21st Century Victorian Home NH

Welcome to our blog for the 21^st Century Victorian Demonstration Home! There is so much information to bring you up to date that we will split up the first two posts into an overview and a timeline.

Once we decided to build a home for the 2007 NH Parade of Homes (new homes to be showcased throughout the state), we wanted to find a way to really make it stand out from the 30+ other new homes in the Parade. Our first thought was the USGBC (US Green Building Council) LEED for Homes program, which is still in the pilot phase. We have been following the green homebuilding movement closely, partly as a response to client requests and partly from our interest in new technologies and advances in building science. Our experience is that a lot of homebuyers are interested in different facets of green building without calling it that, especially energy efficiency and low maintenance/ durability. At the same time, green building emphasizes items that we feel set Zetland Homes LLC apart from the average builder including excellent design capability and high performance construction techniques.

As of today, there have been no LEED homes certified in NH. There are a couple in process, so we will be the 3^rd or 4^th in the whole state, depending on the timing. We are going for the Silver rating. In conjunction, the home has to be Energy Star rated and we expect to achieve the 5 star+ rating. The Demonstration Home is just under 2300 square feet with 4 bedrooms, 2 ½ baths, and a 2 car attached garage. The exterior is going to be detailed in a folk Victorian style. It is located in a new neighborhood known as

in Loudon. The location is perfect as it has a real country feel but is just minutes to Concord. One of the technologies we hope to spotlight is geothermal heat (and cooling and domestic hot water). We have been receiving many inquires about geothermal from potential new home clients.

We are framing the house now with the somewhat difficult goal of having it 100% complete for the Parade starting the first weekend in October. Our trade contractors and suppliers know it is a tight schedule and seem enthused about the project. Several national companies have already come aboard as sponsors with several more on the way.

One of our main goals with this Demonstration Home is to show you can build green homes without using unusual or off the wall products. Instead we are focusing on materials and techniques that are considered mainstream even if they are newer and that are a result of current ideas about building each home as a total system.

Coming next . . . a timeline of how we got to this point.