Energy Star Home Architects are also Timber Frame Designers
Using Energy Star principles, home architects are crafting timber frame and other custom designs that yield energy efficient residential projects.
Soellner is of the few Energy Star home architects selected by DOE/EPA as an Energy Star Partner.
Rand Soellner Architect has been creating residential designs for decades, and also performed the site selection analysis, programming, site planning and conceptually designed the New Florida Solar Energy Center in the 1980s. This is one of the few Energy Star home architects with strong commercial and technical experience, long before the term “Green Home Architects” and “Green Design” were even coined. His latest house designs incorporate time-tested energy-efficient techniques along with cutting edge systems, features and materials to result in some of the top green home designs in the World.
Rand Soellner Architect established a Green Design Initiative to help spread Energy Star Home Architects knowledge across America.
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Home Architects Creating Houses Using Energy Star
“Back then, it was called Environmental Architecture, Energy Efficient Architecture, Energy Conservation, Environmentalism and Ecology,” said Soellner. Since then, Rand Soellner has designed energy efficient homes with recycled materials, many in mountainous regions, developing systems used by Energy Star home architects.
Two of his latest generation of residential designs, his “Mountain Retreat Series” are under construction now, one in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, the other in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
Above, you can see a portion of one of these houses, highlighting the bold timber frame trusses for the roofs, a technique Soellner has perfected in his mountain designs, utilizing elements of post and beam and timber frame design and conventional construction, creating a blend called “hybrid” construction for mountain house designs.
Energy Star Home Architects Designing Better Houses for the 21st Century
Soellner said that he has developed one of the few Energy Star home architects + Healthy Home Design Specifications in the World. “I used to fix sick governmental buildings in Central Florida,” he said, “It is surprising what you can learn studying the mistakes of others. Some of these buildings were designed by large engineering firms.”
Soellner’s company recently started a series of press releases, the first of which was called “Se Habla Green,” in which these Energy Star home architects began their first Green Design Checklist 1, something that he said he has never seen until now. Armed with the techniques Soellner has acquired from sources like his Energy Star Partnership with the US DOE/EPA and his own hard-won experience over decades designing both custom houses and commercial projects (he was architect of record on about half of Jurassic Park for Universal Studios in Orlando).
Architects Use Energy Star Recycling Techniques for Home Projects
Some of his techniques are as simple as specifying that the contractors on his residential projects use 2 smaller dumpsters instead of one larger dumpster. One is for recycled materials, the other for landfill debris, which reduces the carbon footprint on the planet from his projects, he explained.
Efficient LED Lighting used in Homes by Energy Star Architects
Other features used by Energy Star architects in residential designs are more high-tech, such as optional LED lighting, which uses approximately 1/6th the amount of electrical energy for lighting as incandescent light bulbs. Soellner co-analyzed the newer LED lamps (the technical term for light bulbs) versus conventional incandescent bulbs with his themed Mountain Resort Design Team electrical engineers, Beaudin Ganze Consulting Engineers. Click here <energy efficient home lighting> to see that post.
Green Design Key to Energy Efficient Creations
Some things in Soellner’s Green Design houses are as simple as instructing owners to use their drapes. “Some things are just common sense,” said Rand Soellner, “you pull your drapes closed during hot summer days in rooms where you don’t have much of a view, and open them during sunny winter days, to admit the sun. It is amazing the amount of energy you can save on your utilities using this simple technique. Soellner also specifies double-pane insulated glass with low-E coatings to improve the efficiency of his window areas.
North Carolina Architectural firm Promotes Energy Star Agenda Right Here
Rand Soellner Architect is one of a handful of Cashiers architects and has many designs in the Cashiers, Highlands, Lake Toxaway, Glenville, Brevard, Hendersonville and Asheville, North Carolina area. He also has projects throughout the USA and the World. He intends to continue refining his Energy Star Home Architects techniques and when he has developed enough for a book, he said he will probably entertain an offer that Images Publishing made to him last year when they included several of his projects in House With A View, a full color glossy coffee table book about the best mountain houses all over the World. See www.HomeArchitects.com for more information.
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tags:
energy star , Cashiers NC , Highlands, timber frame architect, post and beam, green, Hendersonville, Charlotte, Atlanta, efficiency, asheville, denver, lake mead, lake tahoe, new york, chicago, jackson hole.
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Contact Information for energy star home architects:
Rand Soellner Architect
Rand Soellner
Website: www.HomeArchitects.com
E-mail: randsoellner@earthlink (dot) net
Phone: 828-269-9046
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GREEN HOME DESIGN UNIVERSITY QUESTIONS, for those of you taking Rand Soellner Architect’s course of green instruction: about the above subject:
1. Energy Star home architects create houses that?
a. Use less resources to build and operate them.
b. Use a large boiler in the basement.
c. Use a lot of ceramic tiles.
2. What is an energy efficient choice for the glass in your windows?
a. A Low-E coating, double pane glass and homeowner operation of insulated drapes.
b. Single pane glass.
c. no roof overhangs.
3. What is a more energy efficient choice for lighting in your house that is also environmentally sound:
a. incandescent.
b. LED.
c. CFL.
If you are continuing in your Green Home Design University course to the next level,
Favorite this page now, by clicking on your “Favorites” menu choice in the upper left of your Windows Internet Explorer window,
then click here: Eco-FriendlyArchitects to go to the next level 14.
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answers:
1. a., 2. a., 3. b.
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Links and resources:
Energy Star: www.energystar.gov