A New Leesburg Home In Sync with the Environment

A New Leesburg Home In Sync with the Environment

By Joe Motheral

Rene Dennis has an architectural degree from Virginia Tech and has applied his experience and training to design and build a house for his family with features that complement its environment. He’s constructing it with lumber from dead ash and oak trees at his Sage Hill Farm in Leesburg.

Rene Dennis and his wife, Sherry, in front of their environmental friendly house.

Photo by Joe Motheral

Dennis said the house uses what he described as “energy inertia,’’ meaning that, “when my house is heated up by the sun, the masonry in the walls absorbs the heat and slowly releases the heat when the temperature drops. Insulation on the outside of the masonry walls traps the energy inside the house, the masonry absorbs the heat during the summer keeping the house at a comfortable temperature all year round.”

The front of the house has an overhang that faces south and is calculated to naturally control the amount of sunlight coming in, depending on the time of year.

“In the summer, there is little direct sun coming inside,” he said. “In the winter, the sunlight enters.” Dennis said the morning sun will wake the household up. “In the summer the sun moves fast overhead, in the winter the sunlight lingers. Most of the sunlight comes into the house from the large amount of south facing glass. The sunroom on the south side of the house can be easily opened and closed with a large sliding door for further climate control.”

Dominion Energy will supply electricity for the lighting, geothermal heating and cooling, and computers. But the electric usage will be low, and with the southern orientation of the house, solar panels could be easily installed once he believes it’s financially worthwhile.

“In addition, the house is heated with a 6,000-pound masonry stove. In the winter it produces heat from the wood that is bountiful where I live and is considered to be ‘carbon neutral’”

Sitting inside the partly constructed house recently on a 90-degree day, it was noticeably cooler.

The house also will be supplied with ground temperature apparatus.

“A heat pump connected to a 2,500-foot underground pipe will use ground temperature,” he said. “At a depth of six feet, it has a constant of about 50 degrees.”

He explained that the underground pipe circulates a liquid that either gathers or releases heat. The liquid is compressed to extract or in reverse expanded to absorb heat; coils are either heated or cooled and a fan blows the heat or cool into ducts to distribute the temperature in the house.

The entire front of the house will be a greenhouse with tropical plants, the better to lessen carbon dioxide and “we’ll have more oxygen in the house besides looking great.”

The house has been painted in yellow and green color, a nod to his Norwegian ancestry. He estimated the cost to be in the $300,000 range, and hopes to move in this coming winter.

“The color configuration is typical of a village in Norway,” he said. “It fits the ambiance of the surroundings. Yellow and green reflect where we are surrounded by pasture.”

Rene, his wife Sherry and their children have lived for years in an older house he laughingly described as a “hovel.”

The same will not be said about the new one.