TC Legend Homes – Bellevue Net Positive Energy Home
Located on a portion of a subdivided, family property, this 2,614 SqFt Bellevue, WA home is a beautifully built house that helps to foster multigenerational ties and community. With a 5-Star Built Green rating, EPA IndoorAir Plus certification, and a Net Zero Energy certification, this award-winning TC Legend home is an example of the influence and success of the Build Green program. With a specific focus on indoor air quality, this home employs a new ventilation and air filtration system, helping to make it a safe and comfortable environment for its occupants.
Built with passive and active solar needs in mind, the two-storey house faces south. Numerous triple glazed Vinvltek windows on the south side provide passive heating and light within the home. These windows and others throughout the house are coupled with white interior paint to help provide significant daylighting and reduce energy demand from the 100% LED home lighting. The home also employs a 12.87kW photovoltaic system, producing enough power to make the home net positive and power an electric vehicle. With a shell system constructed from 6.5” SIPs walls, 10.25” SIPs roof, 4” foam under the slab-on-grade, ICF form slab-edge stemwalls & U 0.18 average triple pane windows, this house has a tight envelope, helping to reduce energy consumption.
The three-bedroom, two bath house is meant to allow the occupants to age in place with the kitchen, main living space, a bedroom and bathroom, and ADA compliant doorways on the first floor. The state-of-the-art fresh air system includes a Zehnder 350 HRV, Zehnder Comfopost inline heating/ cooling coil, and HEPA air filtration system. This system allows for fresh, filtered air to enter the home throughout the day and to be increased when needed, such as when the kitchen hood fan is drawing smoke out of the kitchen during cooking. This fresh air system keeps the indoor air clean, reducing particulates in the air, even when the outdoor air quality is particularly poor such as during a summer forest fire.
Overall, this home is a comfortable, clean, and net positive building, allowing the homeowners to be happy, healthy, and confident in the knowledge that their home is serving their needs and protecting the environment in the process. The BuiltGreen Certificate of Merit and 5-Star rating this home received help to reinforce this knowledge due to the standard of excellence required of BuiltGreen certified homes.
Built Green highlights:
SITE & WATER
Long term erosion reduction strategies in place
Over 70% of building site left undisturbed with preservation of trees and native vegetation
Stormwater infiltration system catches all stormwater from the site and the uphill grandparents house, mitigating flow
Approx. 50% of the lot is turf grass
Watersense certified fixtures and low flow fixtures and toilets
Rainwater collection ready
ENERGY
Net-Positive Home with a HERS score of -22 and extra power to serve an electric vehicle
12.87 kW roof PV array
Substantial envelope insulation lowers heating requirement: R-30 walls, R-49 roof, R-20 under slab, R-24 slab-edge, average U-0.18 windows
Triple-paned Vinyltek Windows with u-values from 0.15-0.22
Passive Heating Design strategies utilized
Chiltrix Air-to-Water Heat Pump for heating and domestic hot water with COP of 3.92
AeroBarrier air sealing and blower door results of 0.47 ACH50
100% LED lighting
All Energy Star certified appliances
Energy Star certified
DOE Zero-Energy Ready certified
HEALTH & INDOOR AIR QUALITY
Indoor AirPLUS certified
Solid wood cabinets with Low-VOC finish
All Low-VOC paints, adhesives, and sealants
No gas-burning appliances in house
HEPA Air Filtration System
Zehnder HRV with ComfoPost
MATERIALS EFFICIENCY
Graphite SIPS for exterior walls and ceilings
ICF foundation walls
85%+ of waste recycled
Locally produced lumber, SIPs, concrete, cabinets, doors, and siding
Exterior cedar posts constructed form telephone pole MFG waste
Leftover materials moved to next job
Solid wood, domestically grown interior doors and trim
Locally produced Vinlytek windows
Location: Bellevue, WA Star Level: 5-Star, Net Zero Energy Label Checklist: Single Family/Townhome New Construction Verifier: Ecoe Company
Site and Water: 109 Energy Efficiency: 239 Health and Indoor Air Quality: 126 Materials Efficiency: 109 Total Score: 629
The TC Legend Family is growing! We have hired two new Carpenters and two new Draftsman trainees! Big welcome to Miles, Lee, Talia & Amber! Check out ‘Our Team’ to learn more about them.
We are always excited to grow our team and hire on other passionate individuals who aim to create a carbon neutral future and affordable housing!
The Bellingham Barn House is coming to an exciting end, and it was a great opportunity to get Senna and Talia out of the office and on-site! (And finally get some headshots of our new crew!)
Talia, our first TC Draftsman Intern, got to get her hands on the house plans and review her first TC Legend Home in action.
Here’s what Talia learned and noticed about this exquisite home:
“Visiting the Bellingham Barn House site was a great way to see the paper plans come to life in a real home. It was fascinating to see HVAC and water heating setup in person as well as all the design details that the on site crew carefully constructed.
I was particularly excited to see the positioning of the stairs in the middle of the house, serving as a visual and physical separation of the upstairs while keeping a cohesive design and smooth flow of traffic throughout the house.
It was also great to meet the crew and chat about the solar system with Jeff. I walked away having learned and seen a number of new things and I am really excited to be a member of this team!”
Talia has always been interested in building design, architecture, the environment, and renewable energy. When she had the opportunity to combine those interests in the form of an undergraduate course called Energy Efficient and Carbon Neutral Design, she jumped at the chance. After that course, she caught the net zero building bug.
Talia will be graduating in June, 2021 from Western Washington University. One of the incredible things that she did in her undergraduate studies that impressed the TC owners was her participation in an extracurricular competition, the DOE Solar Decathlon, where she designed a functional Net Zero Home for the Tri-cities.
“I’m excited to be making an impact on people’s lives and our environment through designing comfortable, affordable, and efficient homes as a member of the TC Legend Homes team!”
We are excited to announce that the TC Legend Homes Everson Farmhouse has been awarded the 2020 Built Green Hammer Award winner in the category of Built Green Project of the Year!
The Built Green Hammer Awards recognize Built Green members in King and Snohomish counties for their outstanding projects and participation from the previous year.
Ted & Jake received the award virtually at the 2020 Virtual Built Green Conference on September 17, after giving a stellar presentation on “The theory, practice and details TC Legend Homes uses to design and build affordable Net Zero housing for the Pacific Northwest.”
“We’re really very happy to have been granted this prestigious award. Thank you all at BuiltGreen for the recognition. You guys at BuiltGreen work hard & we work hard at TC Legend Homes and we feel that together we can make a real difference to the future built environment.” – Jake Evans
Great job TC Legend Homes team!
Further Details:
Built Green 5 star certified,
HER rating of -19 (with P.V.)
Department of Energy certified Zero Energy Ready Home.
When we pour a slab on grade we are basically pouring concrete directly onto the earth. Sure, there is a 4” layer of foam under the concrete so we don’t lose our heat, and yes, there is 12” of sand under the foam so the foam sits perfectly flat and the plumber can easily locate drainpipes in the sand… but under that sand is the compacted native earth.
No crawl space, rats, trash or mold, just a crisp concrete slab sitting on the earth, insulated so the slab holds in heat (or cold), and keeps the temperature inside the house consistently stable.
Slab-day is stressful, because many of the affordable Net-Zero houses from TC Legend use the slab-on-grade as the finished-floor.
Concrete slab as a finished floor provides a cost-effective, durable, aesthetically modern floor. However, the concrete needs to be finished perfectly flat on “Slab Day.”
Last week at the Lake Stevens house, the second concrete truck was late and the guys had to scramble to pour and screed the last truck-load before a permanent seam became inevitable!
Disaster was fortunately averted, the 1,500 square foot (sf) floor had the seam massaged-out, was troweled flat, covered in plastic and will be scrubbed and sealed in a few months before the trim goes up.
There are other finish options for concrete floors; they can be ground down, acid etched, and stain can be added to the concrete in the yard.
The following photos are gathered from a couple other already-built jobs. Dan was too busy at Lake Stevens last week, shoveling, troweling and de-stressing the crew to run a camera.
The black slab under the mountain was poured using black dye within the concrete.
The yellow Legos are a layout grid for in-floor radiant hydronic heating, which until recently was one common heating option deployed within our Net-Zero homes (more on heating systems soon).
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