Homes promote better outdoor use with new energy efficiency rating system
(South Jordan, Utah) Kennecott Land’s Daybreak community will unveil its new Brookside Home Gallery this Saturday. The Brookside Home Gallery represents the fifth major iteration of new home designs at Daybreak since its opening in 2004. The 19 new model homes demonstrate an evolution in design thinking with re-imagined spaces that reflect changes in the way people live today. Based on feedback from some of Daybreak’s current homeowners, as well as third party research, Kennecott Land and the seven home builders participating in the new gallery have built an entirely new collection of homes in less than 90 days.
Daybreak will introduce the new Brookside Home Gallery to the public this Saturday, June 26, 2010, with a grand opening event from 11 am to 2 pm. The event features live music on the beach at Oquirrh Lake, cooking demonstrations in the model homes, and a variety of food from local restaurants for sale in an open-air market. Admission is free.
The Brookside Home Gallery sits on an elevated bluff overlooking the Daybreak community’s 65-acre Oquirrh Lake, and provides views of the established areas of the community and the Wasatch Mountains. The 15-acre Brookside Park will be built adjacent to the site and feature a meandering brook that re-circulates water and carries it into Oquirrh Lake. The park will also include 25 additional community gardens, a large grassy playfield, and tree lined walking paths.
The new collection of homes range in size from 878 sq.ft. to 6,382 sq.ft. and include three different types of townhomes as well as a variety of single family home collections. Pricing ranges from the $170’s to $500’s. Other new homes in Daybreak begin in the $130’s and go up to over $1 Million.
Kennecott Land, along with Destination Homes, Garbett Homes, Hamlet Homes, Holmes Homes, Ivory Homes, Rainey Homes, and Richmond American Homes set out to create a suite of new home plans that use a home’s square footage and its yard space more intelligently and efficiently which spawned the introduction of these new homes. “We’re finding, as we talk to people from different life stages, that their homes are not keeping pace with their changing needs,” remarked Cameron Jackson, Marketing Manager, Kennecott Land. “You’ll notice as you walk through these homes that the living areas have been designed to be flexible to better allow homeowners to adapt the space to their lifestyle..”
The major theme for most of the new homes is the incorporation of strategically placed outdoor rooms. These areas allow homeowners the opportunity to extend their living space into the outdoors by creating private open air spaces that can be used nine months out of the year. Covered porches, loggias, interior courtyards, and privacy screens are some of the features incorporated into the home designs.
“When you look at how suburbs have been developed over the past fifty years, people tend to purchase a home with a large yard and then spend the next decade living in the house and trying to make the outdoor space function for their lifestyle,” said Ty McCutcheon, Vice President, Community Development, Kennecott Land. “The homes in the Brookside Home Gallery are designed to function well from the very beginning, requiring very little additional improvements by the homeowner.”
In addition to the smart use of space, the new homes place an emphasis on increased energy efficiency. Since Daybreak’s beginning, every home has been Energy Star® certified. As several different standards for measuring a home’s “green” quotient have emerged in recent years, Kennecott Land has begun working with their homebuilders to improve each home’s Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Score. Established by the Residential Energy Services Network, a home built to the specifications of the HERS Reference Home scores a 100, while a net zero energy home scores a 0 on the index. The lower a home’s HERS Index, the more energy efficient it is.
Most homes built before 2006 score above 100. Newer, Energy Star® certified homes achieve higher efficiency ratings score at or below 80 on the HERS Index. All homes being built in Daybreak today have a HERS index of between 70-85, with some highly efficient homes scoring in the 60’s, meaning the homes in Daybreak are between 15-40% more energy efficient than older homes.
About Kennecott Land
KLC was established by Rio Tinto in April 2001 to develop surplus mining land. Daybreak is the first testament to that vision. Daybreak is situated on 4,126 acres in the city of South Jordan where 20,000 homes and up to 13 million square feet of commercial space are planned. At KLC, sustainable development is at the heart of every business decision by balancing the complex interaction of environmental, economic and social factors. Kennecott Land does this in a way that protects and strengthens what matters most to our community: strong and safe neighborhoods, quality education, a healthy and renewable environment, and a vibrant local economy. Additional information is available at www.kennecottland.com and www.daybreakutah.com
About Rio Tinto
Rio Tinto is a leading international mining group headquartered in the United Kingdom, combining Rio Tinto plc, a London and NYSE listed company, and Rio Tinto Limited, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. Rio Tinto’s business is finding, mining, and processing mineral resources. Major products are aluminum, copper, diamonds, energy (coal and uranium), gold, industrial minerals (borax, titanium dioxide, salt, talc) and iron ore. Activities span the world but are strongly represented in Australia and North America with significant businesses in South America, Asia, Europe and Southern Africa. Additional information is available at www.riotinto.com
