Building My Net Zero Energy Home: Preparing the Footer and Foundation

Reader Contribution by Staff
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Here’s a photo of the nearly completed footing, show the narrow footprint of the house. As I noted in an earlier blog, this footprint allows sunlight to penetrate deeply into the house, so each room is heated by the sun.

As you will see in subsequent blogs, I placed 5 inches of rigid polystyrene foam under the floor for insulation. I used pink board, that is, XPS or extruded polystyrene, which has an R value of 5 per inch. R-25 may seem like an awful lot of insulation, but remember, the ground beneath a home remains a constant 50 to 55 degrees and can suck a huge amount of heat out of a home during the winter. If you don’t insulate and insulate well, your house will be much colder than you would like.

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