case studies
The owners found their dream home site with a 1977 ranch house sitting squarely in the middle. ROBIN CAPE PHOTOS
Ranch Remodel Transforming a Typical 1970s Home into a High-Efficiency Homestead BY ROBIN CAPE t has always appealed to me to live in a home that uses fewer resources than average. My first home was a salvaged 1800s log cabin rescued from the kudzu in the woods above Durham, N.C. It was fitted with four solar panels, six deep-cell batteries, solar hot water, a composting toilet, a gas refrigerator and cook stove, and a wood stove for heat. Thanks to the tax incentives available at the time, I was able to enter the world of alternative energy for just a few thousand dollars. Using simple solar tools, we managed our daily energy use with the forecasted sun. On the evenings of the days when I had driven to my part-time job 25 miles away, I would plug my house into our small truck to supplement our energy, rinsing and wringing out the laundry after it had rolled around in the sudsy tub in the bed of the truck and hanging it to dry on the line out back.
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It was 28 years later in an Asheville subdivision where my husband and I found our dream home site with a 1977 ranch house sitting squarely in the middle. Close to town and our work, with lots of sun, we had faith we could transform this version of the standard American home into a lowenergy, high-performance homestead for our family. The house needed remodeling to meet our needs so we made our plans and then took it down to the studs, moving walls to accommodate a larger kitchen and master bedroom and bath, and converting a bedroom to our shared office. The first step was to address the building envelope. As students of sustainability, we had learned that as much as 40 percent of a home’s heating and cooling loads can be reduced by improving the walls, windows and insulative values of the home. Our choice of a higher efficiency fiberglass window
increased our overall envelope performance while also allowing us to open the interior to more light and views. After moving walls around, we removed the paneling to replace it with sheetrock. In the process, we realized that the original fiberglass insulation was not filling the wall cavities completely, gapping at the top and bottom, and not offering a complete insulative barrier. We decided to replace all the old fiberglass insulation in the walls and ceiling (offering it to another home remodeler for reuse) with a whole-home foam insulation system. Over time, we discovered that a spray-foam system could contribute to increased moisture in attic spaces and so we made the decision to install a dehumidifier in the attic as a preventative measure. The appliances we purchased were ENERGY STAR ® certified and have proved to be good stewards of our electrical usage.
Solar and electric Our new home was perfectly situated with a large south-facing roof over the two-story garage that served as the perfect site for new solar panels. In 2012, we installed 27 solar panels, initially leaving enough roof space for a solar hot water system. Through an energy
evaluation, we were advised that more photovoltaic (PV) panels and a heat pump water heater would be a better option for us. In 2019, we added six new PV panels to that roof space and supplemented the whole system with two batteries to provide us with backup security in case of power outages. Our home is at the end of an electrical distribution line and we were often the last folks to be serviced if the power goes out. A solar monitoring system ties it all together and allows us to watch how the system performs, as well as to know when the power is off because frankly we hardly notice when it is. A secondary electric panel, dedicated to the primary circuits that we want supported by the batteries, offers us a core stability when the main grid is down. On average, we export more energy to the grid than we use. The bulk of our usage comes from the nighttime hours when we charge our electric car. We are now researching smart-home energy monitors to help us see in real time where our main usage is so we can make informed decisions on any future upgrades. That same solar orientation baked the front rooms of our home in the summer and made the front porch virtually impossible to enjoy. We designed a vaulted ceiling porch to be built across the front, shading our living room and office during the hot summer days without blocking the light in the winter. We used sustainably harvested ipe wood for the deck, ceiling fans to help move the air, and added a secondary, unroofed deck for night star gazing and great plant growing. Overlooking our front gardens, this restful space has become a favorite spot for us to entertain, work and relax, rain or shine. When the aging HVAC system needed replacement, we chose a geothermal heating system as a replacement. By leveraging geothermal energy, we benefit from a base exchange temperature much closer to the desired indoor temperature than can be achieved with a traditional heat exchange system that uses outdoor air. This system utilized the existing ducts in our home, adding two 250-foot deep wells to provide the approximate 59-degree temperature that is common in the ground around Asheville. For redundancy, we installed a woodstove in the downstairs util-
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