New Subdivision Homes Built with Solar Power Included
July 29th, 2010 by KenricI saw this on USA Today. Lyon’s Gate, located in Gilbert, Arizona, is building green homes. These homes come with solar power installed. It says that the ECHO solar electric/thermal system produces up to 10,000 kWh energy offset annually, which is pretty much inline with my calculations.
I think a good rule of thumb for AZ is that a 1kW system produces 1,000kWh a year. Also a 200amp home’s max. power output is 10,000kWh.
Using this you can easily ballpark any system you want.
Although the website doesn’t say, the USAtoday article said that this home had 9 inch exterior walls. I assume that this means that they are using 2×6 instead of 2×4′s, which Hacienda homes already does. It would be nice if they used 2×10′s, but I bet they included the drywall and stucco into the wall thickness calculation.
http://www.meritagehomes.com/builder/section/284-Lyon-s-Gate
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/07/builder-homes-produce-energy/1
Posted in Green Home | 2 Comments »
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The East Valley Tribune article says a demonstration wall section is set up in the model home. Might be worth a drive out there to look at it.
They are using spray foam insulation, which is much more efficient than the fiberglass wall batts and the shredded cellulose that you see in a lot of attics in Phoenix. The closed cell version of the spray foam allows very little heat transfer and the spray foam effectively eliminates gaps. The walls are probably 2 x 6 with styrofoam cladding and the chicken wire/stucco on the outside of that. They probably count the thickness of the sheetrock to get to 9 inches.
Last time I checked, Hacienda was no longer actively building. I didn’t like most of their floor plans, but they built a good quality, energy efficient product.
Arizona has some VERY attractive incentives to add solar. All the progressive early adopters here in California used up the better tiers of the PG&E rebates. I compared my house here with the most similar rental property in Arizona using the Solar City website. The net price was less than half in Arizona. If I lived there full time, I would definitely consider a solar system.
By Another Investor on Jul 29, 2010
My brother-in-law was looking at these last weekend and almost bought one. The demo home was cool to walk through. I didn’t notice if it was 2 x 6 or 2 x 4 though. The builder did advertise that buying one of these homes qualified you for a tax credit of about $6,000. Of course, you probably have to close escrow this year in order to get that before the tax credit expires.
By Shaun on Jul 30, 2010