Net Zero Energy Rental Home Is Seattle’s First Ever

SEATTLE — This weekend’s Northwest Green Home Tour will feature Seattle’s first “net zero” rental home.

The weekend of April 30-May 1, 2016, you can see a Greenwood house that its builders say is the first rental home in Seattle to generate more energy than it uses. The example shows that NZE homes don’t have to be more expensive to build than typical homes, and cost much less to operate over their lifetime.

“Grandma’s House” was built in the front yard of a small home in Greenwood that Dan Allison, Project Lead at Abode Builders, purchased from his mother, who inherited it from her mother.

Allison wanted to preserve his grandmother’s original house, but he also wanted to build a new, energy efficient, low maintenance, rental home on the same lot. He bought a set of plans from a design company on Whidbey Island called Zero Energy Home Plans, and decided to build Grandma’s House himself, with help from his colleagues at Abode.

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