Affordable High Performance?
Date Posted: June 11, 2024
Posted In: Discussion,
From Offsite Builder: A promising small-home modular pilot, ZeMod Delaware, has encountered some financial challenges with meeting its energy savings and home price goals, but the staff believe they can eventually reach those goals. In fact, they hope to expand the program and continue it with new funding.
The program is a collaborative project and includes the non-profit corporation Delaware Sustainable Energy Utility doing business as Energize Delaware, Milford Housing Development Corporation (MHDC), Beracah Homes in Greenwood, Delaware and the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation. Since it launched in 2019, the program has constructed six homes in Delaware’s Kent and Sussex Counties.
The program’s partners decided on the modular approach and worked to find financing and subsidies, according to Jim Purcell, Energy Efficiency Program Director at MHDC. “We also helped with closing costs and down payments.”
Performance Winners
Building scientists and homebuilders have collaborated for decades on designs, details and equipment that make homes more energy efficient, healthier, more comfortable and more durable. As a result, the road to high performance has been clearly mapped, and ZeMod certainly followed that map.
From a performance standpoint, in fact, it has been a clear winner. It was awarded the US Department of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Home award in August 2022 for one of its homes, according to an announcement from Energize Delaware. It also received the grand prize at the Energy & Environmental Building Alliance’s High Performance Home Summit in September 2022.
The modular components for the ZeMod homes were manufactured in the Beracah factory, then assembled and finished by the company’s field crews. The finished houses are designed for low-to-moderate income homeowners and feature energy efficiency and solar power.
“There essentially were two models that we had,” Purcell says. One was a small, two-bedroom, rectangular-shaped model. It was built within the confines of the plant and then assembled at the location, where it was finished and outfitted with solar. The second home was a three-bedroom ranch-style home built using the same process.