Designs That Work
Cold Climate
How to Use this Package
This package has just about everything that you need to plan a
high-performance Cold Climate house.
The drawing set gives you an architectural description of the house
from the foundations up to the roof. The floor plans show a layout with
special attention to the quality and character of the rooms, giving the
future occupant a comfortable living space in an affordable way. The
ground floor of the house can be easily converted to a fully accessible
living area.
The plans also describe the house framing system in some detail. The
structural design that makes use of advanced framing techniques, which
save material, minimize waste and increase thermal performance. The
service pathways have been considered and a materials list is included.
The building enclosure has been detailed to manage water, heat and air,
making the house design energy-efficient, durable and comfortable.
Electrical and mechanical drawings are provided. The lighting,
ventilation, space heating and domestic hot water systems have been
designed with a whole house energy model that considers the building
enclosure and the climate. Trade-offs have been made to get excellent
performance while keeping the systems affordable, and examples of
equipment are given to help you put the systems together.
The team of architects, engineers and building scientists that designed
this set of house meant for all this information to be used all together
as a complete design.
But the package doesn’t have everything – there is important work for
you to do. Every homeowner has particular needs, and these should be
reflected in the final plans and material choices. And just as design,
material selections, and construction details may change from one climate
zone to the next, local environmental factors in your specific location or
even on one building lot can lead to changes not covered by this package.
Professional judgment and common sense are required to address these
issues.
To help, we have explained our design decisions in the text that
accompanies the drawings. In the first part of the text, which describes
the Basic Cold Climate House, you will find a step-by-step explanation of
how we applied climate-specific design and building science principles.
The second section describes advanced technology packages that can be
added to further increase the energy savings achieved by the basic house.
At every step, we show you how our decision-making was guided by the whole
house energy model.
With all of this, you will be well on your way to creating a
high-performance home that is safe, healthy, durable, comfortable, and
economical to operate.
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