Emporia
Emporia Classic Level 2 48 AMP EV Charger UL Listed
The Emporia Classic Level 2 48 AMP EV Charger UL Listed is a home charging solution designed for electric vehicle owners seeking efficiency, safety, and smar...
$429
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Historic Integrity
Originally built in the 1890s as a timberyard, the building was a scrap yard from the 1950s to the 1980s. At that time, it was converted into light commercial offices. By 2000, when Dudzicki bought the building, it had been abandoned. So, Dudzicki and his team transformed the structure into RDA's architectural studio. Meanwhile, Dudzicki and his family built a small house at the back of the site in which to live.
By 2016, RDA had outgrown the timberyard and moved its offices into a former bakery nearby converted to offices. The timberyard then "underwent several planning applications to extend the footprint to create a bigger ground floor area, increase the size of the existing basement, and create a barrel vault roof," Dudzicki says. His team then retrofitted the 2,600-square-foot building to Passivhaus standards.
The building process acknowledged the odd yet historic street pattern. The structure is in the middle of four streets, and the new, barrel-vaulted VM zinc roof provides a subtle yet contemporary addition to the Victorian streetscape. The renovation team significantly reduced the building's carbon footprint (not to mention costs) by using its existing shell and scaling back the timber and steel beam construction.
Challenges and Solutions
Among the project's many challenges, Dudzicki says, was the building's "land-locked location—it was difficult getting to and from the site." Another challenge was managing the retrofit concerning the building's southwest orientation amid "11 adjoining neighbors."
Moreover, he adds: "To create a Passivhaus residence out of an existing, poorly insulated brick building, a building made of solid nine-inch brick construction without any insulation, was difficult to achieve."
"How we would insulate became a challenge," he continues, "as well as how we would allow enough light into the building to ensure it was a comfortable place to live and work for a family of four to five occupants." Dudzicki and his wife have two teenage children, a cat and a dog.
Other Conversion Challenges
In converting the old industrial building into a home, another challenge was "keeping the height of the building as low as the highest adjacent building, while maximizing the internal space with the amount of insulation that we were using," Dudzicki explains. "This gave rise to the barrel-vaulted roof, which was clad in zinc and filled with wood fiber: A difficult but interesting solution."
The team was also challenged with vertical circulation and lighting the basement: roof lights or skylights were the answer. "The final tricky aspect involved was putting a sprinkler system in, as we wanted the ground floor to be open plan," he says. "We used a mist system to comply with building regulations."
What Home R-Values Helped Achieve EnerPHit Certification?
The thermal insulation values of the various building areas in metric terms, being based in the UK, are as follows:
- Basement slab: 0.202 W/(m2K)
- Basement walls: 0.162 W/(m2K)
- Ground Floor brick walls: 0.183 W/(m2K)
- Ground Floor extension walls: 0.093 W/(m2K)
- Extension roof: 0.085 W/(m2K)
- First Floor brick walls: 0.247 W/(m2K)
- Second Floor terrace floor: 0.161 W/(m2K)
- Second Floor walls: 0.093 W/(m2K)
- Barrel roof: 0.120 W/(m2K)
Passivhaus Complete
In addition to high-quality natural-wood-fiber insulation and air-tight construction, the home also has a Zehnder HRV system, Passivhaus-approved windows and doors, and a breathable internal plaster. Solar panels power the all-electric home.
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Home Feature Editor
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Article by
Camille LeFevre
Camille LeFevre is an architecture and design writer based in the Twin Cities.
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