lakeside home sustains itself on sunlight

SDA crafts a zero-energy luxury home

The Martin House combines beauty with sustainability

Location: Charlotte, NC USA Client: Martin family Use: Private residence

Background:
Magical vistas and views surrounded the site chosen for this North Carolina family retreat.

In designing and building a home here, SDA realized the importance of the stunning views of lake and woodland, and took full advantage of the setting when orienting the house on the land.

We were also cognizant of the family's need to relax and enjoy their time in comfortable, informal surroundings. The low-maintenance solar electricity and hot water systems we installed ensure that the family will derive years of worry-free enjoyment of their home.

Special Features:

• We limited the cleared area of the home site to just 15 feet from the perimeter of the house, preserving the naturally wooded character of the site during and after construction.
• We created an open, free-plan interior, with a great room and south veranda offering an outlook down the sloping land to Lake Norman.
• We designed a master suite and home office that have sweeping views of their bass-fishing pond to the east of the house.
• We ensured that the home was sited for optimal solar orientation and shading.

• SDA designed the house to provide the tightest possible thermal envelope, since the climate in this region of North Carolina is hot and humid in the summer months, but can also bring very cold weather in the winter.
  
  

  

  Dining room and kitchen at the Martin house
  

  To create this envelope we used 'light' framing techniques, a deep wall cavity with foam insulation, exterior rigid insulation and complete air sealing.

• We specified a long-lasting, standing seam, steel roof employing a large aperture, double venting strategy, with continuous radiant barrier foil mounted below the metal roof deck.

• SDA specified that all windows be super insulated with low-e coatings and inert gas fill.

• High efficiency, commercially available appliances and compact fluorescent lighting round out the energy conservation measures in the home.

Outcome:
The family enjoys year-round comfort in their custom-designed lakeside home, with the added benefits derived from sage use of renewable technologies:

• The home fields a roof-integrated photovoltaic array, capable of both standalone and utility-interactive operation.

• The system keeps a bank of batteries fully charged, to afford uninterrupted power for critical loads during utility outages.

• A solar thermal array provides domestic hot water and a heat source for the radiant floor delivery system, backed up by a high efficiency gas fired boiler.

• In summer, a ground source heat pump uses the abundant PV-generated electricity to keep the home comfortably cool, extracting heat and humidity from the air and dumping the heat, in a closed loop, into a deep- water well on the property.

  
  The house employs passive solar and “aggressive” energy efficiency measures to reduce the basic load to about 35% of a similar-sized “conventional’ house.

  The Charlotte area is a cooling-dominated climate. Radiant barriers and passive solar cooling reduce unwanted gain. Air-conditioning, dehumidification and back-up space heating are delivered via a ground-coupled, geothermal heat pump. An air-to-air heat exchanger ensures fresh ventilation with heat / cool energy recovery.

  The Martins export their surplus solar power to the local utility as part of the North Carolina Green Power program. They receive a premium of about 200% for sharing their harvest with the community.

  
  

  
  
  Solar Design Associates designs custom all-solar residences in every geographic / climate zone.
  
  Please contact us if you are pursuing the possibility of owning an energy-efficient house powered by sustainable technology. We would be glad to discuss your project requirements with you.

  
  Read more:
  Read a complete technical case treatment of the Martin residence here (pdf file) >>>>

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