EEBA Academy

In this presentation, we’ll show how affordable home builders like United Way of Long Island, along with production, custom, and multifamily builders across the country, are building healthy, durable, energy-efficient homes that are achieving remarkably high performance and low Home Energy Rating System scores – with a program average of HERS 43 without PV and HERS 6 with PV.

Many builders are attracted to the idea of building zero energy homes. However, there is an unspoken presumption that these homes really only pencil out for custom-home money-is-no-object clients or possibly, as heavily subsidized affordable home demonstration projects. In this presentation, Kevin Brozyna shares how, despite a year marked by skyrocketing materials costs and supply chain and labor shortages, this successful production builder has managed to turn a profit while sticking to their company's high zero energy performance and quality goals. Kevin is joined by Terrence Mosley of DOE and Terri Gilbride of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who will provide an overview of the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program and share construction best practices from DOE Zero Energy Ready Home Housing Innovation Award winners in every construction category from production to custom for buyer, custom spec, multifamily, affordable, and attached.

This session will provide different examples of hot water distribution including Home Automation technologies and applications that can help support zero energy home objectives. We will be showing examples of designs and tests that have been completed over the last 15 years proving the savings of water/energy in residential and commercial buildings. We will be interviewing two Sustainable builders who have installed D’MAND KONTROLS for several years and get their view point on this and other factors to consider in building Zero Energy Homes.

High performance zero energy homes provide many benefits including cost savings, energy resiliency, durability, comfort, and sustainable operation. While these types of homes have been built for a long time, the knowledge of how to build them has historically been kept by few. Now with increasingly stringent building codes across the U.S., driven by long-term energy policy and growing demands on the energy grid, all builders and implementers need to know how to build high performance.