Designing an Energy Efficient House on Existing Foundation

This video is a great example of how you can build a relatively affordable, urban, energy-efficient house on an existing foundation. Houses in St Paul Minnesota, and all over the world, have old houses on tight urban sites that need to be redeveloped.

Tom Fisher is a Professor in the School of Architecture and teaches Urban Design at the University of Minnesota in the heart of the Twin Cities.

The house was designed so that you could live on one floor, and age in place. It will be as energy-efficient as possible and will have a solar array on the south-facing roof slope. One of the appeals of the site was its ability to generate a lot of the house's energy from the sun. It will have highly insulated walls, a roof, and a floor. It also will have all new windows. The house will not be certified Passive House, but it is being built very close to that standard.

Tom and his wife Claudia had originally wanted to renovate the existing house that was on the site, but unfortunately, there was too much structural damage over the last 100 years to save it, so it was more cost-effective to simply tear down and start fresh from the foundation up.

During the demolition, about 80% of the existing building materials will be recycled. The demolition crew has been sorting the materials as they go into different piles for the stucco, metal, wood, appliances, and stained-glass windows.

By keeping the existing foundation, not only does it save money, but also doesn’t disturb the existing trees on the site, which some are over 100 years old.

The house is modest at around 1700 square feet with about 1000 of that on the main level. By using the windows to project out, the interior space feels bigger plus there is the bonus of window seats which means less furniture is needed.

Tom and Claudia wanted to live off the grid as much as possible. There was a gas line in the existing house that will be capped off as they wanted to decarbonize the house as well as reduce their risk of exposure to carbon monoxide.

Finally, learn how a Tesla Powerwall in the basement is reducing their need to draw from the grid at night and can be used if there is a power outage.