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This Lunenburg passive solar home uses post and beam construction.
The frame is from an original Acadian home in Digby County,
Nova Scotia. The owners bought the dismantled frame and had it
raised on their property in Lunenburg County after a long and careful
design process.
Designed to be their retirement home, the owners wanted a house that would cost them little or nothing to operate, and would accommodate them and their aging parents, one of whom is wheelchair bound. |
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An extension was added to the south face of the main floor for the
dining room and a portion of the main sitting area. A dormer was
added on the south upper floor to increase the usable space in the
main bedroom, and the original look of the house was maintained
inside and out by re-using the original sheathing boards.
To leave the frame exposed on the interior of the house, the exterior was wrapped with 5.5" of rigid foam insulation (R20), with an additional R20 batt insulation on the north wall of the house. The main roof had a double layer of rigid foam insulation installed (R40). The windows, made in Nova Scotia, are European-style ‘tilt and turn’, double-glazed, low-e coated with insulating spacers and argon filled. A tight building envelope means little heat loss through infiltration. A high efficiency HRV takes care of the ventilation needs. |
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An EPA-approved woodstove is used for backup heating, and the
homeowners harvest two to four cords of wood from their own
woodlot annually. This house also has two 180-litre (40 gallon)
electric water heater tanks, one for domestic hot water and the other
for back-up space heat, in the form of hydronic in-floor heating. This
was installed in anticipation of the owners not being able to carry out
the woodcutting as they get older.
The house is pre-plumbed for a combined solar DHW/space heating system, should the hydronic system be used as full-time backup in the future. |
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This house requires about 5,000 kWh a year of purchased energy, a 70% reduction from the energy required to run a comparable conventionally designed and built house. | ||
For more information on the Lunenburg Acadian retrofit see
CanSIA (Canadian Solar Industries Association) Bulletin (2 page PDF):
Passive Solar Energy for residential homes
Publications
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Sealevel 2007-05-24 |
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