How a Washington, DC, Architect Made His 1925 Rowhouse Net Zero

Architect Will Teass and his family have a lot of experience living in historic rowhouses in Washington, DC. When he and his wife, Liz Dixon, were looking for a bigger place for their family of five, they wanted to find another rowhouse they could really make their own. They found this home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and did a full gut renovation, keeping the historic facade while modernizing everything else. Now, the house is net zero from an energy standpoint, meaning that the home produces as much electricity as it uses. We asked Will for his design and energy advice so you can find ways to make your own home more sustainable over time, too.

Even though Will and Liz's house isn't protected by historic preservation regulations, they chose not to disturb the outside front of the home. "We didn't really want to interrupt the streetscape by proposing something so radically different that it stood out," Will says. They also liked having a front porch and ultimately decided to keep it as-is rather than expand the house a few feet into the front garden. Instead, the house got a nice paint job to match the rest of the new design.

When Liz and Will decided to renovate this house, they didn't set out to make a net-zero home. At first, they just wanted to install solar panels, but then the conversation "snowballed," Will says. They thought, "Well, if we do the solar panels, all these other possibilities open up to us," he says. If you're considering installing solar panels on your own home, now is likely a good time to do it. Many states have tax incentives to help offset the cost of installation, and Will says there's a lot of competition between solar-panel companies that homeowners can use to their advantage.

One of the biggest ways to make homes more sustainable from an energy consumption standpoint is to decouple them from the gas grid, Will says. So, when he and Liz bought this home and gutted it, they had the gas company terminate the line. Now, all of the appliances in the home are electric. This would be an extreme step for someone working on a small renovation project, he says, "but over the course of time, you should think about phasing out that gas service." Will recommends choosing more efficient Energy Star appliances.

Will and Liz previously lived in a rowhouse with a small kitchen, and they knew they wanted a bigger space for entertaining in their new home. They gutted the old kitchen, shown here, and started from scratch.

Will says that if you're hoping to transition from a gas stove to an electric one, you should be aware that you may have additional costs beyond just buying the new appliance. "The reality is that [gas stoves] are a pretty effective way to cook, and switching from a gas range to an electric induction cooktop or oven isn't," Will says. "It's not as easy as just simply replacing that," because sometimes you might also have to do additional wiring or increase the size of your panel to support a new electric appliance.

These days, most people want big kitchens with plenty of room to hang out with their guests or their kids while they're cooking, Will says. "Cooking is much more of a team sport, where everyone's kind of involved with it," he says. "For us, having been in a rowhouse with a tiny kitchen that only one person could be in at a time — we wanted the exact opposite." So, in the new kitchen, Will lowered the floor slightly to create more height in the kitchen and make the space feel more open. All the old appliances have been replaced with more energy-efficient models powered by solar panels on the roof.

About two-thirds of the ground floor of the home is composed of the dining room and kitchen, Will says, with the living room taking up the rest of the space. The patio just outside the kitchen is actually a roof terrace — underneath, an English basement serves as a rental unit Will and Liz post on Airbnb. "We splurged a little bit and went with a bifold glass door," Will says, "so you can really have that seamless experience of being in the kitchen and walking outside." The door is made of four glass panels and they have a retractable Phantom fly screen to keep mosquitos out on humid summer nights.

When Will and Liz — who's also an architect, for Perkins Eastman — gutted this house, they really gutted it. "We took everything out," Will says. "There was a point at which, if you opened the front door, you could look and see downstairs to the basement and up to the roof." By reimagining the ground floor, Will said they were also able to add a large storage closet, which is a huge asset for a family with three young, school-aged children. "Storage is always at a premium, particularly in rowhouses," Will says. "To have a deep hall closet is practically unheard of."

This Rais wood stove is one of the few features of Will and Liz's last home that made it into the new house. It's super-efficient, Will says — just a few logs of firewood will keep the whole house warm overnight. While it provides a great aesthetic and a cozy atmosphere, it's also useful as a backup heating source if DC gets an extended stretch of bad weather and the solar panels can't generate enough power to heat the house.

Upgrading to a heat-pump water heater is another way to reduce your energy output at home, Will says. It's a little bit more expensive than a traditional water heater, he says, but it can "significantly reduce how much energy is used."

Trying to make your house more energy-efficient all at once can be expensive — and isn't necessarily the best way to get greener. Instead of rushing to replace things that aren't broken, you can move more slowly and update spaces around your house as repairs or replacements are needed. Will suggests windows as one place to start. "As you come up for window replacements, opt for a high-quality window or door," he says, to avoid leaking heat or air conditioning and, therefore, energy costs. But just as important as the quality of the new product is making sure it's installed well, he says. It's worth hiring a professional who understands the principles of air sealing, he says.

To make sure you've got good seals, he recommends getting a blower door test to measure how much air is leaking out of your house. Of course, you want to have good ventilation, but you don't want major drafts. These tests work by depressurizing your house and calculating how much new air comes in — or goes out — per hour.

The staircase is one of Will and Liz's favorite features of the new home. Rowhouses are usually long and narrow, with windows only on the front and back of the house since side walls are shared. So, natural light can be hard to come by, and minimizing internal walls — like those around a typical staircase — can make interior spaces much brighter. The treads in this staircase are supported by vertical pickets that also serve as a safety feature. To the left, a collection of frames features photographs Will took on a previous trip to Tokyo.

The staircase is made out of white oak, which has recently increased in popularity in design projects. It doesn't have the warmth of red oak, Will says, but it has a subtler, less distracting grain, and is "more popular among a modern aesthetic."

Imagining the staircase was one thing, but getting it built proved to be a challenge. "You can draw all this stuff, and you can envision it, but then actually getting it done is quite another story," Will says, adding that their stair subcontractor had to bring a creative approach to the project to make it work. "It was pretty clever." It took three days to install the stairs, tread by tread. "It really appears seamless."

The floating affect of the stairs brings a lot of lightness to the house, and is simply a joy to experience on a day-to-day basis, Will says. "It's been a beautiful thing to see every day," he says. "The amount of light that comes down, particularly into the middle part of that second floor — that whole opening is really quite nice."

Liz and Will have always had a studio space to work from home. In the new house, they wanted to make sure that space was as practical as it was beautiful. So, they put it adjacent to a gorgeous rooftop deck. "The way we thought about the plan, it really started from the top [floor] down, in a weird way," Will says. "We wanted to be able to go from the roof deck into the studio, and vice versa. So if you're in the studio, you could simply walk out to the roof deck and not have to walk through somebody's bedroom or do anything else awkward [to get there]."

The rooftop deck faces the street and provides a great vantage point of the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The area is small and ideal for one or two people to share a quiet moment — and that's exactly what it's intended to be. "It wasn't a space that we were going to entertain with," Will says, adding that it's a very "personal" space for them. And with a large silver maple tree in front of the house, it's extra special. "It kind of creates this little treehouse effect," Will says. "It's really quite magical."

This is the home's principal bedroom, with Will and Liz's daughter modeling in the corner. Even in the wintertime, sunlight streams through these south-facing windows, so the family wants to take advantage of that. In the bedrooms, Will plans to eventually create window boxes, kind of like bay windows, so there's a seat to curl up on. "To have that space to read in is really quite nice," Will says.

While Liz and Will kept the front of the house largely untouched for historic appeal, they completely changed everything in the backyard. They leveled out the space and laid permeable pavers, so they can plant things within that grid. The whole back of the house also got a complete facelift, with striking modern design.

The house is now much bigger than it initially was, with an additional floor maximizing space within a small footprint. But from the front of the house, it doesn't look quite as tall as it does from the back, thanks to clever design that sets the top floor back a bit. "As you go around back, it becomes something that's certainly more contemporary, more modern, and more to our personal tastes," Will says. "We were able to take the third-floor addition and set that back so it wasn't so imposing on the street below."

Will and Liz created a timber pergola structure to upgrade the outdoor space in the backyard. Having this deck provides a great space for outdoor dining — something Will said he's seen more demand for in recent years. "It obviously stems from that sort of modernist idea of blurring that boundary [between indoor and outdoor]," he says. "We definitely are seeing people more interested in that, instead of just having a door out to a deck, creating a wall of glass between the two. Then, ideally, you can open that up and extend the interior space to the outside."