Life At Net-Zero:How One Architect Designed A Waste-Free Dream Home

Life at net-zero has a nice ring to it.  Getting there, as told here for one retired couple, is not easy.  Nor, as you will read, is disconnecting grom the grid.

What does this teach us?  We find most releveant is how we can dramatically change how we build houses.  Construction is old style...not much has changed in almost 100 years.  Why?  Other industries are quicky using new technologies to get smart and efficient.  This model shows us home building can too.

This couiple experienced a long pay back, but their situation is unique.  Everyone of us could mimic some of their investments and see much quicker returns. Not to be lost is their fixed costs of utilities they will enjoy going forward.  Unlike all their neighbors, and most of us, subject to the whims of the marketplace and increases from our grids.

Life At Net-Zero: How One Architect Designed A Waste-Free Dream Home

A Different World Requires a Different Approach

 

By Natalie Burg

Standing in certain rooms of a distinctly modern West Los Angeles home completed in 2011, you hardly know if you’re inside or outdoors. With skylights all over the tall ceilings and retractable glass walls, light and air are as integral to the home’s architecture as the steel and stone that form its structure.

A retired couple worked with architect Michael Lehrer to build a sustainable, energy-efficient 13,000-square-foot home in West Los Angeles. Photo by Benny Chan of Fotoworks, courtesy of Lehrer Architects.

The building is both sizable and beautiful. It’s also incredibly green. The home, set in a lush canyon surrounded by a sprawling organic vegetable garden, has a carbon footprint that is far smaller than you might assume. That makes it part of a green housing trend: According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, newer U.S. homes are using only 2 percent more energy than those built before 2000, despite being 30 percent larger on average¹.
But buildings remain a significant factor in global climate change. In 2015, 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption came from residential and commercial buildings². Americans make up 4 percent of the global population, but produce 16 percent of all global CO₂ missions, according to the National Resources Defense Fund³.

So it’s for good reason that the husband and wife who own the West Los Angeles property are concerned about its impact on the environment. After seeing Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” about the danger and impending nature of climate change, the couple wanted to be a part of the solution.

Fortunately, they were already working with architect Michael Lehrer, who had the skills to help. The project began in 1999 as an addition to their existing house; 12 years and many design iterations later, the owners had an entirely new, three-story home. One that, despite its size, generated a 35-cent electric bill for May and June this year.
The owners were interviewed for this story but requested anonymity to protect their privacy.

Modern Sustainability
At one time, building a sustainable home might have meant sacrificing form for function. As Lehrer proved, that’s no longer the case. In 2011, the home produced more than 100 percent of the electricity it needed over the course of one year, making it a fully “net-zero” home.

Crafting a modern home capable of such energy efficiency is no ordinary design feat. Core to its efficiency is that the southern California house has no air conditioning, which accounts for more than 6 percent of energy use in American homes⁴. Instead, it uses its many windows as a natural cooling system.

“When you live in a gracious climate, you can do that,” Lehrer said. “Not every room has to be comfortable all the time.”

For the few days a year when the heat becomes too much, the couple installed blinds, rendering the home cool and breezy year-round.

Net-Zero Living
Lack of air conditioning aside, the large home still consumes significant energy. There are two electric cars in the household and a sculpture studio, which requires running an air compressor when in use.

Although the homeowners use a fair amount of power, they do so without any guilt, because they generate it themselves. Toward that goal, they installed an unusually large number of solar panels. They cover every area of the roof that isn’t occupied by skylights or blocked by trees.

May and June are peak months for solar power, so the couple doesn’t necessarily receive a 35-cent utility bill year-round. In the winter, their bill is higher, but it is still a fraction of what they paid in their smaller home.
According to Lehrer, living in a net-zero home becomes a learning experience for its environmentally conscious owners. They begin to measure each activity by its impact on their ability to remain net-zero from month to month.

“The big idea in aspirational energy usage is your learning curve,” Lehrer said. “How are you modifying your behavior? How are you living in ways that make you happy and also minimize energy use?”

Sustainability Challenges
The home’s low-maintenance solar power system makes net-zero living relatively easy. But installing it proved a bit difficult. The local power company tried to prevent them from placing enough panels to maximize the home’s efficiency. So the couple simply defied it, covering as much of the roof as possible with the panels.

The next surprise was that the couple’s solar panels couldn’t directly power their home. Because solar panels put power back into the grid, the homeowners would be reliant on the grid no matter how much power they produced. To skirt this issue, they invested in a battery and inverter system, making the home capable of operating independently.

Those energy efficiency investments add up. When their installer said the panels would take nearly two decades to pay for themselves, the retired couple was not daunted by the slow payback. Their investment was for a healthier planet, not to boost the family budget.
Return on investment is certainly a concern for many homeowners, but the home Lehrer designed makes clear the compatibility of energy conservation and modern living: When a homeowner is truly focused on environmental sustainability, anything is possible.

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