A Tour for the Kids

One of the goals of the New Norris House is to have a positive impact on the local community. We recently hosted a second grade class from Norris Elementary. The kids were really excited to see what they are learning in school being applied in the local neighborhood. After taking two groups through the home and landscape, our tour was unfortunately postponed due to weather.


We were very impressed with how much the kids already knew about living sustainably. They had some great questions and it was a pleasure to hear them share about what they were learning in school. The teachers at Norris Elementary must be doing a great job! Hopefully we will be able to reschedule soon!

If you have a group that would like to tour the home and landscape contact us at newnorrishouse@tennessee.edu

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.

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.

USGBC Tour

Before talking about the latest New Norris House happenings, I should introduce myself. My name is Eric Bennett, one of the Graduate Research Assistants for the New Norris House. I am currently in my final year of the Master of Architecture program at UTK. I received my undergraduate degree in architecture from Clemson University in 2007 and I was able to get a few years of professional experience before returning to school last year. This is my first semester being involved with the New Norris House and I will be specifically working to interpret all of the energy data that is being monitored in the home. I will also help lead several tours through the home.


Last week, the New Norris House hosted a tour for the local USGBC members. It was a great learning experience for the tour attendees as well as a test for the New Norris House team to answer some specific questions from well versed local professionals. The USGBC members were led through the different phases of the project's development, from the historical precedent of the Norris community, preliminary design, off-site and on-site construction, landscape design, and through the current Phase IV, energy and water monitoring programs.

While all of the tour guests were very impressed with the overall sustainability aspects of the home's design and systems integration, the greatest compliments were aimed towards the excellent craft of construction. With all the credit going to the "newly skilled" UT students involved with the project, the New Norris House was referred to as "a beautifully conceived and executed work". So to all of the current and past students involved with the project, your hard work and dedication is being recognized, well received, and will hopefully pave the way for more design-build projects to take place within the University. I am sure that the experience gained by working on the New Norris House will have an immeasurable impact on your future career. I am excited to be involved with such a great project and I look forward to sharing what we learn.

Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

There was a great turnout for the ribbon cutting ceremony and open house tours. The ceremony celebrated the last 2.5 years of hard work by students and faculty as well as the wonderful support from the local Norris community and other project contributors.


Opening remarks were made by Scott Poole, the new Dean of the College of Architecture & Design at UT Knoxville. The other speakers included:

Jimmy G. Cheek, Chancellor, UT Knoxville
Samuel Mortimer, Bachelor of Architecture '10
Loy Johnson, Council Member, City of Norris
Kevin Clayton, CEO, Clayton Homes


The distinguished speakers were joined by other project supporters for the formal ribbon cutting.


Although this event was a well deserved "job well done" for everyone involved, it also marks the beginning of the year-long residency, demonstration, and extensive energy monitoring program. As a Master of Architecture student at UT and one of the Graduate Research Assistants this year, I will be helping to monitor and interpret the collected data to see how well the home's systems are functioning. I am excited to be part of this phase of the process and I am looking forward to sharing what we learn with you. Keep checking in for weekly updates on the New Norris House.

LEED for Homes

Over the course of the past 3 months I have been working to complete our LEED for Homes submission to the USGBC (United States Green Building Council) in hopes of achieving a Platinum certification. We are well over the Platinum threshold and are currently projecting that we will exceed it by 27 points. Once certified, we will be the 6th (maybe 7th) LEED for Homes Platinum project in the state of Tennessee. Furthermore, we will be the first LEED platinum project in the University of Tennessee's building stock.

While the documentation itself is more or less complete, we have been working on a large publication to accompany our submission. We hope that our efforts can serve as a case study for others and the book will be available for purchase/ download in the coming months! Below you will find some draft spreads of the 264 page document. Enjoy!

The cover of the book.

The fist section deals with the story and background of the New Norris House. This includes history, design objectives and strategies, and process work.

The second section is the home's user manual. It contains specific information about the operation of the home's systems (rainwater, solar hot-water, HVAC, etc), care and maintenance schedules (floor, siding, landscape, etc) as well as information about lifestyle choices (recycling, composting, purchasing greenpower, etc).

The third and final section is a detailed description of every LEED point acquired by the project. In the credit shown above, information is given about removed exotic species and efforts to re-mediate the site.

This credit details efforts made to avoid the use of tropical wood (in our case, lauan).

The above credit details efforts made to control contaminants during the construction phase.

Ribbon Cutting and Open House

I am pleased to announce the formal ribbon cutting for the New Norris House project will be next week, the afternoon of Thursday the 25th. If anyone is in the area, please mark your calenders! This event is the culmination of 2.5 years of work, and will kick off the year long live-in evaluation period.

There will be a formal opening, a few words by university administration and project partners, and of course tours of the home. In addition, a few historical Norris homes will be opening for viewing/comparison, as well as a small exhibit in the city museum.

Hope to see you all there! If you live in Norris, then we want to see you there for sure!

Monitoring Equipment

Thanks to Tony and Philip with ORNL for their all their help to setup our monitoring efforts for the house! Data is coming in and we hope to share some tidbits soon!

Monitoring NNH Performance

We recently met with Jeff Christian (Director, Buildings Technology Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory) to get an expert's opinion on determining a strategy to monitor the performance of the New Norris House. We discussed some general areas of focus: temperature, humidity, energy use, daylight, and air/water quality testing. In each case, a different approach to monitoring is to be considered. Jeff was able to show us some useful examples of testing instruments, including thermocouples and thermistors, current transducers, data loggers, pyranometers, etc., but encouraged that we take a close look at our personal monitoring goals and design an instrumentation plan with the exact equipment that best suits our needs. He also extended an invitation to his lab where he could help guide us in constructing our desired testing equipment.

The level of detail that can be monitored is seemingly infinite, so part of our challenge is to pose specific questions and set attainable testing goals that will still acquire enough data for a meaningful study. While our immediate focus remains fixed on the NNH, these monitoring studies could potentially apply to a much larger scope. If we can use our comprehensive data to illustrate the superior performance of the NNH in terms of sustainability, then we can begin comparative studies with older homes in the Norris community as an incentive for homeowners to retrofit these less efficient houses with similar sustainable technology.