Brandon Weiss, co-founder and chief innovation officer of a modular home development company, and project partner Gary Hohbach walk through the Transcend prototype home built in Lake City with Green Builder Media. They detail the home's ground-source heat pumps, radiant ceiling panels, light-gauge steel foundation, airtight envelope, and energy recovery ventilation.
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Brandon Weiss: Brandon Weiss, co-founder and chief innovation officer for dual developer Modular Home company that's focused on creating a healthier, more sustainable, intelligent future by advancing the home experience for you and our planet. And we're here in beautiful Lake City on the banks of the Lake Fork River, here at a partnership with Green Builder Media Home. It's the transcend prototype home, really showcase home that we're building.
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Brandon Weiss: And we're starting here with the Foundation system. So in terms of comfort as well as energy reduction, this house will have ceiling panels that have a child or heated liquid that flows through them. And that'll heat and cool the home. And we're doing that through ground source heat pumps. And it's a complete hydraulic system. So it's really going to maximize occupant comfort making sure temperatures are consistent through the building be a really efficient way to heat and cool the home, as well as be able to provide a domestic hot water off of that same system.
00:00:56:10 - 00:01:24:15
Brandon Weiss: So one system is able to produce, you know, would typically replace your hot water heater and your furnace or whatever you're using for heating and cooling. These days, we can replace with one system that will maximize the comfort, maximize the efficiency, and be a pretty innovative approach that we're doing. We're taking some European products that are in the US market yet, and testing when this prototype with a partner in that and looking to see if that is going to be a scalable solution for them in the US market as well as ourselves.
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Brandon Weiss: So it's great to test that on a home in this area and the climate that does have some big swings. It was 37 degrees this afternoon and right now it's 83 degrees. So big swings in one day, which will really test the system. Well.
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Gary Hohbach: On this particular project we're implementing a lot of new technologies. So first of all, one of the most interesting thing to me is that we're using geothermal heat pump system that's regulating the heat and allowing us to have an extremely efficient building. We're using radiant ceiling panels that are going to be able to heat and cool the building from the ceiling, and we are using the light gauge steel foundation system for the first time.
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Gary Hohbach: This is the prototype for this system.
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Brandon Weiss: You know, again, we've paid attention to all the materials that go into the home. So there's not a lot of emitting products within it in terms of off gassing. But then just we also build an airtight structure as well. So our homes are airtight. So in doing that, we're controlling the fresh air coming into the house and the exhaust air going out of the house.
00:02:24:22 - 00:02:52:08
Brandon Weiss: That's going through an energy recovery ventilator that's changing that energy. So we're not just blowing in unconditioned air, blowing out conditioned air that we've paid to heat or cool, that's bypassing through a membrane and allowing fresh air to occur throughout the home. So we're dumping fresh air to all the bedrooms, to all the living spaces, and then exhausting air out of the kitchen, bathroom, laundry at the same time, any incoming air is being prefigured and then filtered again in the system itself.
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Brandon Weiss: And then the exhaust side. When it's coming back to the air, V is being filtered as well. So there's multiple points of filtration through the system and then air quality two. That's another benefit of the radiant system is that there's not these forced air ducts that are massive. The the there are ducts. Yes for the ventilation system. But those are always moving air.
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Brandon Weiss: So there's really never a chance for dust to settle within those ducts. And now that we don't have large ducts for heating and cooling, we're doing all that through radiant. There's no place for dust to hide within a heating and cooling system as well. So that's going to really optimize the levels of particulate matter in the home.
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Gary Hohbach: So we are rolling out all these new technologies on this project, which makes it a really exciting one. And we're excited to do more and more of these in the future.