July 1st, 2008
Green Prefab Coming to a Market Near You!
Stumble it!
If you can’t tell, we’re pretty hooked on the latest and greatest in green prefab design. One big problem, though, is that there’s a huge amount of noise and not all that much action - plenty of fabulous prefab designs and museum / conference exhibits, but very few actual installations (and even fewer mid-market installs, which is where prefab has to go in order to make a true difference in our housing stock).
Finally, the log jam seems to be breaking. Several firms have begun to produce green prefab homes for real people in small but growing numbers. This past month, Marmol Radziner, a prefab company here in Southern California, made a splash with some pretty showy installation videos on local media outlets. These homes are either a) high end or b) for the firm’s founders, so they’re still a ways away from mass-market. But, the videos do a good job of showing what elements make prefab homes unique (factory construction, rapid installation, modular components) and at least to me suggest that they’re not all that far away from being able to replicate these installations on a larger and thus less expensive scale.
So, take a few minutes out of work and check out this great video from the LA Times on the installation of one of the homes. And continue to hope for the day when all you have to do is walk down the street instead of visit the local museum to see a beautiful green prefab home near you. (our apologies for whatever ad the LA Times is running in front of this clip - when I last viewed it it was a Chevy Pickup ad - ugggggg). To see more great green prefab options, visit our green prefab directory here.
Popularity: 4% [?]
June 12th, 2008
Green Prefab: Everyone’s Going Modular
It seems everyone is “going modular” these days with the rapid growth in the movement of green prefab design and construction. The buzz in modular construction is causing a rush of new designs, innovative products, and advanced modular systems being introduced. The goal of prefab is still the same as minimizing waste while maximizing efficiency. To learn more about prefab design and what makes it a compelling form of green building, please click here.
No longer are the days when just calling yourself a prefab company is considered environmentally progressive. Homes are now being made from materials like reused shipping containers, recycled steel, and certified sustainably-harvested wood. The new challenge for prefab companies is balancing the economics of innovative sustainable design with the realities of construction and raw material costs.
We want to highlight some companies doing some very interesting work in the prefab space.
Eco-Steel Homes focuses on streamlined design and their homes use 76% recycled steel sourced from recycled vehicles, appliances and industrial scrap metal. They encourage us all to “start dreaming in steel.” Their models use no wood, making them mold and insect resistant, and come pre-engineered and pre-insulated making them ultra-efficient. You can combine different modules to create your dream (metal) home.
In sharp contrast to these visions of ultra-modern prefab, look at these warm, rustic homes from International Homes of Cedar. Their homes carry an impressive insulative value using interlocking layers of construction lumber from sustained yield second growth forests. Cedar is an extremely durable wood and one of the best choices for construction due to its moisture resistance, pest resistance, and thermal resistance.
Prefab structures don’t always have to be an entire home. With gas prices soaring, why drive to the office when you can set up a modern working space right in your backyard? Start small and own a prefab home office or even a prefab garage. Modern Shed designs are colorful, fun, and utilize green materials in both the interior and exterior finishes and options for their prefab structures. For example you can choose insulation made from recycled denim, cork flooring, recycled decking and more. Modules start as small as 8’ x 10’ sheds for under $5,000 and go up to 1,200sf dwellings. The sheds are ideal for home office space, artist’s gallery, machinery work space, or even a child’s playhouse.
Envision Solar sees the garage as an opportunity to have not only a prefab structure, but having it powered by energy from the sun! The Lifeport garage (23’ x 23’) or its smaller counterpart the LifePod solar structure (10’ x 12’) allow homeowners to own cost-effective and attractive shade structures to protect their cars or serve as a pool house that will pay for itself over time. The entire roof structure is covered in solar panels and will not only power your garage, charge your vehicles, and can also contribute to offsetting the electricity use for your house. The modules are easy to construct and actually give back to the environment rather than taking away.
Lastly, maybe you just can’t get to the gym but would rather have a workout room like the Nomad Yurt by EcoShack? This yurt can be used as an outdoor luxurious portable room for yoga class or as an office. Kids would love it as a play-space as well. Think “outside the house” and maybe you will come up with a use of your own.
Click here to see still more examples of top-notch companies doing work in the green prefab sector.
We hope you have enjoyed our modular outburst of new ideas. Personally I am still waiting for someone to come up with a Biomimicry-inspired prefab structure. Until that happens, we can all feel good about the progress that prefab is making and will look forward to new innovations and technologies.
Popularity: 7% [?]
June 9th, 2008
Steel Cuts Costs in Prefab Homes
Sometimes we find pieces so perfect for our Low Impact Living audience, we have to share them. The Los Angeles Times did an excellent piece on steel prefab homes this weekend, and thought you’d find it interesting.
By Michelle Hofmann, special to the Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2008.
ARCHITECTURAL writer and music critic Thomas Small, 49, and wife Joanna Brody, 44, a public relations consultant, had outgrown their two-bedroom town house in Santa Monica.
So in 2004, they bought a “decrepit” Culver City cottage to remodel. Unable to salvage the 1,500-square-foot fixer-upper and hoping to create an affordable, custom-built home, the couple turned to Whitney Sander, principal architect and founder of Venice-based Sander Architects, who uses prefabricated steel to provide a cost-effective building option.
Construction on the new home started in December 2005 and this February, the Small-Brody brood, which includes two large, hairy Briard dogs, Calvin and Hobbes; and two infants, Joey, 1, and Lyra, 6 months, moved into their 3,800-square-foot part-prefabricated steel, part-custom home.
The Culver City residence features a main house with three bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, two offices and a separate one-bedroom rental apartment above the garage.
“From certain angles, it has an industrial look,” said Small, who didn’t want to hide the metal aesthetic with stucco or conventional sidings and used corrugated-metal-siding panels to finish the exteriors. “So some of the traditionalists in the neighborhood didn’t know what it was when it was going up. But the way it turned out, most people really like it. And it has gotten a very warm reception.”
With costs below those of conventional building methods, quick and easy assembly and no termite issues, prefabricated or pre-engineered steel buildings are finding a place in the residential home market.
For Small and Brody, metal also helped them stay true to their green theme. “Most of the metal in this house is recycled and will be recyclable at the end of its use in this house,” Small said.
“And there’s also very little waste with metal. It was made at the factory and then shipped here. There was no sawdust. No cutting,” he said. “And we didn’t have to hire specialized builders. It was built by the contractor who built the rest of the house, and bolted together very easily.”
To read the rest of this article, click here.
To learn more about green prefab, click here.
To find companies offering green prefab options, click here.
Popularity: 3% [?]
February 25th, 2008
Green Prefab: pieceHomes
Recently I had the good fortune to interview Jonathan and Mary Jo Davis, co-founders of Davis Studio Architecture + Design and the new line of modular houses, pieceHomes. They have been working in the sustainable architecture field for many years, and have recently launched pieceHomes as a new venture.
Q. How did you get into green architectural design?
Jonathan: The first house I designed –right after college– was in Shreveport, LA. It was a custom home and a really a green home. It was located on a lakefront, so it was designed to be raised up for flooding, sited to take advantage of the views of the lake, and we carefully surveyed the trees and sited the house to save as many as we could. We incorporated solar hot water panels, geo-thermal wells for heating and cooling, heat-recovery units behind the fireplaces, into the design, as well as a self-contained sewage treatment plant that put out pure water right at the lakefront. We also used recycled brick throughout the house.
I was also into camping, being outdoors, and sailing….it all tied together and made sense. After grad school I went to work for Frank Gehry….we did a building for a utility company over in Germany that was a showcase for green technologies… I was very much involved in that building. After leaving Gehry, I completed many projects with recycled materials and sustainable systems. These elements have always been part of my palette. And six years ago when Mary Jo and I met and started Davis Studio A+D, we made this our mission. We design for sustainability and we educate our clients about sustainability.
Mary Jo: Two years ago we built our own house and we wanted to use our house as a showcase to show clients that you could build it green and build it affordably. And now it is a prototype for our pieceHomes concept.
Q: Great—please tell us a bit more about the genesis of pieceHomes and where it is heading.
Jonathan: Through interactions with a client of ours several years back we were working through some ideas related to modular homes. We were interested, but we weren’t ready to try to break into the market. Prefab is a huge industry—especially on the East Coast—so to break into that market isn’t easy. But as we designed and built our own house we started to work with these modular concepts more. Then at West Coast Green we met Tim Schmidt who is the CEO of XtremeHomes. He was starting a new factory that builds green homes….and they are very flexible about what they will build. They will basically build a custom home in a factory—or 20 versions of a house, in modular pieces. So when we saw that they could provide the flexibility that we were looking for, we decided to move forward with pieceHomes. From their factory location, we’ll be able to serve the West Coast. Interestingly though, we’re seeing huge demand on the East Coast…particularly in North and South Carolina. It’s amazing. I never would have predicted it. That’s a market that has surprised us…and we’ll have to figure out how to serve it.
What’s interesting to us—we’re a small architecture firm and all of a sudden we come out with this line of factory-built homes and we’ve gotten exposure all over the world. We’re on peoples’ radar, which we never would have been able to do as a small architecture firm. It exciting but it also presents some challenges for us. We’re used to dealing with clients on a one-to-one basis, and now we have so many people coming to us on the modular front. It’s a different way of doing business. And we’re having to having to adjust our practices to meet the demand.
Mary Jo: I’m excited because off-site built has the potential to change the entire architecture industry. Home building has essentially not changed in centuries…but this is a real departure. Prefab could bring architecture to so many more people. We love that aspect of it.
Jonathan: And for us affordability is key. A lot of companies are selling their factory-built work at $400-500/suare foot—and they are gorgeous, but very expensive. Our goal is to produce some homes at the $200/sq foot level….we’d prefer to sell more smaller, affordable homes to more clients than a big, expensive home to a really wealthy client. We’re also looking at selling the whole package…we’re not selling a kit, we’re delivering the whole house, lock stock and barrel. In the future that would include furniture, linens… we want to create the full package—the client can say check, check, check, and get the whole thing delivered.
Q. Tell us about the projects you are working on now.
Jonathan: We are working on several homes now….the first one is a custom design. It’s called Rindge. It started off as a conventionally built house. But we realized we could build it in modules with some minor changes to the structural engineering. We realized we could save money and time going that way. It’s going to be in Playa Del Rey and we’re signing contracts now with the builders, so we hope to be done by the end of the summer.
Q. Are you hitting any roadblocks—challenges?
Jonathan: It’s a bit more work to do the permitting for off-site built—you have to get two permits—one for what’s built in the factory—and one for what’s done on the site. Two sets of drawing. But it’s not insurmountable. In California at least it’s a fairly clear process.
The second project we’re working on, we’re in early design phase. The client has an old one story house in Venice, LA. Right now they want a new garage and a studio space….but they eventually want a new house. So we’re going to take it in stages. First we’re going to do the garage with a studio module on top of it. That’s the first phase. Then we’re going to do a 2-story addition to the existing house—2 modules—which we would lift over the existing house. The third phase will involve deconstructing the existing house and then with another set of modules we would build a new house, which would connect to the 2-story addition. It would be a seamless integration. The new house will be much better related to the site in the end. Using modules allows us to do it in stages, and it allows the family to continue to live there while this construction is going on. We’re planning to do Phase 1 this summer.
Mary Jo: We’re also talking to people in SF, Seattle, Denver, Texas….and for some reason a lot of people were asking about building homes in Hawaii. But shipping these homes to Hawaii would be a trick!
Q. Tell us about the materials for the homes you’re working on.
Mary Jo: As much as possible, the exterior materials will be installed in the factory. This reduces cost and on-site work. We’ll be using materials such as cementitious panels, galvanized corrugated steel siding, Mangeris wood (from sustainably managed forests). We’re also looking into other materials such as Ecoclad.
As for the interior items, for all of the living spaces we’d offer cork or bamboo floors as the basic. We offer Expanko as well, which is a rubber-cork composite. Or Forbo. We use EcoTop for the counters. No VOC paints and finishes. We use vegetable-based oils on exposed woods. We’ll use formalhyde-free MDF cabinets. Of course Energy Star appliances and a tankless water heater. LED lighting as an upgrade. Whole-house water filters. Dual flush toilets, low flow water fixtures. In our house we used wheatboard…but now the price has gone way up. There are many upgrades available—Kirei board or Palmwood for example.
Q. Will you seek LEED certification for pieceHomes?
Jonathan: We’re talking about it….certainly if the client wants it, we will do it. And all of our homes will be Build-It-Green certified. We can offer the possibility of homes getting LEED certification but not do it as a standard process. If the client wants it, we can go for it. Build it Green is more flexible. It’s a California based rating system and it’s an easier process. We’re planning to do that for all of the homes. A highly rated Build It Green house it’s quite comparable to a LEED house.
Q. Well thank you so much for your time and insights. We’ll be very interested to see PieceHomes popping up across the landscape over the next few years!
Mary Jo: Thanks—we’re excited. Green and modern are merging. It’s a great time.
Popularity: 6% [?]
September 24th, 2007
Green Prefab Homes - Prefabulous!
Prefabricated, or modular, home construction is enjoying a renaissance in the booming green building market. Some people may think that prefab or modular building connotes cold uniformity, but in this newsletter we’ll introduce you to companies that are making this new breed of green prefab homes beautiful, comfortable, and most importantly very light on the planet! (when you’re done reading, visit this new article with more information about the latest prefab trends and products)
What is Prefab?
The basic principle of prefab construction is that sections of a home, or modules, are built in a controlled factory environment, transported to a project site upon completion, and then connected and placed onto a foundation. Depending on the complexity of the home, designers can employ anywhere from two to 50 structurally connected pieces.
Most often prefab is associated with highly modern design. Modern design is typically characterized by clean lines, strong forms, use of materials in their natural state, and little to no added decoration. Modular building allows modern design to be brought to mainstream markets because it generally reduces construction and design costs significantly when compared to a similar custom-built home. Recently, a much broader range of prefab home options has emerged, especially some of those designed using “green” building principles.
Why is Prefab Green?
The primary goal of building a green home is to reduce its environmental impact while also creating a healthy environment for occupants. Architects and builders do this by emphasizing energy efficiency, reducing fresh water use, selecting materials that are healthy and sustainable, and choosing sites that minimize environmental disturbance.
Prefab design & construction offers a number of unique opportunities to accomplish these goals. First, the control available in a factory environment allows the designer / builder to be very precise with material planning and use – there is very little waste left over when compared to standard construction techniques. Second, hard-to-find green materials can be bought in bulk and used over many projects, minimizing delays and ensuring that no “short cuts” are taken due to unavailable materials. Third, this bulk purchasing and the delivery of a small number of completed modules to the home site dramatically reduce pollution from transportation to and from the site. And finally, the disturbance of the home construction site can be minimized because there is no need to stage and store large amounts of material onsite for extended periods. A good prefab contractor might clear only the house footprint itself and enough room to deliver the completed modules.
In addition to being green, these elements also help to keep costs down and shorten the overall project timeline. Materials can be bought in bulk at attractive prices. Skilled craftsmen can be fully employed and can work on modules for many prefab homes at a time. And, the indoor construction process eliminates delays and damage due to weather conditions.
So, What Do Green Prefab Homes Look Like?
Green prefab homes come in all shapes and sizes. Smaller is better for the Wee House by Alchemy Architects. Alchemy offers a wide selection of green materials, technologies and styles in their prefab house line. They come in small “solitaire” units or in multi-module larger “companions” if you need more space. While Wee Homes arrive on site nearly ready to live in, the homeowner needs to get a contractor to complete the foundation, utility hookups and cabinetry. You’ll save time, money and dramatically lower your environmental impact with a dwelling like the Wee House.
Another beautiful example of the modern-style prefab home is Michelle Kaufmann Design’s (MKD) Sunset Breezehouse (pictured at the top of this article). Designed through a partnership between MKD and Sunset Magazine, the Breezehouse has a “BreezeSpace” at the center which is situated under a distinctive butterfly-shaped roof. This breezeway or porch allows you to “let the green in” to your main living and dining areas, blurring the boundary between interior and exterior and increasing your functional living space without building more walls and ceilings. The home is Energy Star certified and highly efficient, relying on open cell foam insulation and thorough caulking to eliminate air leakage. The Breezehouse also features water-saving plumbing fixtures, on-demand water heaters, and a mechanical ventilation system that is 30% more efficient than typical forced-air systems. It’s efficient and gorgeous.
Another innovative prefab design is the Solaleya Home. Solaleya homes actually rotate to track the sun in order to use passive solar energy for heating. This rotation is highly energy efficient, provides a constant change of scenery, and brings warming natural light into the living space. The structure is made of a central pillar and arches, giving the home excellent hurricane and earthquake resistance. It is also Energy Star rated and is truly the house of choice for anyone who follows the sun all year round.
One last example for those looking for a slightly less modern approach is the house pictured here from Bamboo Technologies in Hawaii. These green prefab homes are made almost entirely out of bamboo, one of the most sustainable of building materials. You can customize versions for any climate zone, so fear not if you don’t happen to live in the tropics! And, these homes are incredibly strong and stand up to both earthquakes and hurricanes. Although these homes are built far away, they are transported by ship, which is one of the less carbon-intensive methods of moving materials. The other environmental benefits of a bamboo structure certainly counter this one drawback.
How Can I Get A Prefab Home?
The easiest way to get a green prefab home is to call a design firm that specializes in prefab such as one of the ones mentioned above. Here are some of the other options in green prefab design:
- pieceHomes (Los Angeles, CA)
- Blu Homes (Boston, MA)
- Eco Structures (Maidsville, WV)
- Eco-Infill (Denver, CO)
- kitHAUS (CA)
- Hive Modular (Minneapolis, MN)
- Modular Homes, Inc. (Edison, NJ)
- h-haus (Santa Fe, NM)
To find more companies that create and build prefab homes, please visit our green prefab housing directory.
What If I’m Already Building a Home?
Some of us might want to have it both ways – the individuality of a custom home or the benefit of working with a trusted architect / builder, combined with the cost and environmental benefits of prefab approaches. If this is you, don’t fret – you can now find green prefab elements to employ in more customized designs. Some of these include:
- Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs). SIPs are preconstructed wall and roof elements that combine insulation, structural elements and often channels for wiring & plumbing in one piece. They are much easier to assemble than typical walls, are very strong, and are incredibly energy efficient. Premier Building Systems is one of the leaders in this area, with over twenty years of experience.
- Precast, predesigned foundations. Check out the Oasis Foundation Wall System. Foundation, insulation, and interior walls combined into one piece, and installed in one day. And, you achieve indoor air quality and material efficiency savings too.
- Precast or prefabricated countertops. Several companies produce integrated counter and sink elements out of sustainable materials. Lithistone produces beautiful sink and countertop units out of materials that contain recycled content and require low energy use to make when compared to traditional cement-based products.
- Pre-packaged solar PV systems. A large portion of the cost of solar PV installations is labor. You can cut that significantly with a pre-packaged solar system from ReadySolar. Their “Solar in a Box” system comes with all of the needed components, ready to install.
And, last but not least, try to check out Modern Cabana’s line of green prefab accessory structures – perfect for that home office, guest suite or relaxation space in the back yard!
Related features:
To explore some new products and services in the green prefab market, check out this new post.
Looking for something smaller? A prefab office, or a retreat cabin? Check out this post on small prefab (weefab) options.
Read an interview with the co-founders of pieceHomes, Jonathan and Mary Jo Davis.
If you are interested in building a custom green home, find a green builder near you.
Popularity: 63% [?]
