Thrive Home Builders' Bill Rectanus and Gene Myers introduce the Green Builder Vision Home at the Saunders community, a 55-plus ranch-style neighborhood near Fort Collins. They explain how advanced framing, deep heel trusses, standard solar, heat pump heating and cooling, and a purchased offset for the home's 138 metric tons of embodied carbon are meant to produce a carbon neutral production-built home.
00:00:04:10 - 00:00:24:02
Bill Rectanus: One of the unique features here at the Saunders community is the fact that this is a 55 plus active, adult targeted community. This is something new for thrive homebuilders we haven't done a lot of. It's also something that's not very readily available as far as new construction in the Fort Collins area. So we're very excited to bring a series of ranch style living plans to the community.
00:00:24:07 - 00:00:43:27
Gene Myers: Saunders was conceived by the developer to really meet a need for our aging population. What could we do in the way of home design and neighborhood design to be able to keep people in their homes longer?
00:00:43:29 - 00:00:58:11
Bill Rectanus: So we're partnering with Green Builder Media on a vision home. This vision home is designed to really showcase the energy efficiency, health, and carbon reduction strategies that we put into many of our homes and that we're really focused on here at the Saunders community.
00:00:58:13 - 00:01:20:09
Gene Myers: We'll be doing our first carbon neutral house here as the Green Builder Vision home. And we've already done the carbon calculations and we're working on an offset. And so this is really what we plan to do going forward. Our goal is to be a carbon neutral production builder by the end of next year.
00:01:20:11 - 00:01:46:04
Bill Rectanus: That's right. Home builders. We're really focused on sustainability, energy efficiency and health in all the homes that we build. This Saunders community is no different. We'll be partnering with EPA and certifying all these homes under the EPA Indoor Air Plus program, provide a healthy, safe living environment for our buyers. In addition to each home will be certified under the Doe Zero and Ready Home program, which means that these homes are ready to go to Zero Energy.
00:01:46:04 - 00:02:07:10
Bill Rectanus: Because we've done all the difficult things, all the stuff behind the walls that needs to happen to get us there. In addition, we'll be putting solar on a standard and putting other unique energy efficiency components into the home, like heat pump heating and cooling. These things combined really help reduce our carbon footprint and provide exemplary energy efficiency to our consumers.
00:02:07:12 - 00:02:29:23
Bill Rectanus: Some other unique energy efficiency features we put into the home our framing package. And in a lot of homes, you you think that more framing is better, but that's actually the opposite. You can really minimize the amount of lumber that you put into a home and thereby maximize the amount of insulation. We've really focused on that here with 24 inch on center framing, right sized headers.
00:02:29:23 - 00:02:53:24
Bill Rectanus: So we get some additional insulation behind them, open corners, deep heel trusses so that we get full insulation in the attic all the way to the outside wall. These are some of the tricks that we use to really reduce the energy consumption in the home, and maximize the amount that the solar on the roof can offset. So here at Saunders, we're not only looking at operational carbon, but we're also looking at embodied carbon.
00:02:53:24 - 00:03:02:12
Bill Rectanus: Embodied carbon is the carbon that's in each and every component that goes in to the home as it's being built and used.
00:03:02:14 - 00:03:22:19
Gene Myers: For our vision home, we calculated the number of parts in that home and it's over 19,000 parts. So accounting for all of those has been challenging. But we've completed that exercise. That home has 138 metric tons of carbon and will be purchasing an offset for that.
00:03:22:21 - 00:03:34:18
Bill Rectanus: That's what we're going to be doing on the Vision home with Green Builder Media. And we're really excited to potentially build the first fully zero carbon operationally and embodied carbon home in the country.