“They had lofty goals,” said SALA Architect’s Marc Sloot, architect of the Hanson’s home. With most people when you talk to about Net Zero, “it’s about the house itself. But they came in and said, ‘we want to do our house and our cars’”.
Unlike many renewable energy home building projects, the Hansons wanted to build in an urban neighborhood, close to their jobs and where they’d have access to all the amenities of the city. It would have been easier to build in a suburban or rural setting where there is a greater choice of land parcels ideal for solar positioning and with fewer building codes and requirements to contend with.
With the goal of finding a lot in an urban setting to build a Net Zero home that could produce enough energy to power the house and two electric cars in mind, the Hansons were ready to move forward.