The Penn State Hamer Center for Community Design and the State College Community Land Trust are celebrating more than 10 years of developing sustainable and affordable housing in the State College borough.
Students and faculty from the Hamer Center develop energy efficient models and designs that the SCCLT uses to retrofit older properties and build new houses.
Yasaman Ghaffarian and Setareh Farashzadeh are graduate students who have been working with the Hamer Center for a year. They decided to get involved after learning about how these efforts made it more affordable for one of their friends to purchase her first home.
“It was a personal interest in our architectural field, and at the same time it touched us on a personal level in our lives, so it was more meaningful to us,” Ghaffarian said.
These designs focus on long-term affordability by bringing down utility costs. The Hamer Center uses guidelines from different certifications, including Zero Energy Ready Home and Passive House.
These certifications state best practices for energy, water efficiency, indoor air quality and ventilation. Hamer Center director Professor Lisa Iulo said this is a holistic approach that also focuses on making the homes more comfortable for residents.
Many of these solutions include external changes such as the installation of solar energy systems and energy efficient windows. According to Iulo, most of the retrofitting occurs within the interior structures of the older homes. Many of these homes were built with little to no insulation as they were constructed before energy codes were established.
“The insulation is absolutely essential to keep the indoor climate comfortable for people and the less insulation you have the more you have to pay for utility bills,” Iulo said
Adding insulation to the homes helps trap energy, conserving heat in the winter and blocking out heat during the summer.
The sum of these improvements, Iulo added, can significantly lower or even completely eliminate electricity costs, as homeowners are able to earn credits from excess energy generated by their solar panel system.
The Hamer Center and the SCCLT are currently working on building sustainable homes on South Garner Street as a part of their new duplex project.