Our Advanced Insulation Package

Insulation is like a wool sweater for your house. It is what keeps you warm on a chilly winter day. Insulation and air impermeability go hand in hand. If insulation is the wool sweater for your house, the house wrap is your rain coat. We can talk about the air barrier later, but today I want to talk about insulation.

There are many different types of insulation on the market. At Arlington Designer Homes, we design our houses using different types of insulation for different reasons. We use a hybrid system which helps us maximize efficiencies. An insulation package that is correctly installed will have contact on all 6 sides: front, back, left, right, top and bottom.

On a typical construction project we will use Demilec Sealection 500 in the places where spray foam is a good fit. These places include the band board, bump outs and overhangs, and as part of the roof assembly.  Spray foam goes on in a thick coat and expands 100 times to fill all the nooks and crannies. It sticks in places where other types of insulation just won’t stay.

Another type of insulation we commonly use is spray-in fiberglass insulation or the BIBS system. This is another great insulation that fills all the cracks and helps to prevent air infiltration. Sometimes we will use a dense pack cellulose in the vertical walls, with the same benefits of the BIBS system.

If you have been reading my blog, then you know that the products we put in the walls and ceiling are just one part of the whole advanced insulation package. We use air sealing (check out our next blog for more on air sealing) to keep the air out and help the insulation perform the way it is supposed to. Advanced framing, proper ventilation, high quality windows and siding, and attention to detail are also all factors in making sure that our houses are properly insulated and extremely comfortable and energy efficient.

Conserving Water and Preventing Run-Off

It has been a long road but we are well underway building what will surely go down as one of the most amazing and unique homes in Arlington.  We are excited to be working with many new and interesting systems. Because of the unique position this lot is in, we have worked to design the lot in such a way that there will actually be less storm water run-off post development than pre-development.

In this way we are truly ahead of our time. Arlington, Virginia, and all localities within the Chesapeake drainage basin have been working for years to reduce run-off from farming, industrialization and housing development. During our development process we had our civil engineers work to design the lot in such a way that we will be on the cutting edge of development technology in our area. The technologies we will use to prevent run-off and help do our part to preserve the Chesapeake Bay include:

1.       Rain water re-use

2.       Pervious pavers

3.       Green roof

4.       Bio-retention

5.       Swales

6.       Mitigate time for unexposed soils

7.       Shared trenches for utilities

8.       Area appropriate plantings

9.       Hydro-zoning

Not only will these technologies prevent run-off and pollution into Arlington’s storm water systems, they mean our new home will use less water. We will need less water for bio-retention, pervious pavers, and hydro-zoning, as well as the features going into the house.

As Featured on CNN...

We're very pleased to report that William and Sheila Moore’s elegant and eco-friendly home, located at 4719 North 24^th Road, was recently featured in a CNN special report on green building features and options. Our family-owned company, Arlington Designer Homes, designed and built this one-of-a-kind green home in 2007.  It features energy-efficient windows and doors, EnergyStar appliances, recycled carpets, reclaimed hardwood floors, low VOC paints, an advanced insulation package with spray-foam insulation, and a geo-thermal heating and air conditioning system. 

CNN hosted the national report, which showed examples of green, energy-efficient building techniques and features being used around the U.S., from inside the Moores’ home, highlighting how well the home’s green features blend in and actually enhance the warmth and livability of the house.

One of the most important things this house demonstrates is that ‘green’ doesn’t have to be boring or utilitarian. The home on North 24^th Road features reclaimed wood floors, and a gorgeous and rare salvaged walnut countertop in the kitchen. In the entryway, we embedded fossils in a recycled stone tile wall for a truly unique and beautiful look.

At the same time, the green features included in this home will combine to reduce energy costs by up to 50%, prevent toxic off-gassing, seal out mold, allergens and pollutants, and significantly reduce the homes’ carbon output.

We'll have the video up on our website soon - stay tuned!

A Green Building First in Falls Church

I’m really pleased to announce that Arlington Designer Homes recently received the first two Gold-level Green Building Certifications in Falls Church from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Research Center. These new, custom-built green homes, both located on West Street in Falls Church city, are two of only five houses in the entire state of Virginia to be certified at the Gold level. (Arlington Designer Homes also received the first Gold-level Green Building Certification in Arlington last year, for a home on Underwood Street.)

                                                                                                                    

The two new homes will also receive Energy Star certification and will be certified by the Falls Church City Green Home Award Program. One of the two homes was custom designed for the homeowners, who moved into their new home late last year. The second home, located at 307 West Street, was just completed last week and is currently for sale.

Each of these elegant, contemporary homes includes numerous unique green features that reduce energy costs, including Energy Star appliances, spray-in foam insulation, geo-thermal heating and air conditioning, and exterior rigid foam insulation to prevent heat loss. The green features included in these homes will combine to reduce energy costs by up to 50%, prevent toxic off-gassing, seal out mold, allergens and pollutants, and significantly reduce the homes’ carbon output.



Our award-winning new green home located at 307 West Street in Falls Church city features contemporary design, a beautiful gourmet kitchen and an open floor plan.



The National Green Building certification process includes inspections and review of lot and site development, resource efficiency, energy efficiency, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and homeowner education.

Many people think that building a green home just means including the newest green technology, but we strive to incorporate green practices during every step of the design and construction process. One of the most important green features of these homes is actually their location. We selected lots close to public transportation – less than half a mile from a metro station -- and within walking distance of restaurants, shops, a library and a bike trail, to help reduce the amount of time the homeowners will have to spend in their cars.

The new green home located at 307 West Street in Falls Church City is currently for sale, and will be open for the Virginia Parade of Homes this Saturday and Sunday, April 30 and May 1, from 11am to 5pm, so please stop by and tour this great house!

A Green Home Can Also Be a Quiet Home!

2010 was a very busy year for Arlington Designer Homes, culminating with our delivering a new custom home just before the new year - a pretty nice holiday gift for our customers, and for us too! It's always exciting to finish a project and and see the homeowners move in to their new house. As I mentioned in last week's blog, we always look forward to hearing what our homeowners have to say about the house after they've gotten a chance to live in it for a little while -  what we did right, and what can be improved upon. One thing that that our customers and I have noticed about this particular project, a single-family green home we built in Falls Church City, is how quiet the house is. With a geo-thermal heating and air conditioning system installed, there's no noisy racket from air conditioners in the summer or the furnace in the winter. All you can hear is silence. The spray foam insulation also helps to mute any external noises, and with the highly energy-efficient windows, you barely even hear the sounds of buses and cars passing on the fairly busy road right in front of the home.

Most of us who work in green construction regularly promote the more well-known benefits of green homes: increased energy efficiency, reduced energy costs, improved air quality, a smaller environmental footprint, etc. But sometimes we forget to talk about the more intangible, but equally important benefits - like having a little bit more peace and quiet in your life.

Just like in other urban areas around the country, here in Northern Virginia, most of us live in close proximity to our neighbors. And as more and more communities in the DC metro area continue to promote "smart growth" - encouraging people to live in higher density areas where they can easily access public transporation, reduce energy costs, and avoid developing more land -- people in our area will likely be living ever closer to one another, and to major roads and public transporation routes. Living in a high density areas can offer many benefits, but often, peace and quiet isn't one of them. But even if you live in a highly-developed urban setting, with firetrucks and ambulances and buses zooming by at all hours of the day and night, with a little thought and attention to detail, you can still create a sense of quiet inside your home, and inside yourself.

Geo-Thermal Heating and Cooling

I am currently working on a home where we have  installed a Geo-thermal heating and cooling system. This is not the first Geo-thermal system we have installed and it won't be the last. Installing the systems can be 2-3 times more expensive than a typical HVAC system, but the payback can be huge.

Currently the federal government is offering a 30% tax credit (stay tuned for my next blog to learn more about tax credits) on any sustainable energy system that is installed. This means that with the tax breaks, you are paying a lot less in initial costs and the payback period is much shorter. The way that I have calculated it for the house that I am currently working on, is that if energy costs stay constant, the geo-thermal system will start paying itself off in 7 years. So the geo-systems that we install can then actually make money for you for up to 43 years!

Installing geo-thermal HVAC is a big project,
but across the board, our customers have
been thrilled with how well it works!

Installing Geo-thermal systems on a tight lot like the one that we are currently working on can be tricky. It is a sequencing challenge. I had to excavate the house and coordinate the foundation work with the Geo-thermal drilling work. In this house, we installed 2 ground loops that go 300' into the ground. These loops happen to be installed beneath the garage floor, although they could have just as easily been installed under the basement slab or in the yard.

The idea behind Geo-thermal systems is that you are using the earth's constant temperature to heat or to cool your home, depending on the needs. The system operates like a heat pump exchanging hot or cold energy with the coolant that runs down and then back up two 300' loops. Once this energy has been exchanged, it enters the unit and is dispersed like a typical forced air unit is, throughout the house.

So, for example, when you are heating your house, your unit will exchange the energy from the cool air that is brought into the unit with the air that is heated to a baseline of 55 degrees from the earth. The earth's temperature is a constant 55 degrees. Once this air is in the unit it will be heated to the temperature on the thermostat by using natural gas or electricity to bring it up the extra few degrees. So in essence, this system helps create a constant 55 degree air intake that can be heated as necessary.

The entire unit takes up a little more space in your utility room, but has the distinct advantage of eliminating noisy outdoor AC units. Overall it is a very interesting and unique system that works great for our customers.