Page 30 - Green Builder September-October 2018 Issue

Twice as good. Thrive Home Builders’
award-winning Courtyard townhomes
include energy-saving aspects such as Annual Building Science Report 2019 EFFICIENCY MATTERS
double-wall construction.

COURTESY OF THRIVE HOME BUILDERS

Gene Myers, the owner and CEO of Thrive Home Builders, was
awarded the Denver-area Home Builders Association ‡ˆ‹ Builder
Regal of the Year Award. Thrive was the „rst “solar standard” builder
in Colorado and the „rst production home builder to include
DOE Zero Energy Ready Home (ZERH) certi„cation as a standard
feature for an entire series of houses.
Residences suburb of Lone Tree, Thrive becomes the „rst builder in Colorado to
With the Courtyard Rows townhomes at RidgeGate, in the Denver

o•er net-zero-energy construction in a townhome community. This
includes placing solar voltaic panels on all †‹ of the project’s homes.
Heavy insulation, top-notch air All units will be equipped with at least .šš kW of PV panels; an
sealing and energy-miser appliances upgrade to ‹. kW is available. “Denver’s suburbs have never seen
anything like this before,” says Thrive Home Builders Vice President
make Courtyard Rows a crowning of Operations Bill Rectanus.
Designing a multi-family product with suŸcient roof space for
achievement in multi-family living. a meaningful system is a major design challenge, according to
Rectanus. “With RidgeGate’s large, monolithic roof plane design
BY GREEN BUILDER STAFF and a site plan that enabled strong solar access, Thrive was able to
HRIVE HOME BUILDERS COULD REST ON ITS LAURELS. reach ‹. -kW PV arrays on this residence at Courtyard Rows, which
After all, the Denver-based company has won is virtually unheard of in multi-family construction,” he says.
grand awards for housing innovation from the U.S. With the upper-end solar panels, Courtyard Rows achieves an
Department of Energy four years in a row. Thrive has impressive Home Energy Rating System (HERS) score of about †,
T built more DOE Zero Energy Ready-certi„ed homes or net-zero-energy performance. Fortunate homeowners are likely to
than any other builder in Colorado and has the second-highest pay no more than service charges on their utility bills. Even without
number of homes certi„ed nationally, with †‡ as of August ‡ˆ‰. PV, each two-story, ,‰†‡-square-foot townhome would achieve a

28 GREEN BUILDER September/October 2018 www.greenbuildermedia.com

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