Digital Meets Green in Sunny Florida

Custom builder's partnership with a home automation company leads to a pair of model homes that showcase the role of technology in energy efficiency.

Source: DIGITAL HOME Online
Publication date: 2008-03-06

By David Essex

An innovative partnership in sunny south Florida aims to show how digital technology can work hand-in-glove with "green" building techniques to save energy and protect the environment. The proof: two, loaded-to-the-max model homes that are twice as efficient as typical homes.

Courtesy: Solaris Home Systems The Solaris Environment Management Automation System gives homeowners feedback on their energy consumption.

The partners: Solaris Home Systems, a Palm Beach Gardens home-automation company that relocated from Chicago in 2005; Affiniti Architects; and Cribb Construction of South Florida, a high-end home builder located in West Palm Beach.

After conceiving the green homes project in 2003, Solaris went looking for partners, says chairman Tom Pirelli, a software developer who got into home automation as a hobby in his Chicago home a decade ago. He found Buddy Cribb, the construction company's president, after asking friends to recommend quality builders. "There was no such thing as green builders three years ago," Pirelli says. "Buddy was reluctant, to be honest. I'm not sure he's a believer. It does add a premium to the house."

Late last year, the partners completed two model homes in Jupiter Springs in Palm Beach County. The homes are so green that in February, they were on the verge of being awarded silver or gold ratings for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED awards points for sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.

Cribb says his company, founded by his father in 1942, has built more than 3,000, mostly high-end custom homes. Most are 5,000 to 10,000 square feet in size, but the two model homes range between 2,500 and 2,800 square feet. Pirelli moved his family into one of them the day after Christmas.

Electronic Nerve Center

The brains of the house is Solaris' Environment Management Automation (EMA) system, a computer controlled via an Ethernet switch from touch screens by the garage door and in the kitchen, or by voice command, phone, or the Internet. Cat-5e network cable, coax for the cable system, and standard alarm wire form its nervous system. Homeowners can enter their standard daily departure and arrival times, or vacation times, in an "away" mode so the system can minimize energy use for lights, appliances, and energy systems. It can also gear them up so, for example, the air conditioning powers on a half-hour early to reach its preset temperature. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on residents' keychains recognize friendly arrivals and deactivate the security system and the EMA's away mode.

Pirelli says daily e-mail reports tell him such things as the temperature and which doors were opened (each access point is controlled electronically). The feature proved its mettle early on, when Pirelli received an emergency report that pointed to a suspicious uptick on the water meter. "Had I not had that feature, the water could have run for two weeks," he says, damaging the inside of the house. Instead, he paid $400 to remotely dispatch a plumber for an emergency run, avoiding thousands of dollars in repair costs.

Every room has a motion sensor, all windows are wired, and a Web camera takes frequent snapshots. "There's no way anyone can get into the house without us knowing," Pirelli claims. The strategy is to scare intruders away by blaring sirens like those in the Star Trek television series. The EMA screen also provides one-touch activation of home-entertainment devices, he says.

The motion detectors also have an important role in energy efficiency, turning lights on and off. In bathrooms, they turn on hot water circulation pumps when people enter, turning them off five minutes after they leave. "We don't have that pump running 24/7," says Aaron Ewerdt, Solaris' vice president of technology.

It's Always Sunny in Florida

Solar energy plays a prominent role. Twenty-four solar panels usually return power back to the local electric company after the EMA finds more efficient ways to use it in the homes by, for example, activating swimming pool pumps. One EMA screen shows the amount of power currently generated by the panels, daily and cumulative kilowatt hours used, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions avoided.

Pirelli says he is surprised that even during the two worst months for solar (December and January), the meter on his home was still running backward, earning credits from the power company and entitling him to thousands of dollars in tax rebates. Ewerdt adds that the panels somewhat unexpectedly put out around 3,800 watts, not far below their theoretical maximum of 4,080 watts.

The water heaters are also solar, passively heating the water. Pirelli believes the energy and cost savings of the heaters are so clear-cut that the equipment should be mandated by law. A Solaris spokesperson says that in comparison, a typical, 60-80-gallon gas water heater emits two tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent of two cars driven 10,000 miles each.

Pirelli seems inclined to blend social consciousness with tech savvy. In addition to his home automation business, he started a project called the Arial Home Initiative to bring affordable, mass-produced, energy-efficient homes made of galvanized steel to Third World countries.

Low Tech That's High Tech

The homes' building materials also play big roles in energy efficiency. According to Solaris and Cribb, the Structural Concrete Forms, referred to less formally as the E-wall system and sold by Florida-based Efficient Building Systems, are the most critical part.

Rather than being used and taken off site, the forms stay in place after the concrete is poured into them. Each E-wall has a two inch thick layer of industrial, closed cell polystyrene insulation on the inside of the house, plus a thick concrete wall that acts as a heat sink. Solaris says this results in exceptional strength for the walls, but it prevents the inside of the house from getting too hot or too cool relative to the outside air temperature.

"It's an amazing system," says Pirelli. "The entire house is poured in one day. Every single wall is connected to the other, and it's all poured at one time." Cribb says his company is so impressed by the technology that it might begin using it in future homes.

"The attic space was designed as a closed system," Cribb says of an energy-saving technique his company used for two years before the Solaris project. "There are no vents. That eliminates the outside are from getting into the attic." Cribb explains that this design conditions the air in the attic, and provides a greater thermal barrier and structural integrity over the typical system. "Your duct work for the air conditioning is in this conditioned space, which is cooler than an unconditioned space. The air conditioning runs more efficiently."

Adds Pirelli, "The whole idea is to keep the thermal envelope so the heat never enters into the house, so you never need to turn on the air conditioning." Glued-on window film also keeps excessive solar radiation from entering the home, he says.

Even the landscaping saves water-plant varieties were chosen partly for that quality--and the EMA-controlled irrigation system is smart enough to know how much water each type needs, rather than wastefully blanketing the whole space with a uniform amount. Ground humidity sensors provide still more efficiency.

"If the ground humidity is above a certain point, you do not need to water if it rained, for example, an hour before," Pirelli says. Cribb notes that the site work included removing all non-native plant species and grinding them along with trees for mulch that is used on site, thus reducing fuel use and landfill waste.

All this digitally controlled efficency is producing measurable results, according to Ewerdt. An analysis by the power company of the homes' energy efficiency showed each is roughly twice as efficient as other code-compliant homes.

Pulling Along the Trailing Edge

Despite the success, public perceptions might be holding back technology's advance. "Convincing suppliers, subcontractors and building departments and officials to accept and embrace green designs and technologies is a requirement for these techniques to be implemented on a wider and more cost-effective scale," Cribb says.

A Cribb employee, project manager Henry Chau, says of reaction from local inspectors to the model homes. "When we handed them plans that showed the E-wall and the solar water and solar panel system, they looked at us with a quizzical look," Chau says.

Subcontractors often resist the LEED requirements initially, says Cribb, but after becoming familiar with them, they tend to take it all in stride. He cites the example of cabinet makers who balked at LEED's prohibiting raw edges on cabinet plywood, painters who worried about the quality and convenience of LEED-approved, environment-friendly paint, and air-duct contractors unhappy about the LEED requirement for inspections by third-party engineers.

Both companies plan to offer several configurations so buyers can match their dreams to their budgets. "A lot of these green items are great, but you have to do a cost analysis on them," Cribb says. Adds Pirelli: "Some people won't want the solar panels because of the expense. But we won't make the solar water heaters optional, for example. It's absolutely ridiculous to build a home in Florida without them."

On the tech front, Pirelli sees much promise-and has invested in-concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) technology, which employs a four- or eight-foot polished aluminum mirror to concentrate sunlight, thus reducing the size of the expensive solar panels. He says CPV reaches high temperatures and can be used for hot water and cooking. Meanwhile, Solaris has gone beta with a family-calendar option for the EMA and is moving into media servers and Blu-Ray discs for home entertainment.

The two million-dollar-plus homes in Jupiter Farms would be the filet mignon on any builder's menu. In the past, says Cribb, his company "may have done some of these features here or there. With Solaris, we did them all." Pirelli concurs. "We put everything into these two homes-everything we knew would work."

<i>David Essex is a freelance technology writer in Antrim, N.H.</i>