Fischer Residence, 36 Years in the Making of a Green Home

The craftsman style of the entrance is a welcoming feature at the end of the semi-circular drive. Walt never forgot the lot when he visited it many years before while on the job as the Public Works Director for Miami Township. The property overlooks the Little Miami River valley and you can see downtown Cincinnati in the distance. The house is Energy Star 5 Star+ with a HERS rating of 41 (that means it’s 59 percent more efficient than an average home). Dovetail Solar and Wind will add an 8KW PV system to the roof in the Spring of 2015 which will lower the HERs rating even more.

The property has a walk out basement from the pool table room and the hot tub patio. The second floor patio is screened all around. The passive solar design has triple pane windows on the south side with a special coating schedule to allow the sunlight to warm the rooms. The window brand is Pella 350 triple pane vinyl with added foam core frames.

The distinctive entrance to the great room has a natural ventilation window on the north side that funnels all the hot air up and out for those mild late spring and early fall days.

The home has a poured concrete basement with framing above grade. It includes a tornado room which doubles as a wine cellar. Insulation is Knauf Jet Stream ULTRA, a white fiberglass insulation which provides R23 in the 6” walls and R49 in ceiling. Each bag contains the equivalent of over 30 recycled bottles, with a minimum of 60% post-consumer recycled glass content. It will NOT support mold or mildew, is non-combustible, does not give off any chemical vapors and is Greenguard Gold certified by UL Environment.

Peg and Walt love their large kitchen with double ovens and natural stone counter tops. It opens up to the living room and is off of the laundry room hallway to the garage.

Both levels of the home benefit from passive solar heating. With large windows on the south side of the home, sunlight comes through the windows and is lowered in frequency to infrared radiation to warm the floors and furnishings.

The eight seat theatre to-die-for has a screen painted on the far wall. A special paint and high powdered projector delivers a bright sharp image.

Modern homes are very well sealed. For older homes up to 30% of your heat and cooling can go right out the window. It’s like having a window open all year round! In order to provide fresh air to the home without losing energy, Walt points to the air-to-air heat exchanger. For example in winter, the warm stale air is exhausted through thousands of channels surrounded by the incoming cold fresh air. As the two air masses pass each other, heat is transferred through the thin walls of the air channels.

Hard water in the region can be a real problem but Walt wanted a better solution than a traditional salt water softener. This one creates a magnetic field around the incoming water pipe causing the minerals to become charged and precipitate out of the water.