Judging Home |
TriPod: A Plug and Play Housing System (#63) |
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| Type of building: | Residential |
Entry Description | |
| TriPod is a prototype house demonstrating the "Plug and Play" concept and is designed to provide an innovative alternative to the currently unimaginative housing industry. The principle of separating served and servant spaces is utilized by creating a mechanical "core" that acts as a motherboard that is able accept multiple "pods" that are living, cooking, and sleeping spaces. This modular design allows homeowners to change their homes by adding or subtracting pods to suit their needs over time. | |
| A discussion of design for adaptability and disassembly techniques incorporated: Modularity and adaptability are the driving principles at work at every level within Tripod. All families grow when they welcome a new child and they shrink when the children grow up and leave home. Tripod adapts to these changing needs by allowing home owners to add or subtract rooms or simply swap for different sized rooms. This eliminates the need to purchase another structure on another property and it increases the lifecycle of the rooms because they are reused in other households. This system is made possible by the creation of the core and its pods. The core forms the backbone of the house. It contains all the mechanical systems and the majority of the distribution systems necessary to serve a house. Mechanical systems are continually becoming better and the core creates an architecture that can easily accept new mechanical equipment. A raised access floor creates access to the distribution systems so changes can be made and pods can be attached. A modular structural system in the house allows different type of pods to be plugged into the core as the occupant's needs change. The installation of a pod can be done in matter of an hour as demonstrated during Tripod's construction. The pod serves solely as a living space and only a simple electrical plug-in and pex tubing connection are required for the pod to be functional. Structural steel is the primary structure of the core and pods. Light gauge steel is used as secondary structure for the roof, floor and walls to support structural insulated panels(SIP). These metal panels form the enclosure and provide lateral bracing for the steel frame. 95% of structural connections are removable fasteners.The SIPs are screwed to the steel frames and their seams are finger joints sealed with butyl sealant to allow future disassembly and reuse without damaging the panels. The components of the house can be easily recycled, but the concept of Plug and Play reduces the frequency of demolition. | |
| Environmental implications of entry: Tripod has been designed to be a super energy efficient house on many different levels: A prefabricated and modular house can be assembled with greater speed and superior craft when compared to a traditional 'stick built' house constructed on site. This helps to create a house that is less leaky and is more efficient. Furthermore, prefabrication causes less damage to the site than traditional construction. The house has many features that help it to use less energy over its lifecycle. It only uses 10-25% of the electricity that would be used in a benchmark house of equivalent size. It accomplishes this by utilizing passive solar conditioning, super-insulated walls and windows, efficient appliances, daylighting, and an efficient heat pump for conditioning. Tripod uses photovoltaic panels to gather energy from the sun and this allows it to be 'zero energy house'. It generates as much electricity as it uses and therefore eliminates the need to use fossil fuel for power. | |
| Economic or policy implications of entry: The goal of the 'plug and play' concept is to give a more coherent vision to a housing industry that is truly fragmented and hasn't seen any significant change in many years. In a macro scale, the goal of the design team is to promote a web-based network for owners of the plug-and-play houses. Through this network, exchange of the modular parts can be arranged directly between owners. Once an agreement is made, the physical detach/attachment will be performed by professionals on site. A historic precedent of this can be seen in the Lustron House that utilized prefabricated homes with interchangeable parts. On a smaller scale, the homeowner will also reap the economic benefits of owning a highly energy efficient home as energy prices continue to soar. The use of photovoltaic panels, a super insulated enclosure, proper solar orientation, and highly efficient appliances and mechanical systems will all pay off in the long term. | |
| Explain how the entry advances lifecycle building education: Focusing on the Plug and Play concept, the material palette of the finishes integrates the interior space yet distinguishes the core and pod elements, while the bolts, joints and the core/pod connections remain exposed on the interior. The mechanical systems are easily viewed from inside the core so the occupants can learn how their house serves them. The dynamic and flexible nature of the house can be seen from the smallest details to its overall concept. Besides the visible connections, the design team also sought to promote smart living. A house can be built to be very efficient, but it will perform even better over its lifecycle if the occupants live efficiently as well. A touch screen serves as an interface between the 'brain' of the house and its occupants to display the energy gain from the photovoltaic panels, energy draws, as well as interior temperature and humidity in each of the pods. If the energy draw greatly exceeds gain, the screen displays a warning signal. The program offers suggestions to help the occupants live more sustainably and smartly. This interface not only enables occupants to be more aware of their daily habits through graphic displays, but also understand how various components of the house contribute towards a livable environment. | |
| Additional information: Modular Cabinets: There is no insulation between the steel studs in the house because the SIPs provide all the insulation that is needed (an R-30 construction). The space between the studs is utilized by a modular cabinet system. A variety of cabinets are designed on the same 3' foot module as the structure so they can be placed on any wall in the house. This allows the occupants to customize their shelving arrangement. Radiant Heating: Every pod is equipped with radiant floor heating. This creates warm floors that do not need carpeting and supplies a more efficient source of heat than a traditional furnace. Solar Thermal Collectors: All of the hot water for the house can be supplied by these collectors. | |
Entry Metrics | |
| Estimated building square footage: 800 square feet | |
| Tons of concrete reduced/conserved in your entry: 16 tons | |
| Explanation: 29 tons of concrete is required for slab on grade method for the same footprint. By raising the building with footers and concrete foundations (18 footers) that only weigh 12.3 tons, 16.7 tons of concrete is conserved. | |
| Tons of wood reduced/conserved in your entry: 0 | |
| Explanation: The exterior cladding is Cypress and is assembled into a pressure-equalized rain screen that greatly prolongs the life of the building enclosure. 100 year old reclaimed tongue and groove pine flooring is used with formaldehyde-free OSB sub-flooring. | |
| Tons of steel reduced/conserved in your entry: 7 | |
| Explanation: The entire structural system is steel: structural beams and columns, steel studs and joists, and insulated metal panels. All of the components are assembled using removable fasteners to allow them to be easily salvaged and reused. | |
| Tons of aluminum reduced/conserved in your entry: 0 | |
| Explanation: A raised access floor in the core is made of aluminum/plywood sandwich panels that can easily be replaced and recycled in 18”x18” modules if they are damaged. 20 gauge on both sides times core floor area yields 0.14 tons that can be recycled | |
| Tons of carpet reduced/conserved in your entry: 0 | |
| Explanation: Assuming roughly 27.8 sf of carpet tiles yields 32 lbs, interior livable area of 670 sf would require 768.6lbs of carpet tiles. However, radiant floor heating eliminate the need for carpeting since the floor will be kept warm in the cold seasons. | |
| Other material: water | |
| Tons of other material reduced/conserved in your entry: 17 tons annually | |
| Explanation: A rainwater collection tank collects roof run off (300sf) to irrigate an edible garden. 27.9 inches of rain falls on site annually during gardening season. Although not a building material, water is a commodity often disregarded in buildings. | |
| Tons of Green House Gasses Reduced: 73 | |
| Discussion of Green House Gas reduction implications of your entry: We focused on comparing our house to a benchmark house of an equivalent size. This benchmark house is assumed to use a standard construction system. We ran energy simulations (using Energy 10) on both the benchmark house and Tripod to estimate their annual energy consumption. The houses were then put in several locations in the to country see how they performed in different climates. We focused on the results for Pittsburgh, PA. Tripod is a 'zero energy house', so we will assume that it will not consume any electricity from coal burning power plants. We used the article "Estimating Seasonal and Peak Environmental Emissions Factors" by State of Wisconsin Department of Administration: Division of Energy, to determine the amount of Green House gases that correlate with each kWh that a power plant generates. This was combined with the annual energy consumption of the benchmark house to determine the amount of GHG that were being diverted by using Tripod instead of the benchmark house. The combination of energy efficiency measures and on site power generation used in Tripod is able to reduce emissions by these amounts: Carbon Dioxide: 73 tons annually Sulfur Dioxide: 0.56 tons annually Nitrogen Oxide: 0.16 tons annually | |
| Measurement tool used to calculate GHG reduction: Energy 10 in combination with "Estimating Seasonal and Peak Environmental" | |
| Website of GHG measurement tool used: http://www.keystone.org/spp/documents/WI%20EE%20Quantification%20Report_emision%20factors.pdf | |
| Other energy conservation features of your entry: Structural Insulated Panels used for the enclosure. They have a value of R-30 with only 4 inches of thickness. Passive Solar Conditioning and proper solar orientation help to reduce the needs for active systems to heat and cool the house. Windows on the south collect heat from the sun while the operable clerestory windows allow for a stack effect cooling system in the winter. Super insulated window help the reduce energy loss. An air to air Heat pump increases the efficiency of the mechanical systems. Energy efficient appliances like a convection cooktop, refrigerator, and dishwasher all reduce energy consumption. Daylighting helps to reduce energy needed for lighting. LED lighting reduces energy needed to light the house at night. | |