Going for zero
A zero-net energy subdivision is rising in New Paltz and the homes are selling at a pace that is encouraging the builder and real estate broker to team up on building more in the area.
“I think the most important thing is our combination of technologies,” said Wendie Reid, broker and owner of Wendie Reid Realty in New Paltz. “All the homes are designed to be zero-net energy, which means they are connected to the grid, but at the end of a one-year cycle, the house will have produced more energy than it used.”
On a recent sunny day, she showed off the electric meter on one of the five occupied homes in the Green Acres development, steadily moving backward as the solar panels provided electricity to the grid.?The planned 25-home subdivision has sold five homes since the first was finished in 2009;Â two more are being designed by their future owners. Each is unique in that each house must be correctly configured to maximize solar gain.
But it is not rocket science, or even new, said builder Anthony Aebi, founder and president of Greenhill Contracting in Esopus. “Everything that was done was using stuff that was on the shelf, there is nothing that is new.” ?The 3,000-square-foot homes, which sell from between $500,000 to $650,000, use insulated concrete form (ICF), geothermal heating and cooling, solar panels and super-insulation, including triple-pane windows.  ?Aebi said that the geothermal and solar power technology is improved from past projects, “but not terribly much” and added that ICF has been available for more than a decade, developed as an earthquake resistant building option. He said the window technology has been used in Europe for about a decade.
The lack of fossil fuel residue, he said, as well as the airflow design and concrete and other natural materials make for a healthy building where mold and insects are unable to breed. And, he said, the concrete homes are far more valuable than conventional homes because they will stand for literally hundreds of years. ?Reid said the economic math make the homes much more valuable than stick-built McMansions.
The typical home in the Green Acres subdivision is about 3,000 square feet, with three or four bedrooms and three full bathrooms, and has livable space from basement to attic. She provided comparable costs for a standard stick-built house of the same size, showing that while initial costs for a zero net energy home are higher, they are offset by tax credits.?Specifically she compared a standard home costing $453,000 with a zero-net energy home costing $600,000.
The standard home down payment is  $91,000 versus the $120,000 for a zero-net home, costs that roughly equals out when the $30,000 in available tax credits are figured in. At a 5 percent mortgage over 30 years, the standard home pays $23,300 annually in payments, while zero-net pays $30,900. But that home has no energy or utility bills and so the annual cost of operating both houses turns out to be the same, roughly $30,400.