Champion Home Builders recently finished the construction of a net-zero demonstration home, reports Builder’s Jennifer Goodman.
The home is located at the Pine Tree Manufactured Home Park in Eatontown, NJ. The plan is to gather data during the next 18 months, as a way to encourage the construction of more homes that will be more efficient, sustainable and yet affordable.
Data will initially be collected for six months while the home is unoccupied. Information on energy use will continue for a year once the home has residents. Those results will then be used to help refine the design, with the goal of reducing the costs of future net-zero homes.
To reach net-zero-energy levels, the team applied an integrated design approach. It combined high insulation levels with a highly efficient heating and cooling systems, along with an innovative ductless air-moving system.
The home’s photovoltaic solar panel system allows the house to achieve net-zero-energy on an annual basis.
This project was a team effort. Participants included the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Building America Program. Support also came from the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI), the Systems Building Research Alliance (SBRA) and The Levy Partnership, Inc. (TLP).
The home is going to be one of the few to garner the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home (ZERH) designation, and the first manufactured home located in a cold climate to receive the honor.
The DOE believes the ZERH designation will symbolize a new level of home performance that’s the result of stringent requirements that will ensure high levels of comfort, durability, comfort and health.
“To reach net zero energy we need to make sure every component of the home is extremely efficient,” The Levy Partnership president – and SBRA’s – Emanuel Levy told Builder.
As manufactured home professionals know, Champion is currently the number 3 producer of HUD Code manufactured homes in the U.S.
Champion Home Builders was founded in 1953 and reports having produced over the years more than 1.7 million factory-built pre-HUD Code mobile homes, post HUD Code manufactured homes and modular homes or buildings throughout the United States, in the United Kingdom and western Canada. ##
Editor’s Note: for a related story on the DOE and their pending, controversial proposed changes for manufactured housing, please click here. ###
(Image credits, Builder/Champion, Dreamstime and MHLivingNews.com)
Submitted by Joe Dyton to the Daily Business News, MHProNews.