Carbon Neutral Home Coming to Deanwood

• September 13th 2010

by Joe Marhamati

A team of students and faculty from Parsons The New School for Design, Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy, and Stevens Institute for Technology are partnering with Habitat for Humanity and DC’s Department of Housing and Community Development to build a two-family carbon neutral home in Deanwood. On Sunday, stakeholders met to celebrate the beginning of a project that will utilize some of the most cutting edge clean energy technologies available today. The development of the home is being done in conjunction with the Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathalon.

The team will construct one unit of the home on the National Mall during the Solar Decathalon and another in New Jersey, and then move both units to Deanwood where they will be reassembled and constructed with the guidance of Habitat for Humanity. Representatives from The New School added that funding for the Deanwood project would be provided by a number of organizations and corporations, and that the home will eventually be sold to an area family through a no-interest loan.

Once built, the property will use state-of-the-art passive energy technologies, which aim for maximum energy efficiency to reduce the need for supplemental electricity production. The home’s energy use will be approximately 1/10 of its neighbors and will be produced by solar photovoltaic panels on its roof.

The effort, which will also take advantage of new German-inspired clean energy technologies, presents a unique opportunity for green affordable housing nationwide, according to Habitat for Humanity’s David Gano. Gano noted that once the efforts were conveyed across the affordable housing community at an upcoming conference in Portland, Oregon, he expects the strategies to be employed in future developments.

The students expressed a great deal of excitement about the project and similar hopes that it would provide a model for future urban affordable housing throughout the country. The home, which will be located at 4642 Gault Place NE (map), has a projected completion date of early next fall.

Similar Posts:

• Deanwood: A Little Bit of Country Just Inside the District’s Borders
• Solar Decathalon Showcases the Houses of the Future

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/carbon_neutral_home_coming_to_deanwood/2465.