Energy

Four Square uses a Passive House approach beginning with the appropriate siting and orientation of the building to take advantage of passive solar gains. The envelope is highly insulated, includes reduction in thermal bridging, air sealing, energy recovery ventilation, and triple-glazed window and door systems. We use iterative energy modeling throughout the design process to test the performance of the building with the passive house standard as a conceptual goal. The shed roofed areas are designed for future solar panel installation. No fossil fuels are brought to the site.

Economy

Through our commitment to high performance buildings, our firm has explored a number of envelope construction strategies and details that work to achieve Passive House levels of performance while remaining economical to construct using typical materials and methods. We fully acknowledge that custom single family residential design and new construction is resource intensive and costly. This approach inherently enforces design discipline to generate compact efficient plan layouts and building volumes because of the fundamental relationship of surface area to volume. While there is increased initial costs associated with Passive House assemblies, this upfront cost is offset with energy savings overtime.

Wellness

The project is designed with wellness in mind for a couple with adult children featuring single floor, accessible living that allows for aging in place with an integrated garage that allows direct interior access to the home. Additional details include flush thresholds at doorways and flush access to bathing in the primary bathroom. Indoor air quality is managed by an energy recovery ventilation system with filtration. No fossil fuel combustion takes place in the home. The passive house level building shell coupled with thermal mass of the frost protected slab foundation provides for very consistent interior temperatures. Hard surface flooring and careful selection on interior finishes avoided voc’s.

Four Square

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