Nestled in the shadow of Boulder, Colorado lies a fertile 20 acre parcel of farmland. What was once a sleepy, vacant lot has now become the scene for a modern residence with a big environmental conscience.

Approximately a year ago, the Sopher Sparn team loaded up a couple of large pizzas, threw on some hard hats, and headed over to one of our largest job-sites; a project we call the ‘Net Zero Modern Family Farm’. What was formerly a sprawling expanse of Colorado prairie had already morphed into the immense skeleton of an 8000+ square foot home.

While the home’s immaculate contemporary aesthetic is more than enough to stir up feelings of house-envy, underneath all the glass, stucco, wood, and steel are various intricate and delicate systems that make more to this house than meets the eye. The employment of multiple green technologies buried within the home’s structure, at over 8000 sf with a barn, equipment shed, and a large pool, have engineered this net-zero residence to boast an HERS index (home energy rating system) of minus 29.

A net-zero home, as implied by the name, means that a home requires no outside energy to support itself. The -29 HERS rating means that the net-zero modern family farm will actually produce 29% more energy than it will use making it at the time of appraisal, the most energy-efficient home in Boulder County. 

With fiercely environmentally-conscious clients, the path to net-zero was prioritized from the beginning. There was no shortage of enthusiasm from any of the involved parties to make this house the most environmentally ethical home it could be. When the homeowners dream of having a pool began to pose a threat to the home’s energy-efficiency, the design team put their heads together with two of Boulder’s top energy consultants, Populus LLC and Sustainably Built to find a sustainable solution while keeping the homeowner’s wishes a top priority. The solution utilizes unparalleled energy-conservation systems that both preserve and generate energy concurrently. The main systems include Grid-tied photovoltaic panels, to reduce the electrical loads throughout the home and ensure mechanical systems align with output of solar generation systems, a vertical axis wind turbine, and Geothermal heating and cooling system. The home will also include expansive south-facing, high performance, triple glazed windows that passively allow solar energy to flood the living space, a super-insulated building envelope, heat recovery ventilators that continuously bring in fresh air while extracting energy from exhausted, stale air, and long-standing LED lighting managed by a low-voltage home automation system and integrated throughout the house. To ensure that the interior environment of the home was as safe for the family as the house is for the earth, the team incorporated recycled construction materials (ex. FSC-Certified engineered wood flooring) and non-toxic, environmentally safe finishes.

A year later at the job-site, the home is still not yet complete but has evolved substantially from the shell we explored 12 months prior. The roof is on, bathrooms tiled, dry-wall finished and even the electronic dog-door is up and running. One of the most remarkable rooms in the home, however, is the sizable crawlspace that houses many of the home's green technologies. The intricacy of the equipment is mind-boggling, as is the fact that the neatly organized labyrinth of pipes and gauges all function simultaneously to sustain this state of the art Colorado home. The excess energy that the home produces will initially be stored and then sold back to the city. The homeowners hope to lease out some of their land to a small organic farming operation down the road. The Net-Zero Family Farm is expected to be complete by Fall 2015.