New Home Construction

Spear Head Excavation offers new home construction for those looking for modest sized, high efficiency, single family homes. Our goal is to make high end, extremely energy efficient new homes attainable for most buyers.

This is done through a combination of factors. Frost Protected Shallow Foundations are key to making new homes that are both affordable and incredibly easy to heat and cool. The homes we offer come standard with a six inch concrete slab and radiant heat. Think of this as a huge battery. It is a giant thermal mass that stores heat for an extended period of time. When that is combined with a radiant heating system the result is that you “charge” the concrete mass with heat. It then holds onto that heat and slowly releases it into the air over time. The average concrete slab used in residential construction is only four inches thick. In pursuit of highly energy efficient homes, we are offering six inch slabs with radiant heat as standard, which gives you fifty percent more capacity for maintaining heat overtime.

Next, we use extremely well insulated SIPs. That is, Structural Insulated Panels. SIPs offer extremely high R values due to the thickness and continuousness of the foam insulation. Our homes are built standard with six inch walls which provide a continuous R value of 40. Standard 2x6 construction traditionally only offers an R value between 19-23, and in addition to this, it’s not continuous. There are gaps in insulation every sixteen inches which adds up to significant heat loss across an entire house.

Our SIPs are provided by Eco-Panels. You can check them out here at https://www.eco-panels.com for more detailed information on this technology.

On top of the SIPs we have a traditionally constructed roof with trusses and Closed Cell Spray Foam that gives an insulation value of R49. A home this well insulated and air tight also offers significant “passive cooling”. So far we’ve only talked about heating, but all of this is true for the reverse in the summertime. The slab is a storage of thermal energy, it stays cool all summer long and the heavily insulated walls and roof keep the heat out. Our homes also come standard with heat pumps for secondary heating and cooling.

With all of these factors combined we have a home that vastly outperforms the current prescriptive code requirements in the 2024 International Residential Code.