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The Viridiscent House in Falmouth, Maine generates 3 times as much power as it uses! The extra power is used for TideSmart’s logistics facility.
The Viridiscent House is “net positive,” maybe the most net positive house in the Northeast, producing three times as much electricity as it consumes. This is a result first and foremost of an incredible building envelope and high insulation values. The building, designed by BRIBURN , with Chris Briley as project architect, is a certified Passive House and sports triple pane windows, an advanced ventilation system, ductless mini-split heat pumps, and a roof filled with a 19.4 kW solar array. Since solar was part of the original vision of the structure, the roof design is ideal for solar (perfect angle and orientation, with no dormers, vents, or other obstructions on its south-facing side).
Building owner Steve Woods, who operates TideSmart Global , the campus on which the Viridiscent House sits, says that with a house this insulated, they have not (as of Dec 3) had to turn the heat on! In fact, typically only January and February are heating months. The desire to build such a high-performance structure comes directly from Steve’s commitment to a new model of business and a sense of responsibility for future generations.
“The Yellow House [structure which preceded Viridiscent House] was killed by climate change,” he jokes, “So Viridiscent House was my way of getting back – doing something about the problem.”
For the last six years, TideSmart has practiced sustainability on their 7 acre campus in a number of ways. In addition to recycling, water reclamation, and minimizing impacts on their building site in Falmouth, they installed their first solar array in 2010 and an electric car charging station a year later (only the third in Maine at the time). So when the opportunity to develop the Viridiscent House came, it was the continuation of a series of efforts.
“The goal of all this is to show that business owners and property owners have a higher obligation to the environment and to the community than simply being a place where people show up for 40 hours and then go home,” Steve says. “We believe that businesses should be models of sustainability and the way you can do that is to open your facilities to the community – for example, we offer our EV chargers for free use after-hours and on weekends. We host a number of community events here. We don’t want just a state of the art business, we want a meaningful relationship with the community around us and the earth below us.”
Learn more about TideSmart Global, an experiential group of marketing agencies – specializing in healthcare, sports marketing, retail marketing and all forms of event marketing. Or read more about the Viridiscent House .
