Parade of Homes Spotlights the Works of Talented Home Builders

By Bill Hoy, Project Manager

Each fall, the Southwest Montana Building Industry Association, a membership-based organization representing more than 10,000 regional building industry professionals, conducts the Gallatin Valley Parade of Homes. During the event, people from across the area tour homes recently finished by local builders. This year, the association asked us to participate on the tour and we were delighted to host more than 2,000 visitors over the course of two consecutive weekends.

The reason for the tour is to put the spotlight on outstanding regional builders, who in our case is Tollefson Builders, a family owned and operated company lead by father-son team Jerry and Travis Tollefson. According to the Tollefsons, their mission is to push sustainable building to the next level.

Standing Out With Sustainable Systems

Of all the homes on the tour this year, the REHAU® MONTANA ecosmart house certainly stood out as having the most sustainable features. It's probably not a coincidence that some of the comments and conversations most often overheard during the tour were about the windows. After all, they do lend a remarkable aspect to the home's architecture. 

What folks learned is that the windows are the most visible component of the high-performance building envelope, which also includes insulating concrete forms and structural insulated panels (used to construct the exterior walls of the home). The systems are designed to work together both visibly and behind-the-scenes to secure the home's interior climate against harsh Montana winters. 

The windows feature insulating uPVC profiles, Sunlight-Responsive Thermochromic (SRT) glazing and compression-seal technology. SRT passively tints the glass in response to direct sunlight while compression-seal technology forms a tight seal against air and water infiltration. uPVC is a natural insulator that resists heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer.

Read more about all of the home's systems here.

Energy 1 Talks About ecosmart house

By Leo Crane
Vice President/Project Manager
Energy 1

Every day, our team here at Energy 1 works with renewable energy and building experts. We share our experience and expertise in an effort to learn from each other and get better and better at what we do.

It's an interesting line of work especially because we're learning new things all the time about how various green building and renewable energy technologies can work together to make a structure more operationally proficient, financially compelling in terms of overall energy usage/costs and environmentally sustainable.

That's why the REHAU MONTANA ecosmart house project is so exciting for us. The Energy 1 design team did their thing -- leading the engineering efforts from our office was Todd Nelson, who provided the lead on the overall mechanical system and energy model for the house. And now that the house is finished, a team of scientists from MSU is conducting extensive research to determine exactly how well the design works! 

It's a true living laboratory of cutting edge building technologies. The idea is that the integration of specific systems can be studied, tested and evaluated at varying conditions, in both the built and natural environment to see what configuration creates the highest level of efficiency. 

Right now at the house, researchers are testing the REHAU geothermal ground loop heat exchange, ground-air heat exchange and radiant heating and cooling systems under a multitude of conditions. The goal is to study specific installed technologies in an occupied residential setting -- everything from the insulating concrete forms to the solar thermal system -- to determine what makes sense from a cost and performance standpoint. Layered into this analysis is the real-time results and information that will be gathered from varied usage patterns and weather conditions experienced month to month throughout the year.  

The results will be interesting to analyze given the dramatic weather patterns of SW Montana, and the relevant demand for both heating and cooling throughout the year. But once the research results are received, an entire industry will benefit from the excercise. We'll have specific, performance-related data on system configurations that will help determine the best approach to sustainable building design in our corner of the world and everywhere else.

Environmental/Energy Agencies Convene at ecosmart house

By Bill Hoy, Project Manager

The sound of hammers, saws and power tools has faded into memory as the REHAU MONTANA ecosmart house project has entered its research and education phase. But it's anything but quiet around here! 

The house serves as a venue for meetings and seminars focused on green building and energy efficiency, and tours are frequent. The house is outfitted with signs and video stations throughout for visitors to learn about the project, the systems* installed and what we're doing in the way of testing and data collection.  

In the picture above, I'm speaking to members of the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), the Montana Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Department of Energy during a meeting these organizations held in the educational facilities of the house.

There's no better backdrop for the minds of industry, government and academia to come together on one of the single most important issues of our time: Achieving balance between the built environment and the natural environment. 

*Learn more about all the systems here: http://montanaecosmart.com/experience.php




A Great Story About This Project From P&M Magazine

Eric Chidester (left) and Tim Rogers of PJ's Plumbing and Heating install some of the

5,000 lineal feet of 1/2-inch PEXa tubing for radiant heating in the ecosmart house.

An additional 900 lineal feet of tubing is installed for the snow and ice melting system

in the home's driveway.

"One of the drawbacks of trying to sell homeowners on the advantages of installing an energy-efficient heating system using radiant, geothermal or solar thermal technologies is the lack of real numbers to back up performance claims. Most energy performance numbers are based on computer modeling of how building occupants will use the systems.

Those numbers rarely come close to how human beings actually use their heating and cooling systems.

Researchers at Montana State University in Bozeman, along with sponsor REHAU, are about to change that perception."

Read the entire article here.

Grand Opening Planned for April 20

Click the image to view the video at vimeo.com.

By Bill Hoy, Project Manager

Seems hard to believe, but construction is almost complete, and we've set the date for the grand opening of the REHAU MONTANA ecosmart house for Friday, April 20. We'll post an agenda and more details here once they're developed.

While this is an invitation-only event, it kicks off the official opening of the house. After the grand opening, the house will be open by appointment to the public for tours. We invite you to visit and experience the house in person while we conduct important research using the latest sustainable building systems.

Technical Summit Determines Research Objectives of ecosmart house Project

By Bill Hoy, Project Manager

Bill Johansen explains the goals of this sustainable construction living laboratory.

With the construction phase of the ecosmart house nearly complete, last month 38 building industry business and association representatives from across the U.S., as well as members of the academic community, met in Bozeman for a technical summit. 

The ecosmart house project aims to exhibit the possibilities of maximized energy efficiency and occupant comfort through a combination of the latest sustainable building products and systems. Coordinated by REHAU, two-day the summit brought industry stakeholders and academia together to help determine the direction of the upcoming two-year research phase. 

Participants collaborated to define parameters for using the house during this period as both a demonstration project for sustainable residential construction, and as a unique research, measurement and data-gathering entity for building product and system performance.

Six areas of focus were identified for the two-year post-construction phase of the project:

• Building envelope
• Systems (mechanical/renewable/ventilation/controls/comfort)
• Education, research and lessons learned
• Technology integration standardization
• Marketing
• General oversight

Committees were formed for each area of focus, with a designated leader who will work to recruit additional committee members and to outline specific goals over the coming months.

Research Data on Sustainable Building Systems to be Available via LabVIEW

By Bill Hoy, Project Manager

Fall is here in Big Sky country and cooler night air is settling in already. The heating system is scheduled to be operational by the first of November and the mechanical room is in the process of being completed along with finalization of the electrical wiring. The sheetrock is tentatively scheduled to be installed the week of November 7.

The innovative Sunlight-Responsive Thermochromic (SRT) glazing has been installed in the windows. SRT glazing passively tints the glass in response to direct sunlight using a film sandwiched between two pieces of 1/4 in. glass which is then assembled into a 1-3/8 in. insulated glazing with a suspended heat mirror film between another 1/4 in. glass with a Low E layer.

What does all this mean? It means a possible R4 to R8 glazing rating. The research over the next several years will validate the actual R value.

Technical Summit Will Usher in Research/Academic Phase
A technical summit has been scheduled for November 3-4 here in Bozeman. This is when we will open the project to critical thinking as well as academic and professional scrutiny in order to define exactly what makes homes affordably sustainable and energy efficient. The group will determine what research and data would be most beneficial to verify optimum building designs and mechanical configurations.

A number of sustainable building industry stakeholders from both the public and private sector as well as academia from across the U.S. have been invited to participate. The house is scheduled to be complete by January 2012, after which REHAU will lease the facility for two years to demonstrate and document the various energy systems with the help of Montana State University (MSU).

Open Access to Data
All data and information will be available on the Internet (details to be announced), and will be openly available for access by the general public to learn about all of the systems and their performance. The MSU School of Engineering students will be responsible for installing and monitoring over 350 sensors utilizing data acquisition with a software program called “LabVIEW.” The other key objective of the project is to understand the ROI of the systems and provide recommendations to the industry on alternate systems that are economic.