We are just a week away from the GreenBuild open house and Envinity has been hard at work to add all of the finishing touches before their debut! The team has been installing the Energy Star appliances, the Heat Pump Water Heater, the natural wood trim, and all of the other final details that make these homes both beautiful and high performing.
This past weekend, EEHR provided two tours for Penn State students and alumni, we even had several alumni tour that were part of the 2015 Race to Zero student design competition and actually had a hand in designing the homes! Over the past couple weeks, Envinity has been hard at work finishing the homes. The exterior is nearly finished and casework has been installed on the inside. In less than a month, the homes should be finished for the Ribbon Cutting ceremony!
Envinity is finishing installation of the interior drywall. Sadly, this means that some of the coolest features of the homes are now hidden, but this takes us a giant step closer to finishing the homes. Much of the work over the next six weeks will be installing the final ‘living’ features of the homes such as installing kitchen casework, countertops, and appliances, installing bathroom fixtures and lights, and finally painting and cleaning. All of this will be finished for the GreenBuild open house weekend on May 19 & 20th!
Over the past several weeks, Envinity has been installing the siding to the North home of the GreenBuild Duplex. Siding is one of the most important elements for a high-performance home. The home cladding layer is the first line of defense against the outside elements; it needs to keep out rain water, protect the other control layers from harmful UV rays, it needs to be able to dry so that water doesn’t collect behind the cladding, and it needs to look good! For the GreenBuild Duplex, Envinity chose to use two different lap-profile vinyl sidings. Vinyl siding, a petroleum-based product, may not come to mind as one of the most sustainable choices for a high-performance home. This siding was chosen for a few reasons, the profile of the siding allows for a small air-gap between the siding and the sheathing so that the siding can dry without the need for installing a rain screen gap. The siding is also affordable and durable so we know that the siding will provide the protection needed throughout the lifetime of the home with minimal maintenance. Finally, the siding chosen for this project has a high recycled content, so fewer virgin materials were used to create the siding compared to other, cheaper options.
This week was the 4th Residential Building Design & Construction Conference put on by the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center in the Penn State College of Engineering. The two-day conference brought in academics and professionals from across the country an the world to present work and research about residential design, construction, energy-efficiency, affordability, and more. During the last day of the tour, Chris Hazel (of EEHR) and Sarah Klinetob Lowe (of PHRC) along with Scott Wing and members of the Envinity design and construction team, conducted a tour of the GreenBuild site and homes to several of the conference attendees so that they could experience the homes and learn more about the process of designing affordable, high-performance homes and take those ideas back to their own institutions!