Energy efficiency and sustainability take center stage at two new Las Vegas developments built by Pulte Homes, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders.

普尔特（Pulte）的Azure Canyon开发项目位于西南拉斯维加斯，郊区不断增长的边缘遇到了萎缩的沙漠。每个Azure Canyon房屋都符合当地房屋建筑商协会建立的“绿色建筑”标准。房屋的规模从1,788到2,088平方英尺不等，房屋的售价为230,000美元至260,000美元。

To minimize energy losses, Pulte locates all the homes’ ducts within the conditioned space; some ducts are run through 20-in. open-web floor trusses, while others are located in the conditioned attic. All duct seams are sealed with mastic, and the tightness of every completed duct system is verified with a Duct Blaster test.

Defining the envelope

Pulte使用自己的工人而不是分包商进行电气，管道和HVAC工作，并培训所有工人，以维持空气障碍的完整性。“我们的许多计划都有各种颠簸，其中一些只是装饰，”内华达州Pulte Pulte Design的Robert Broad解释说。“当我们定义热包膜时，我们经常将其简化 - 一些凸起的位置在信封之外。对于每个悬臂或海湾区域，每个人都需要了解我们要密封的边界。有时，我们实际上会喷涂信封的位置。”

Training is an ongoing process. “We do pre-insulation behind tubs and showers,” said Broad. “But sometimes we still have to fix insulation that has been moved by the plumber. We’re trying to get the guys to recognize that if they tear out some insulation to do the plumbing, they have to replace it appropriately.”

每个房屋都会接受鼓风机测试

At every Azure Canyon house, Pulte workers verify the integrity of the air barrier by performing a blower-door test. “We run the blower door and go around with a smoke pencil and look where we could do better,” said Broad. “We walk around and say, ‘What else are we missing?’ ”

To meet the requirements of Environments for Living (EFL), a voluntary energy-efficiency standard, third-party verifiers perform additional blower-door tests on one out of every seven new Pulte homes. Among the services provided by the EFL program is a framework for utility bill guarantees. On all of its Las Vegas homes, Pulte provides a guarantee that covers energy for space heating and cooling. Energy used for cooking,domestic hot water use, and plug loads are excluded from the guarantee. Since it is based on kilowatt-hours of electricity and therms of gas, not dollars spent, the guarantee is independent of energy cost fluctuations.

Low heating and cooling loads

由于对空气密封的谨慎关注，Azure Canyon Homes需要的HVAC系统比可比的房屋要小得多。布罗德说，在解释用于计算加热和冷却负荷的方法时，“舒适工程的约翰·斯帕戈（John Spargo）进行了我们的手册J计算，这需要很多细微差别和判断力。他缩小了渗透率的范围，并在热增量计算上应用了比您通常发现的更具体的输入。他在所有这些投入的边缘。与典型的HVAC承包商相比，他的计算以手动J的80％运行。”

仍然需要改进的空间

Azure Canyon房屋的指数评级为61或62，但可能更低。“我们的她的分数是基于最坏的方向，” Broad解释说。像大多数生产制造商一样，普尔特没有努力根据被动太阳能原则来定位其房屋。结果，屋顶悬垂并未针对夏季阴影进行优化，窗户方向是随机的。

Broad描述了Pulte用作“您的基本低E窗口”的窗口。到目前为止，他一直在尝试说服他的公司升级到来自红衣主教的Suncoat Max Glazing，这是一种带有改进的温暖边缘垫片和较低热量增强系数的玻璃。

Each home gets an energy monitor

Another Pulte development is Villa Trieste, a planned community that will eventually include 185 homes measuring between 1,487 and 1,960 square feet. All Villa Trieste homes, like those at Azure Canyon, are enrolled in the Environments For Living program. The homes are equipped with efficient appliances: 15 SEER air conditioners, 92% AFUE gas furnaces, and Rinnai on-demand gas water heater.

Each Villa Trieste home is equipped with a whole-house energy monitor, or “energy dashboard,” mounted on a wall near the kitchen. These EcoConcierge meters from In2 Networks display real-time energy use and water-use data. “The dashboard is Internet-connected. If I’m at work, I can adjust the AC from my office,” said Walter Cuculic, Pulte’s director of strategic marketing. “The thought is that by paying attention to the energy dashboard,homeowners will be able to reduce their energy use by 5 or 10%.”

每个屋顶上的太阳能

Every home at Villa Trieste will include a 1.76-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) array using SunPower SunTile roof-integrated PV modules. Pulte’s practice of ignoring orientation complicated the task of identifying the best south-facing roof slopes for the PV arrays. “It was a little bit challenging,” admits Cuculic. “For some of the lots, we had to restrict the possible elevations — for example, we may tell a customer that you can’t have a ‘Spanish’ elevation on this lot.”

The cost of installing PV arrays at Villa Trieste is being subsidized by several grants from the local utility and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). A portion of the $7 million DOE grant — equivalent to $37,000 per home — will be used to study whether the homes’ energy dashboards help homeowners lower their energy use.

如果Pulte成功地为Villa Trieste的每所房屋获得LEED Platinum认证的目标，该社区将成为该国最大的LEED Platinum Homes集合。自从Villa Trieste的第一个评级房屋获得了43或44的印象深刻的HERS索引分数以来，该社区取得了一个良好的开端。

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与Pulte销售合伙人解释了如何

她使用_品质的建筑室_出售绿色建筑的隐藏功能。