The ABC Green Home gets closer to the building process and utilizes its project players to put forward the construction planning in a collaborative effort.

By Eddie Ponce

It is great to be working with an extraordinary team of individual leaders in the construction industry with the ABC Green Home project. We have come together on a collaborative platform to aid in creating a Net-Zero home. The 1,700 square-foot, one-story home will become a standing structure and this project will become a playground for the residential construction industry to learn as much as possible and integrate cutting-edge technology that they can implement into their own design platforms.

Paul Peck of Paul A. Peck & Associates has assisted the development in the civil design work of the home. Peck has helped us in the placement of this project to achieve the best orientation possible at the notable location at the Great Park in Irvine, Calif. He has also worked on precise grade plans that will assure the home meets all factors that it must comply with, per the city of Irvine's planning standards. We are also working on a Rain Water Cistern for landscape use -- another great feature -- and with this we are looking into different ways of collecting water run-off. In our exploration of this feature, we plan on capturing water from rain gutter down spouts, area drains and the hardscape through the Belgard pavers.

This system will work in conjugation with the impressive hardscape and drought-tolerant landscape designs by Michael Schrock's team at Urban Arena, LLC -- another green team group member. The project aims to be a minimal burden on the strained domestic and reclaim water conservation programs that the municipalities face. Ryan Rose of Albus- Keefe & Associates, the geotechnical engineer of the project, has been out at the site with me conducting a geotechnical investigation for our construction parameter. With this information, we were able to share it with Saeed Bekam's team at Gouvis Engineering who is the structural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer. His team then incorporated the information with the well-crafted, Universal Design of Manny Gonzales from KTGY Group, Inc., to produce the structural and mechanical sets of plans. With these sources complied, it becomes the cornerstone of the foundation for this project.

With strong groundwork set in place from a hardworking team of partners and with the criteria set for us by Southern California Edison (SCE) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), we have reached out to some of the industry's top leaders -- such as Steve Easley and Rick Chitwood on exterior home assemblies, and Gary Klein on hot water distribution. From this collaborative effort, we are going to use new cutting-edge technology from many different areas.

In order to limit our use on renewable resources, we are using state-of-the-art electric smart appliances from Whirlpool. As of yet, there are no dual propose gas / electric smart appliances out on the market.

So there is no need to bring gas onsite, eliminating the strain and dependability of another natural resource. The home also includes Daikin Altherma electric heating and cooling system; spray foam in the walls and underside of roof decks and ridged foam on the wall system, as well as on the concrete slab edge and under concrete slab system. With the benefit of the AQUIS grey water system from Sloan, the ABC Green Home is looking at eliminating up to 600 gallons of domestic water per bathroom. And with the aid of the solar system on the roof at roughly a 4.7 KW, the home is expected to meet the Net-Zero energy requirements. Our design team has the great opportunity of being able to work with Chuck Good-Man of iPda in the BIM Collaborate program. This program gives our design team the ability to collaborate with each other in real-time. This has cut a lot of the design process time down, making the design team much more efficient and effective. Modeling the house in 3D has given us the ability to view all the elements of the house and eliminate design faults prior to building out in the field, cutting cost and potential time lost. The team also has the opportunity to practice with the new, PlanWell Collaborate program cloud application from ARC, which is a localized place that all team members can store and view information regarding the home and the planning and construction process. Working with this great team in a collaborative setting has made this a steady and successful design process, and sets the tone for the rest of the building process that is soon to follow.

Eddie Ponce is contract manager for Southern California Edison. He may be contacted at eddie.ponce@sce.com.