By Zoe Buchli
Five Western students have started a project that will bring more tiny houses to Bellingham.
Project Zero Net Energy Tiny House (ZeNETH) will be the first tiny house project at Western, and is a student-led venture to create a home with a special feature not many houses have: It will be zero net energy.
ZeNETH has a project manager, policy lead and faculty adviser. There is also a separate design team with three students.
Senior Kellen Lynch is a Fairhaven Student and is the project manager of ZeNETH.
“Net-zero houses are homes that produce as much energy over a year’s time as they use in regard to electricity,” Lynch said.
One of the key components of ZeNETH’s zero-net-energy strategy is its use of solar panels, which will be the home’s main source of electricity, Lynch said.
While solar panels cost more upfront, they save more money and are more efficient in the long run, Lynch said.
“It’s not going to be a conventional American house but built smaller. We’re designing something that’s more efficient and representative of our environment here in the Pacific Northwest.”
KELLEN LYNCH, ZENETH PROJECT MANAGER
Lynch said the team is applying for a Sustainable Action Fund grant with hopes to have it fund the project. The Sustainable Action Fund is intended for projects like ZeNETH, that can help promote sustainability in Western’s community, and is a student-funded program that all students pay into quarterly, Lynch said. “It’s not going to be a conventional American house but built smaller. We’re designing something that’s more efficient and representative of our environment here in the Pacific Northwest,” Lynch said. The end goal for the project is to make sure potential buyers of the house know that this project’s design can be manipulated to fit their aesthetic and that this tiny home is meant to be customizable, Lanphear said. “We would like it just to be a model for people to look at, and know that they can design something like [this] as well,” Lynch said. “We want to advance the design of tiny houses, but we also want it to be replicable.” ZeNETH was created fall quarter of 2017, when Lynch was in a design class through the Institute for Energy Studies and was assigned a project of designing a net-zero house. Environmental Sciences Professor Imran Sheikh is the faculty adviser for the project, and has had experience working with tiny houses from his time at UC Berkeley. “Students will be more invested in it if they’re the ones that are in charge,” Sheikh said. “They’re going to get a lot more out of the experience if they’re empowered to make a lot of these decisions.”
