100 Cove Pointe Ln Oak Ridge, TN 37830

Perfect blend of Old World Charm & Energy Efficient Technology! This Zebra Alliance custom Craftsman Style home showcased on HGTV is designed with green features like geothermal heating and cooling with rain garden, & other energy efficient features tested to be 50% more energy efficient than homes built to local code. Also features Fan-tech air exchanger system. Over 4,000 square feet of beautifully finished living space that includes a state of the art kitchen and a media center. Convenient to the heart of Crossroads at Wolf Creek with neighborhood amenities such as swimming pool and pond - minutes from restaurants from fast food & popular chain restaurants to local favorite’s such as Big Ed’s Pizza, only 20 minutes from Turkey Creek. Close to UT Aboretum! What are you waiting for?!! btwn ORNL, TVA, DOE, and Schaad. Also included design by Barber McMurry architects.
Features: Less time required to heat water, Piping plastic and not copper, flood prevention sensors, geo thermal heating and cooling, whole house shutoff, SIPs panels reduce air infiltration which also prevents insulation sagging.Because the SIPs are sealed so tightly, the builder installed a whole-house fan to keep the air from getting stale. The advantage to using a fan is the large mixing box in the basement that pre-conditions the air coming in with the air that is being pulled out (exchanges heat, and pulls everything through a roughing filter). In a typical house, the air (and allergens, heat, etc.) are free to move in and out of the envelope with no control. This whole-house fan can run constantly, or intermittently (I think it is half-an-hour on, half-an-hour off), or shut off entirely. It pulls from all the bathrooms, so this is the same fan system that runs to keep the smell/moisture down (you can't hear it because it is running in the basement, but you can tell it is working if the light is on).

Heating and Cooling:
The exterior paint (walls and roof) reflects UV rays, rather than absorbing the heat into the walls. In the middle of the day in the summer, even the walls that are being exposed to the sun are supposed to be cool to the touch. Windows are triple-paned and argon-filled with a UV coating. The heavy overhangs on the South sides of the house mean that in the summer time, when the sun is high in the sky, the interior is shielded from the sun. In the winter, when the sun is lower in the sky, you'll get more light in. Another bonus from that feature is that the front porch is really comfortable in the mornings, while the back deck is nice in the evenings. There is literally always a place to hang comfortably outside.
Both heating and cooling is provided by a single geothermal unit, meaning that heat is pulled out of the ground in the winter, and then dumped into the ground during the summer. One of the bonuses of the system, is that in the summer time it preferentially dumps the heat into the water heater before it leaves the house... essentially heating your water for free. Water tank is believed to be a 90-gallon tank, so there is plenty of hot water.
Energy usage is going to depend on many different things. Current owners washed a lot of clothes, ran the dishwasher a lot, were constantly running in and out of the house, and had a pretty narrow comfort band on the thermostat. It probably isn't fair to compare the energy consumption of my family with a family of 3 or 10. I can say that we were paying 8.6 cents/square foot to heat our 2,800 sq-ft house in Pasco, WA, and 7.6 cents/square foot to cool it. We paid 16.1 cents/square foot to heat a 3,000 sq-ft house in North Knoxville. We paid 5.6 cents/square foot to cool and 5.1 cents/square foot to heat at Cove Pointe. I don't think it is fair to compare the house to Pasco, because a large part of the savings were in the utility costs themselves. I don't think it is fair to compare the house to North Knoxville house either, because it was terribly inefficient. That being said, owner indicates you can pass on that the energy-saving features reduced utility costs by about a 25% in the summer, and more than 50% in the winter.

In real dollar terms, without anyone in the house this June (so discounting the large family showering, washing clothes, and running in and out, etc.) we paid $110 to maintain the house at 68 degrees!

Final note:
One of the other things owner toyed with (from an energy efficiency standpoint) is that the metal roof is ideal for both setting up a water catchment system (less filtering because you don't need to remove sand from asphalt shingles) and installing solar panels (special clips are made just for these roofs). Imagine installing a 20kW system and a few thousand gallons of catchment and never paying another utility bill again! How cool would that be?