How Did the Project Achieve Optimal Sun/Shade and Systems Balance?

First, Lévy sited the house for optimal sun and shade. With its dominant east-west axis, the home maximizes solar while allowing the nearby trees to remain. Lévy used Vectorworks throughout the design, documentation, and construction of the 2,500 square-foot home. He did studies during the early design iterations to balance optimal shading and photovoltaic collection while minimizing site disruption. He balanced south-facing glass to internal exposed thermal mass (concrete floors and masonry fireplace surround) for winter passive solar heating. He designed a thermal chimney, which the homeowners call "the shark fin," for a stack effect : a natural ventilation strategy.

What Sustainable Details Did the Project Implement?

Completed in June 2014, the wood-frame home has eight inches of spray foam insulation in the roof and six inches in the walls. The exposed concrete floors are slab on grade. Standing-seam metal covers the roof and the walls. "When we were designing the house, there were lots of fires in the area, and ash was falling everywhere," Newell says. "We were looking at not only safety but also low-maintenance materials" when choosing the exterior cladding and roofing for the house. The roof-top solar array includes 31 panels. "We're grid-tied ," explains Becker, "which means when we produce power during the day that we don't need, we send it into the grid and at night pull it back in." The geothermal system includes four wells 150-feet-deep, "which go into a system and precool the incoming air from the outdoors," Becker says.