New American Home 2019

The New American Home 2019 offers indoor-outdoor living on a Vegas hillside.

For the 36th annual edition of Professional Builder’s New American Home, architect Dan Coletti wanted to make the most of the house’s hillside site, with its panoramic view of the Las Vegas Valley and the Las Vegas Strip in the distance.

In addition to five bedroom suites, a formal dining room, and an inner sanctum lounge, the single-level, 8,000-square-foot design makes the very most of modern indoor-outdoor living concepts. Giant moving walls of glass from Western Window Systems constitute virtually the entire back façade of the home, which recently debuted at the 2019 International Builders’ Show.

“I’ve been designing homes with Western Window Systems products for quite a few years now,” says Coletti, owner of Henderson, Nevada-based Sun West Custom Homes. “And I’ve become very skillful at creating very large indoor-outdoor open spaces.”

The focal point of the back side of the home is a square-shaped indoor-outdoor wet bar set at an angle and flanked on either side by huge Series 7600 Multi-Slide Doors. When these doors are open, they seamlessly blur the transition from the outdoor back patio to a massive open floor plan that includes a light-filled great room and a spacious, uber-contemporary kitchen.

The relatively flat roof line’s deep overhangs, some as wide as 20 feet, all across the back of the home work in tandem with the multi-slide doors to create a highly energy-efficient residence.

“Now, with the new Series 7600 being so energy efficient, it expanded our ability to use even more glass where we want it,” Coletti says.

Next to the great room sits the large master suite, complete with his-and-her toilets, dual-entry walk-in shower, and a huge walk-in closet. But perhaps the most spectacular aspect of the master suite is a 90-degree multi-slide door. On one side of the 90-degree angle, a five-panel moving wall of glass opens to a private master patio. On the other side, a smaller slider opens to the main patio. A beautiful vanishing-edge swimming pool sits between them.

Across the patio, on the other end of the huge house, another one of the five bedrooms features a four-panel multi-slide door that opens to the massive outdoor living space.

Coletti made a concerted effort to incorporate the appearance of the home, with its contemporary-modern design, minimal decoration, and abundant glass, with its environment in the master-planned community of Ascaya.

“We wanted this home to blend into the mountainside, so we picked some darker colors for the doors’ and windows’ aluminum frames,” says Coletti. “The Western Window Systems’ colors provided a great complement to the natural landscape.”

Other sponsors of the The New American Home project include Las Vegas-based Custom Home Window and Door and Blitz Construction of Henderson, Nevada.

This year marks the 36th edition of The New American Home (TNAH). Sponsored by the Leading Suppliers Council (LSC) of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), every TNAH showcases the best in residential design and construction practices, while promoting the latest technological advances and efficiencies the housing industry has to offer.

This year, the project is located in Henderson, Nevada’s Ascaya development, a 313-lot neighborhood with panoramic views of the desert landscape that overlooks the Las Vegas Strip. From the start, design-builder, Sun West Custom Homes (Sun West), aimed to maximize both energy efficiency and style.

With the home’s structure in place, the project team was ready for mechanical system selection. Identifying a high-quality and efficient solution that could flawlessly fit into the design of the home was essential. A combination of ducted and ductless Zoned Comfort Solutions® fit the bill. 

“Mitsubishi Electric systems are a big benefit, especially for this design,” said Coletti. “We didn’t have the attic spaces you might generally have in a normal home. It gave us a lot of flexibility.” Sun West and its subcontractors identified 12 cooling and heating zones and ultimately installed M-Series systems with 3 MVZ Multi-position Ducted Air Handlers, 3 SEZ Horizontal-Ducted Indoor Units, 4 PEAD Horizontal-Ducted Indoor Units and one ductless, MSY Wall-Mounted Indoor Unit for the home’s audio-visual room.

“I’m a big fan of Mitsubishi Electric, especially the ducted mini-split units. The ducted units sit up in between the trusses with a little access panel in the closet,” said Smith. “So very non-obtrusive. You’re basically putting the air conditioning right where it’s needed. This allows you to properly zone a home and minimizes the length of your duct runs, preventing air leakage.” The ducts are 63% tighter than code baseline, further upping the efficiency and overall comfort of the entire home.

With the hot and dry climate being a large factor in the Las Vegas area, ensuring the air conditioning is working optimally is also a necessity and greatly impacts indoor air quality. “It’s a very efficient system. Each zone can have its own temperature and its own thermostat which I think is a huge plus in places where it’s very hot,” noted Carl Martinez, president of construction, Sun West Custom Homes. Washable, 10-year filters with multi-stage allergen filtration comes standard with each Mitsubishi Electric indoor unit, removing particulates, odors and contaminants from the air. With the continuous fan operation of variable systems, air is constantly circulating, providing enhanced air quality in each zone of the house.

“We try to focus on 3 main things at Mitsubishi Electric: health, efficiency and comfort,” noted Chad Gillespie, senior manager of performance construction, Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US. Sun West also installed a third-party energy recovery ventilator to reduce humidity and supply fresh air. For full home automation, all the electric systems (including the heating and cooling system) are synced to a Crestron controls platform for easy and universal management. 

As the house debuted at the 2019 International Builders’ Show (IBS), the HVAC system has been put to the test, welcoming thousands of builders and homeowners through its doors. “Truly, this system can handle many different heating and cooling loads,” explained Gillespie. “We’ve had events here, lots of people in the house, a few people in the house, with and without the doors and windows open. The system adjusts as you need it to, saving you money and energy. Not to mention, the outdoor units are whisper quiet; your usable outdoor space is not lost to the noise of your HVAC system. It just goes to show when you combine really efficient equipment with great design, you get a truly efficient home.”