The 2024 Virtual Concept Home by Livabl is changing how new builds are presented to the world.
Created by Zonda Home, this is an unprecedented collaboration and includes many of the biggest names in architecture, design, materials, and new builds.
The 2024 Virtual Concept Home by Livabl is about creating the best life for a homebuyer and making it attainable today. This virtual home contains up-to-the-minute innovations that make the new home industry so adaptable to rapid change.
As a founding sponsor of the 2024 Virtual Concept Home by Livabl, the Propane Energy and Research Council (PERC) has offered a multitude of options for propane use around Livabl’s project.
We spoke with Bryan Cordill, the director of residential business development, about PERC, its involvement with the Livabl Concept Home, how PERC feels about virtual projects like these, and where propane is headed in the future regarding sustainability.
Please tell us a bit about PERC and why it’s important to today’s homeowners.
PERC is a government checkoff program that was created by Congress with the intent of handling research, development, safety, education, and training. The Livabl Virtual Home would be part of our consumer education.
There’s also aspects of development and safety, as we look at designing homes, we want to make sure that everything works together and gives the consumer the best opportunity to have a home that they enjoy, that they’re comfortable in, and a home that they can afford to live in when operating costs are rising.. And then, that looks at a dual fuel system (of propane and electric) and we educate about the reduction of emissions from a home we pair the most efficient components together in a project.
How has the use of propane changed over the years for homeowners?
Traditionally, it was hard. In the early days, it was rural and only really tied to agriculture and larger family homes that were away from the city center. Currently, we see a lot of opportunity to expand as the cost of natural gas has increased, and as the availability of buildable lots in that natural gas footprint have decreased.
A lot of more traditional neighborhoods with subdivision developments now go in with a full propane system. That could be an individual who will take it to the house, or what we see in a lot of areas is a larger single storage system with gas delivered to the homes through distribution lines and meters. It’s just like you would expect to see with natural gas distribution.
Why did PERC want to get involved with a project like the Livabl Concept Home?
We really want to educate about the efficiency of what we call a dual fuel home. That’s a home powered by electricity and propane. You have electricity, or even on-site solar to provide the power for the LED lighting and ventilation, and maybe even the heat pump on the primary side.
But then when you need additional energy-dense solutions, like water heating, or backup to the heat pump when it’s colder and the efficiencies fall off, then you can combine that with high-efficiency propane.
We have tankless water heaters in the marketplace that are between 95 and 98% efficient. They are products that are taking a full amount of energy in the home and delivering it to hot water. This is versus an appliance that may be using electricity that was generated at a power plant, and only 33% to 34% of that energy gets to that appliance.
So, you have the downstream emissions at the power plant that are greater because you use more energy. So, this is all about education for us and helping to learn and communicate. That dual fuel or hybrid approach really gives us the fastest chance to move towards a zero emissions structure.
When it comes to these dual-fuel solutions, is it a 50/50 split or does it depend on the home?
It would depend on the home and the climate area as to what that percentage would be. But the controls that we have in these in these homes, they are smart thermostats, and they have the built-in technology. They can detect that the heat pump has been heating the home efficiently at first, but now it’s not able to keep up or the outside temperature has dropped and it’s not as efficient. Let’s move over to the high-efficiency-condensing furnace and provide lower cost, higher comfort heat at that point.
Can you use propane in a home in an area that gets a lot of cold weather?
In the case of a lot cold, there’s two things that we can do: There’s an option where we can bury the propane tank in the ground to give it a regular temperature. So, even if you’re in the 30s or 40s, when you’re below the frost line, you’re still above freezing so you got tremendous vaporization. The other option is for an aboveground tank, there is an external vaporizer that will use a little bit of energy but create hot water to make sure that you have the vapor in the lines to operate it.
How will propane be used in the Virtual Concept Home?
Regardless of climate zone where the home will be built in, this new concept home is about making sure that that we are living healthy in a post-COVID, post-pandemic state. There’s a lot of flex space and outdoor space so that you can be with your family or with your neighbors, but not on top of each other in the house.
So much of this concept home is geared around that outdoor living space, the fireplaces, and the patio. Those are the places that regardless of where we build the home, if you were to build this house, you would see propane used in the home.
Secondarily, depending on states, codes and building desires, we would see the likelihood of a tankless water heater in the home because of the space savings, the cost of construction savings, and the endless hot water for the consumer once they move into the house.
A lot of homes are shown with a gas range in the kitchen. There were some questions recently about the connection between gas ranges and asthma. The medical community has come out to say that there isn’t a single source to say that gas ranges cause asthma.
We really want to promote the functionality of the gas range is not impacting breathing ability. There should be good ventilation in the homes when you are cooking. It doesn’t matter what kind of range you’re using to cook. If you’re not ventilating the cooking emissions, it’s negatively impacting your indoor air quality ventilation over the range. It’s what you cook, not your heat source, which is really the concern that we want to communicate.
How do non-profits like PERC feel about projects such as the Virtual Concept Home?
This is the first one, and so it’s a new era for us. Similar to the housing industry, we look for cost effective ways to plan, design and research what consumers would want, and then educate them on the possibilities. This gives us the flexibility to show this home in different parts of the country and different climate zones and how an average winter temperature might impact the house in Northern Virginia, versus the effect on the same house in southern Arizona.
It’s just taking those opportunities. When we’re building a site-built home, it’s only done one time. We get to tell that story once, in one location. We think that the concept home and the virtual aspect of this really gives us an opportunity to tell our story more efficiently.
Where is propane headed in the future, particularly regarding sustainability?
In the future, we think we’ll continue to see an increase of users of propane as we see more homebuyers that have left the urban environment, even in this period of higher interest rates and a little bit of a slowdown in the housing market.
The markets that people have been attracted to post-COVID are remaining as the hot markets and so we continue to see propane being used in new construction. We also see the evolution in the remodel space, as the people that don’t have to move are deciding to spend a little more on their existing house, that transition to the highest efficiency tankless water heaters and condensing furnaces. Those products really strengthen our position.
But the great news is we’re also developing new lower carbon components with our propane. We have renewable propane that is created as a by-product of aviation fuel. We have a plant that’s coming online this quarter that will produce renewable propane from a weed. This plant, its only purpose was to serve as a cover crop for soil conservation.
After it’s performed that function, we’re able to convert it into a renewable fuel that has a very low carbon profile. Propane has a lower carbon intensity relative to the electric grid in over 40 states in the United States. So even when compared to the electric grids, propane is cleaner today. With the continued production of renewable propane, we’ll be able to be part of the solution in a wide path to zero as our lower carbon fuels, paired with traditional propane to get us further down the road of technology and on that path to net zero emissions.
A lot of the knowledge comes from the research of where we are and that’s a big part of it. Currently, all that fuel is used in transportation because that’s where it has the greatest economic impact today. But as that product continues to be available, and as consumers continue to move towards keeping that portable, high energy dense, low emissions fuel available, we anticipate that it will move into that residential space.
PERC is one of the founding sponsors of the Livabl 2024 Virtual Concept Home. To learn more about PERC, go to propane.com. To learn more about the Virtual Concept Home, visit Livabl.com.
