Geothermal HVAC meets homeowners' desires for IAQ and comfort

The homeowners of the Proud Green Home of St. Louis wanted an HVAC system that would provide good indoor air quality and also be very energy efficient.

One of the children in the home has respiratory sensitivities, so it was important to have a heating system that did not rely on combustion like a gas furnace. A geothermal system exchanges heat with the ground through a network of pipes buried underground. There's no burning of fossil fuel, which improves air quality and makes it highly energy efficient. The system can provide heating and air conditioning and can supplement water heating as well.

In this video, Matt Belcher of Verdatek Solutions, one of the green consultants on the project, and Jeff Garner of Scott-Lee Heating and Geothermal Company, discuss the role that geothermal heating and cooling can play in a high performance home like this one.

The Proud Green Home of St. Louis was a project of ProudGreenHome.com in partnership with Hibbs Homes, Verdatek Solutions, Curtiss W. Byrne Architect, and the High Performance Buildings Research Center, part of the Midwest Energy Efficiency Research Consortium at the University of Missouri-Columbia, to build the five-bedroom, 3,700 square-foot, Prairie-style home. Designed by architect Curtiss W. Byrne, the home in Wildwood, Missouri is expected to meet a number of prominent green building standards, including:

• Energy Star for Homes
• ANSI ICC-700 The National Green Building
• DOE Zero Net Ready home
• EPA Indoor airPlus
• WaterSense

The home will undergo third-party verification to ensure its performance and quality.

Notable high performance home features include:

• Integrity Windows from Marvin
• Dow Building Solutions including spray foam insulation
• LG major appliances
• LG Electronics
• Mattingly Lumber & Millworks factory-built walls and trusses
• Benjamin Obdyke Home Slicker Rainscreen
• Boral interior and exterior brick and stone
• Cree Lighting LED lights
• Continuous slab insulation
• Huber ZIP System sheathing and tape and AdvanTech flooring
• STEP Warmfloor radiant underfloor heating
• GeoComfort geothermal heating and cooling system
• Kohler low-flow plumbing fixtures
• Zehnder America Energy Recovery Ventilation
• ACT D'MAND Kontrol Systems
• Solar power ready
• Solar water heating ready

In a partnership with the High Performance Buildings Research Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the Proud Green Home of St. Louis will be featured as part of the green building curriculum for students, and includes long-term energy and water usage monitoring.

Read more about the Proud Green Home of St. Louis.