Shepard-Nguyen DADU

Shepard-Nguyen DADU

Shepard-Nguyen DADU

Built to house grandma on a multi-generational property, Shepard-Nguyen DADU is an accessible 484 square foot home with an additional 176 square foot loft. The DADU was designed to be light, airy and open in order to create a welcoming and safe environment for the grandkids to play in and grandma to hide away to when needed. The clients have an excellent eye for interior design, so the home was completed to a sleek and modern finish.

Since the main occupant is grandma, the home was designed for aging-in-place with wide doorways, a curbless shower with handrails, lever style door handles, extra grabs for the pocket doors, and a seat at the entry.

Specs

  • 484 square feet
  • 176 square foot loft
  • 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom
  • Net Zero Energy
  • 4kW solar array with Enphase micro-inverters
  • HERS Index: -10
  • DOE Zero Energy Ready Home certified, ENERGY STAR certified, EPA Indoor airPLUS certified
  • Fujitsu mini-split
  • HEPA filtration
  • ENERGY STAR 50-gallon domestic hot water tank
Forest Hill House

Forest Hill House

The Forest Hill house was commissioned by a night-shift worker with a love of house plants & the land upon which he was raised. The lot, bequeathed by grandma, faces due south with a big sky view, interrupted only by a distant fir; ideal for passive solar harvest, active photovoltaic (PV) harvest, and vegetable harvest!

Built over the winter of 2020/ 2021, Jeff tells me the build was all straightforward, except grinding down the interior slab-on-grade after the stick-frame walls were built. The grinder is a frustratingly twitchy machine, time consuming, and no one’s favorite job. The result however is a beautiful concrete floor with the aggregate cut-through, showing patina from the bull-float & the cream in the concrete. This floor will endure through many years of very hard wear.

Equally durable materials are used to clad the SIP roof & walls; NuDura metal roofing & Hardie fiber-cement lap siding combine to protect the insulating SIPs foam panels. The siding was hung in-house by TC and the fellas did a fabulous job of precisely stacking the board-joints, setting up a very pleasing pattern in the siding.

To clad the small 6” ICF (Insulated concrete form) upstand, TC uses colored 26 gauge metal to protect the insulating foam from impact & abrasion.

The highly insulated energy-shell enables this home to be heated with 12Btu/ hour (max) Fujitsu minisplit. This is an all-electric, net zero house, ready for the future. Including the coming storms….

Battery power is a hot topic these days, with grid managers planning for greater grid efficiency by storing off-peak grid surplus in privately owned battery systems.

TC Installed the 5Kw LG lithium-ion house battery on the exterior north wall. Integrated with the PV, the battery allows the PV produced electricity to be stored, ensuring this all-electric house works even when the power goes down.

Morales Utility Shed

Morales Utility Shed

This small backyard building in urban Bellingham was designed for multiple uses: yoga studio, brewery, workshop, and cycle storage. While not built to be a living space, it does have a bathroom. The entire project was built for just $120,000, with the client doing much of the finish work. With its south-facing roof, this building is ready to become net-zero-energy with the installation of solar panels.

Specifications

  • 360 square feet
  • 6.5” SIPs walls
  • 8.25” SIPs roof
  • 4” R-20 foam under 4” concrete slab-on-grade for thermal mass
  • R-24 insulated concrete forms perimeter stem-walls below grade
  • Terracotta colored floor from red dye within poured concrete slab. Scrubbed, polished, sealed.

Bellingham Gentle Density DADU

Bellingham Gentle Density DADU

TC Legend Homes demolished an existing one-car garage and re-purposed the available space with a cozy, high-performance, 775 square foot, detached accessory dwelling unit (DADU) that includes an attached single-car garage. The RE Store handled the structure demolition to maximize recycling opportunities and minimize waste.

The DADU was designed from the ground up to be net-positive-energy, meaning it will produce more energy on an annual basis than it requires. TC Legend Homes applied the same approach and many of the same building techniques to this DADU as it does to any of its other homes.

Key Features

  • A simple design to minimize exposed surface area

  • Orientation and window placement to optimize active and passive solar

  • Slab on grade with 4” under-slab insulation & Insulated concrete forms

  • Structural Insulated Panel construction (vice traditional framing) to reduce possibility of thermal bridging

  • Triple-pane windows

  • High-efficiency mini-split heat pump for heating & cooling and high-efficiency heat pump for water heating

  • HEPA High Efficiency Whole House Insulated Filtration System

  • 5.4kw photovoltaic solar system

  • Energy Star, EPA Indoor airPLUS, and 5-Star Built Green Certified

  • Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Index is negative 16!  (A typical new home has a rating of + 62).

Whatcom County DADU

Whatcom County DADU

 All photos courtesy of Jared VanderGriend

This family needed some room for the big kids to spread out. TC Legend Homes designed and built this accessory dwelling unit to meet their needs. The family gained a large garage, with 576 square feet of living space perched above, accessible to the main house via 2nd-story bridge.

Key Features:

  • A simple design to minimize exposed surface area

  • Orientation and window placement to optimize passive solar

  • Insulated concrete forms

  • 2nd floor Structural Insulated Panel construction (vice traditional framing) to reduce possibility of thermal bridging

  • Double-pane windows

  • High-efficiency mini-split heat pump for heating & cooling

  • Energy Star, EPA Indoor airPLUS, and 4-Star Built Green Certified

  • Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Index is 46.  (A typical new home has a rating of + 62).