New Photos Added

Check out some of the new photos just uploaded onto http://thenewnorrishouse.com/photos.htm. New finished exterior, interior and site photos have been added as well as some photos of the events that have taken place on site.

As Spring is quickly approaching, we are beginning to set up more public tours of the house. If you are part of a group or organization that would like to tour the house, send us an e-mail at newnorrishouse@tennessee.edu for more information.

Getting from Point A to Point B

Although the town of Norris is pedestrian friendly, traveling outside town limits requires transportation by car. While living in downtown Knoxville, we didn’t rely too much on our cars. Ken could walk, bike, or ride the trolley to the university. Since I telecommute, the only driving I did was a once a week trip to the grocery store, and errands or appointments that couldn’t be taken care of downtown. It was a nice change of pace not having to fill gas tanks weekly like we did in Phoenix; with the exception of some longer weekend trips, we weren’t using much gasoline to get around town.

gas prices on the rise (source)

Our transportation situation has changed now that we live in Norris. Ken has to drive to campus; the commute is about 23 miles one way and takes about 30-40 minutes depending on traffic. However, his time spent on the road is equivalent to the amount of time it took to walk or ride the trolley to campus from downtown Knoxville.

23 mile commute from NNH to UTK

I’m still telecommuting part-time, but this semester I’m also completing a practicum with a company in Oak Ridge. This means that half of the week I’m driving about 21 miles one way for 40-45 minutes to get to the office. It’s a scenic route, but not on the freeway and with a fair amount of stop-and-go traffic.

21 mile commute from NNH to Oak Ridge

As I’m driving more often now, I’m reminded that a daily commute has financial impacts. Gasoline prices continue to rise. Although both our cars get close to 30 miles per gallon so we’re not filling up quite as often, it’s impossible to escape the price hikes. Every driver has maintenance and insurance costs, and maybe a car payment as well. Other impacts are on personal time—no matter the length of the commute, and on the environment—air quality being affected the most.

(source)

The New Norris House is very energy efficient, but we have to drive while living here. I’m left wondering if it’s better in the long run to live in a highly efficient home and commute to work, or eliminate a commute and live close to work and other amenities in a house or apartment that's not as energy efficient?

Analyzing Energy Use

Here is a snapshot of the preliminary energy data received from our eMonitor system. The eMonitor is connected to each of the home's circuits and allows us to remotely see real-time energy use.

Before the home was constructed, the energy use calculations for the New Norris House (1008 sf) were projected at 40.13 kBTUs/sf/year OR 12.05 kWh/sf/year. Using our collected data, the actual total energy use is 23.8 kWH per day OR 8.62 kWh/sf/year (based on 6 months of data from Jul 01 2011 – Jan 26 2012) - significantly less than projected and 61.3% less than the typical US household.

Data from the New Norris House will be collected for an entire year. This data will be used to refine the prototype and disseminated for life-cycle assessment studies.

Walkable Norris

Pedestrian-friendly. Clustering of commercial areas. Front porches. Smaller yards. Urban-growth boundaries. Many who are in city planning today envision these characteristics as part of an ideal community. Back in 1933, those ideal characteristics were built into the town of Norris. Originally established as a place to house the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) workers who were building the Norris Dam, Norris today looks much the same as it did 75 years ago.

the path continues under the bridge

The TVA city designers borrowed ideas for the design of Norris from the English garden city movement of the 1890s. These plans included winding roads that followed the contours of the terrain, greenbelt design principles, a central business area, houses with doors that opened to a central area, and walking paths. (It was a given that the homes built in the town would be fully electric, powered by the new energy source created by the TVA.)

the path to the town center

The completely walkable aspect of the Norris city design has remained. Walking paths are much like sidewalks, and run parallel to the roads. But they also weave through clusters of houses and underneath bridges. Every so often we’ll take a different route when out on a walk and will inevitably discover a new path to explore.

a path between homes

In the warmer months, we’ve walked to Archer’s, the local grocery store, and to the post office, located in the building next to Archer’s and Hensley Happenings, the local cafe.

the local grocery store--part of the town center

We see many people walking—on our road and throughout the community, either with their dogs, on errands, or out for some fresh air and exercise. Since it is a small town (population around 1,500), the destinations are limited, but it’s great to have the opportunity to walk to the center of town, enjoying the sights of history and nature along the way.

the post office--also part of the town center

Electricity for all

Last week, an afternoon thunderstorm knocked the power out at the house. I was working at the time, and although my laptop could run on battery for a short time, I depend on an Internet connection to connect to a remote work computer. The outage was short—only an hour—but it’s obvious how electricity is a necessity nowadays, and how easy it is to take for granted something that we depend on daily. I did some reading on the history of electricity in our area and discovered that less than 100 years ago, east Tennessee had no electricity.

The lack of electricity changed with the advent of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which is the nation’s largest public power provider. It was created as part of the New Deal in 1933 under President Franklin Roosevelt; it was one of the programs designed to bring the country out of the Great Depression, and aimed to address environmental, economic, and technological issues.

11/21/1934, Jersey City Journal; cartoon of President Roosevelt (source)

In the early 1900s, the Tennessee Valley was suffering: land was being farmed too hard and soil was eroding/depleting, crop yields were falling, farm incomes were shrinking, and 30% of the population was affected by malaria. Enter the TVA. Dams were built to generate energy from the region’s rivers, and with the introduction of electric lights, appliances, fertilizers, and new farming techniques, east Tennessee was modernized. Electricity made life easier and farms became more productive.

rural electrification:  before and after (source)

However, the TVA and Norris Dam were not without controversy. Around 15,000 families were displaced from their land and homes in the Norris Lake area. Racial discrimination persisted; many African Americans living in the region were available for work, but were not hired by the TVA. Local power companies felt the federal government should not be involved in private development and escalated a lawsuit to the Supreme Court. Despite the controversies, TVA dams were completed, and 75 years later in Norris, we’re using even more gadgets dependent upon electricity via the power of nature.

TVA dams in red (source)

For additional information, see the TVA website and the New Deal Network.

Rainwater System and LEED Certification

Here is a link to an article published last month in PHC News. The article focuses on the rainwater harvesting system at the New Norris House. Credits have been earned in all LEED for Homes categories and we expect to earn 12 out of 15 credits in the Water Efficiency (WE) Category. 4 of these points come from WE 1.1 - Rainwater Harvesting System. Our rainwater harvesting system features technology from BRAE, a subsidiary of Watts Water Technologies.

The graph above charts the water collection potential of our cistern. The blue line represents the past 10 years average rainfall for each month. Currently, we are permitted to use the harvested rainwater for non-potable sources in the home. With two residents and high-efficiency water fixtures this leads to an average of 37.4 gallons of treated rainwater used per day. Over the next 12 months we will be analyzing the treated rainwater for contaminants. If the water is deemed safe for potable use, we may see as much as 90 gallons being used per day in the home.

A week of winter

snow in the backyard

The weather in Norris this winter has felt almost spring-like, with the exception of the past week. Temperature highs have been in the low to high 50s, and the forecast for the coming week is for more of the same—highs in the mid 50s and lows in the 30s and 40s. According to the Farmers’ Almanac, Tennessee’s winter this year is going to be very mild and very wet. 

map available here

But back to the past week. Outside, the temperatures dropped into the 30s for the highs and into the 20s for the lows, and we received about an inch of snow over a two day period. We drove to campus the day after the Norris snowfall, and noticed there was no snow in Knoxville. Norris is about 1085’ in elevation, and Knoxville is about 890’, according to non-scientific measurements taken from Google Earth. While this isn’t a significant difference in elevation, the Norris/Clinton area sits on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau and the weather patterns here are different than those in Knoxville (more information here).

norris is around the 'e' in plateau (original map here)

While it was cold outside over the past week, we had our first chance to experience what it’s like inside the house during much colder temperatures. The house is very airtight, which means no cold air rushing in through gaps in windows—a welcome change from the unsealed windows in the historic building where we lived in downtown Knoxville. The heaters in the living area and swing space keep the living space warm, but we’re not using the bedroom heater. The bedroom is an enclosed area with a standard height ceiling, and stays warm enough that heat isn’t needed even at night. The loft is the warmest area in the house because it benefits from the rising heat; it’s a couple degrees warmer than the main floor.

view from the picture window at the front of the house

The short winter preview has given us an idea of what to expect inside the house when (if?) the temperatures drop again. As for more snow, time will tell if the Almanac is right and we receive more rain in the coming months instead.