Sustainable Home Building

Enovo Modular Homes with Bio Recognition

By deriving their name from the Cheyenne Indian word meaning “your home”, Enovo pays homage to “the Amerindian peoples’ profound respect for nature”. The modular homes, designed by a team of Canadian architects which includes IME Habitat president Karl Mongrain and Pierre Leclerc, offer a variety of configurations that optimize available space and feature evolutional capacity. Self-sustaining vegetation carpets the roof, providing natural insulation against heat and cold. Rainwater is collected beneath the green roof, filtered and recycled. Grey water is also collected from the kitchen, bath and laundry room. Enormous windows of high performance glass let in natural light to minimize the need for interior lighting during the day. Other green features of Enovo’s eco-friendly modular homes include solar-powered radiant heating, energy efficient appliances and a bio recognition home automation system designed by IME. Photos courtesy of Enovo

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5 Sep 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

Repurposed Shipping Containers Home - Sweet Home

Sometimes to think “out of the box”, you need to be in the box. Literally. As Melinda Fulmer at MSN Real Estate reports, large metal shipping containers that are left empty at ports around the country are being repurposed into modern, eco-friendly housing. What began as an experiment for emergency housing has become a realistic – and less costly option – to traditional construction. Peter DeMaria of DeMaria Design in Manhattan Beach, California has launched a home building company, Logical Homes, which will offer nine models of container homes for construction around Southern California. The homes will average about $150 to $200 per square foot; in comparison to $220 to $250 per square for traditional construction in the area.

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28 Aug 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

Green Prefab Cabin by Method Homes

By employing a team of expert craftsmen to factory construct the Method Cabin, Method Homes was able to create a prototype in record time while reducing construction waste by 50%. Built in just three months, this green prefab cabin with a uniquely woodsy appeal is located in Seattle, Washington. With a target of achieving LEED for Homes 2.0 gold, Method Homes utilized stylish and sustainable materials as well as sustainable building practices. In the kitchen: custom (and renewable) bamboo cabinets are topped with Ecotop, a fabulous new material composed of equal parts bamboo fiber and recycled wood. The interior was painted with Yolo Colorhouse no VOC paints and all lumber is FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified. Warmboard supplies radiant heat, while low-flow fixtures conserve water. A metal roof is durable, contains at least 25% recycled content and is a recyclable material. The prefab cabin is also prewired to adapt to a solar installation. Method Homes

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6 Aug 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

Elegant and Eco-friendly Condo Tower in Downtown Seattle

5th and Madison, an elegantly eco-friendly condo tower in downtown Seattle, offers gracious living without a guilty conscience. The wide, shallow homes are built with expansive, operable windows that bathe rooms in natural light and provide ventilation; thereby reducing energy costs. And talk about great views! Bathrooms are equipped with energy-efficient dual-flush toilets and low flow showerheads. In the kitchen, refrigerator-filtered water and ice make it easy to break the plastic water bottle habit. Low or no VOC paints and finishes were used throughout.

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6 Aug 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

MkLotus Sustainable Pre-Fab Home by Michelle Kaufman

This small (one-bedroom, 725 square foot) sustainable pre-fab home may be diminutive in size, but certainly not in style. The team of Michelle Kaufmann Designs, XtremeHomes and Late Afternoon Garden Design succeeded in infusing this modern home with warmth and comfort. It’s difficult to imagine that MkLotus was built in just five weeks in an all-green factory in Oroville, California, then assembled and furnished in San Francisco across from the City Hall in just two days. Talk about instant gratification!

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24 Jul 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

Dream Green Home Certified as a Wildlife Habitat thanks to Permaculture

With very capable assistance from Todd Jersey Architecture and Deborah Coburn of Naturally Inspired, Northern California Sonoma County residents Karen Boness and Mark Feichtmeir are settled into their dream green home and loving every minute of it. The research process and end result proved so inspiring that the couple are developing Kenwood Permaculture, a company providing education on sustainable lifestyles.

Beautiful Scrap Metal Gate Design

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20 Jul 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

Living Off The Grid with a “Hybrid” Energy-Efficient Home

Pouwel Gelderloos of Billings, Montana calls his innovative, energy-efficient home design a “hybrid”. The reason: this home is capable of being completely self-sustaining, (off the grid), but is also connected to the grid should the need for additional energy resources arise.

Taking his 30 years of building experience to the next level, he endeavored to design a home that “harvests the elements”. And it does, with great style and without sacrificing modern conveniences. Gelderloos’ goal was to construct an energy-efficient home that would blend in with the community; one he felt had “curb appeal”. The tri-level central structure is octagonal: with wings on each side and an atrium that wraps around the front. The only obvious “green’ elements are solar panels and a wind generator.

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16 Jul 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

Eco-Friendly Housing by Solarsmith - the New Mexico home supplies renewable solar power to neighbors!

Sante Fe green building firm, Solarsmith, offers eco-friendly housing solutions that don’t sacrifice comfort or style. A fine example is the Barr residence in New Mexico, which was recently featured in Natural Home magazine. The exterior of the house makes good use of xeriscaping by using low-maintenance native plants that require little water while blending beautifully into the surrounding desert landscape.

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15 Jul 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

Green Modular Home - built in just 106 hours by Green Team!

Dynamic green team members from Deltec, Extreme Makeover, and The EcoBuilders collaborated with the U.S. Green Council to build a home that achieves coveted LEED Platinum level of certification: making the home one of only 25 in America able to boast this distinction.

How did they do it? Following are some of the methods the company uses when constructing a green modular home. Optimizing energy performance is a great place to start. Features such as spray foam insulation, high efficiency heating and cooling systems, energy star appliances and energy-efficient lighting conserve energy and produce long-term savings on utility bills. This extremely durable home is designed to deter wood ingesting insects and mold while also being resistant to hurricanes, tornadoes and floods. Examples of other modular home designs are seen below.

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14 Jul 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

Green Home in California - LEED Platinum-Certified Project7ten home

The grass is always greener… and in this case, you can say the same for the rest of the home as well. As one of few LEED Platinum-certified homes in the U.S., project7ten was conceived as an educational model for environmental awareness. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System is the national standard for design, construction and operation of high-performance Green buildings. Built on a foundation of all things Green, project7ten features low energy consumption; water conservation; and the three Rs – reusing, reducing and recycling – while remaining high on the style scale. “From the outset, every decision went through a filtering process: ‘is it Green, is it the latest and greatest available, is there a reason to use this material?’” according to the brains behind the building, developer Tom Schey and friend Kelly Meyer, who also had a helping hand from local award-winning architect Melinda Gray. Located in Venice, California, project7ten boasts FSC-certified lumber, locally-sourced building materials, solar panels, grey-water recycling, energy-efficient appliances and water-efficient fixtures – just some of the eco-friendly features that brought project7ten its highly coveted LEED Platinum certification. Project7ten.

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10 Jul 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

First Los Angeles Green Building Award - LivingHomes Wins!

The 38th Annual Los Angeles Architectural Award included a category for Green Building for the first time this year and has chosen the team at LivingHomes as the pioneer recipient.

Working with world-class architects, Ray Kappe and Kieran Timberlake, LivingHomes creates modular structures using non-toxic, sustainably-derived materials in factories that are specially designed to reduce waste. The company offers standard homes with lines designed by each of the architects as well as custom homes for those who desire more flexibility in layout and finishes.

These innovative structures offer functional design such as movable millwork walls and an abundance of natural lighting. The aesthetic focus is on “warm modernism” – integrating the linear elements of modernism with the warm details associated with Craftsman style homes.

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9 Jul 2008 | Sustainable Homes | Comments (0)

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