out to the lake. But keeping the floor plan narrow also helped keep the inside cool, as operable windows and doors across from each other enable passive cooling that lessens the burden on the mechanical equipment and lighting scheme.
Dedicated to four-sided architecture, the house presents an interesting and attractive elevation from any approach. Mixing stucco and clapboard siding with a shake roof and colorful accent tiles, large lighting fixtures, and copper gutters and downspouts, the exterior presents the look and feel of a Colonial Island mansion. But it’s an exterior designed to last much longer than its predecessors, with fiber-cement siding instead of wood; concrete roof tiles instead of wood shakes; impact-resistant windows certified to stop windborne debris; and an insulated, full-height masonry shell that blocks thermal transfer and moisture from getting into the structure.
Though it accommodates a mature family, probably with the kids visiting on school breaks or on vacation, the house is definitely designed for the adult owners. In addition to a generous master suite, in which the bath and dressing areas are separated from a sleeping pavilion by a vestibule, the house features a home office and library loft near the master suite, a spa room and home theater, wine room and stacked covered loggias—each with a complete compact kitchen.
Those spaces are served, however, with a system that not only keeps them comfortable but also conserves energy. Hidden in an insulated attic or in closets tucked back behind the rooms, the zoned mechanical systems operate in conditioned or semi-conditioned space. As such, they can run more efficiently, require less maintenance, and last longer.
The system, combined with an insulated building shell and other features (like the on-demand water-heating components), is projected to use 63 percent less energy for heating and cooling and 40 percent less energy for water heating. Overall, The New American Home 2006 is calculated to use 39 percent less energy than a comparably sized house built to conventional International Residential Code (or I-code) energy standards—proving its beauty is certainly not just skin deep.
For more information about The New American Home 2006, go to
www.buildersshow.com/Events/NewAmericanHome.aspx.
Rich Binsacca is a freelance writer in Boise, Idaho.
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