Hi Guys,

I’ve found out today that my builder will build any of their plans to R2000 standards. From my reading, the intent here is that an R2000 home will be modeled, and tested and should use less than 50% of the energy of a standard house built to code.

Does this kind of meet this site’s recommendation for a “pretty good” house?

I believe these improvements will cost about $20k, and will mean that the house will be heated via heat pump, have a DHW heat exchanger, heat pump water heater, triple pane windows, full basement insulation, R10 below slab, R25 basement walls, R60 attic, etc.

It looks like most people build their main walls with an R24 mineral wool batt, with R15 of foam outside. That seems like it agrees with Martin’s recommendations on how much exterior foam to use. They also typically include a pretty decent, but not extravagantly good.

Air tightness must be tested to be less than 1.5 ACH @ 50 pa according to the standard, but my builder typically targets 1 ACH, and beats it most of the time. Their last net zero home they built, it was .69 ACH.

So, how does this sound? Is this good enough? Is it “pretty good” as per this site’s recommendations?

Solar isn’t in the cards for right now, but fundamentally, the only difference between the R2000 home, and R2000 Net Zero is the solar on the roof. The energy demands of an R2000 home should be able to be covered by solar on the roof.

The intent would be to put solar on the roof in 5-10 years, as panel prices and installation costs continue to fall, and electricity prices rise.