Location

La Calera, Colombia

Challenge

The challenges for this project are very similar to the Recodo 23 project, since they are located in the same place.

• The developer wanted to offer a sustainable housing project to the local housing market standards by incorporating several “green strategies” and passive house design concepts to the architectural design.

• The main concern for the developer company was to sell houses that lowered the cost of living and the monthly bills. How to reduce the amount of energy consumed from the grid and prevent power cuts and electric shortage (very common in the location) was one of the most important features of these houses.

• How to distribute heat to indoor spaces and provide hot water efficiently considering cold weather conditions, taking in account the house architectural layout and contemplating location site conditions.

• How to maintain the gardens and green areas in mint conditions all year round without over spending money on potable water from the grid.

Area

670 sqm

Solution

• Designed and installed a solar PV system capable of injecting 1.6 Mw per hour to the household electric grid. 6 PV high efficiency solar panels of 280w working in a single line are capable of recharging 6 solar batteries during a period of 3 to 5 hours depending on sun conditions. Once the batteries were fully recharged, it could inject up to 9 Mw per hour to all the electric consumption during daytime. Thanks to this, the calculations lead to reduce consumption from the grid up to 60%. Also prevented power cuts and energy shortage all year round.

• Proposed the use of a good quality thermal insulation installed underneath main room floor, secondary rooms, all bathrooms, kitchen and TV room floors. Also proposed double brick walls with insulation layer on the East facade, that were in permanent contact with predominant winds.

• For heating up the indoor spaces, the idea was to install a 2,000 Liter central boiler tank system connected to 8 solar water panels located in the roof. They provided heat through cooper wall mounted radiators in the main areas.

• This boiler tank system also provide the household with hot water for bathrooms and laundry room, which brings the electric and gas consumption down (by at least 20% of total).

• In order to keep the huge garden green all year round, I design a mixed rain harvesting system and a grey water treatment plant. When it rains, the roof top area can recollect up to four cubic meters of water to fill the storage tanks located on garden. During the dry months, the water coming from the showers and the sinks, is treated in a wetland and reused for the irrigation system.

• Also, it reuses the treated water to flush toilets. This can reduce the consumption of potable water up to 30% from the grid.