HONDA SMART HOME

The Honda Smart Home is a pioneering research and demonstration project designed to advance home building strategies for zero-carbon living and mobility. The showcase home, occupied since 2015, generates enough electricity annually to power all end uses and an electric vehicle. Our design contributions integrate passive design principles with efficient mechanical systems and advanced control strategies. Air tightness was achieved with an automated aerosol envelope sealant strategy, natural ventilation is used to precool building masses overnight, and efficient ceiling fans provide air motion to extend the range of thermal comfort. Radiant floors and ceilings heat and cool the occupied spaces. A single ground-source combi heat pump generates cooling, heating, and hot-water and achieves excellent efficiency with low-cost shallow-bore ground heat exchangers. Our systems design also incorporates several forms of heat recovery including: drain water heat recovery, desuperheat to transfer cooling waste heat to hot water, and a greywater-source heat exchanger to improve heat pump efficiency in both cooling and heating.

Additional technical information, complete construction drawings, and open-source performance data are available from https://www.hondasmarthome.com/.