Steve Tuckner admits he failed.
His goal: To build an “affordable” net-zero home.
So he picked an affordable neighborhood: St. Paul’s North End. Sold the spacious three-bedroom abode in Roseville where he lived for decades. Moved with his wife and two dogs into an apartment — and hired builders. That was over a year ago.
“Is what we did financially sensible? Hell, no. I’m gonna lose a ton of money on it. … We’re likely gonna die there, because we won’t get the cost back,” Tuckner admits. “I did it because I believe in it. What we did is on the bleeding edge of what you can do.”
Now, the 1000 block of Loeb Street will have a home worth three times the cost of anything next door, across the street or down the block. It’s 1,060 square feet, a single story with no basement — and all for the low, low cost of $400,000, not including the lot. It likely will be the North End’s first “net-zero” home.
“I was surprised when I got an address out of them,” said Ryan Stegora, an Apple Valley builder working as a consultant on the project. “All right, add the North End to the areas where there are high-performance homes.”
“Net zero” is energy-efficiency parlance for eating what it produces; maybe a little less. With a 4-kilowatt solar farm on the roof, 15½-inch-thick walls of poured concrete and foam, a 9-square-foot battery, high-performance air exchangers and a sealed plastic “smart vapor barrier,” Tuckner thinks it’ll be up for the job.
He — if not his wife, initially — got on the “net-zero” kick years ago, after visiting the renowned “House in the Woods” in North Hudson, Wis.: a spare-no-expense home built for more than $1 million.
That home had a symphony of bells and whistles. Solar panels that tracked the sun, weather-resistant exterior shades, wastewater heat recovery, you name it.
