SanJoseGreenHome.com

The mkLotus prefab green home - the latest design by Michelle Kaufmann Designs

Prefabricated homes aren’t really that new of a concept in the building market. For many decades now, modular prefabricated homes have been built and sold as a less expensive alternative to buying a home on the market. The difference today is that prefab has become trendy. With a bit of an aesthetic facelift and a rebranding scheme, modular homes have become the hot new thing in home building and buying. As statistics on unemployment, a failing economy, crippling debt, soaring college costs, and so much more bombard our views, the thought of owning a house is almost impossible. Many young professionals struggle to pay off college loans well into their adulthood and years after they have completed their degrees. This causes major adult life steps like getting married, buying a house, and having children to get pushed back further and further. But, the prefab homes that are on the market today may be just the answer. Keeping many modern-day issues in mind, prefabricated eco-friendly homes have a lot of offer the young home buyer.

1. Inexpensive

One of the most enticing things about prefabricated homes is that they can really cut back on the price of purchasing and owning a home. Though not all prefabricated models are a cheaper option than buying an existing home, they can offer many aspects of financial relief. For one, many prefab eco-friendly home companies are focused on using reusable and highly efficient materials. By working hard to create the most energy efficient constructions, prefab homeowners can actually save a lot of money in the long run. Builders (and therefore owners) save money on materials using (more…)

After World War II, houses and buildings were erected quickly and cheaply as a means to rebuild Germany. However, many people living and working in these houses and buildings soon became noticeably ill, with all signs pointing to the new buildings as the cause. It was this phenomenon that inspired the baubiologie movement in Germany, and has since been infused in other parts of the world as well. Below are the 25 principles of baubiologie.

1. Building site without natural and human-made disturbances
2. Residential homes away from sources of emissions and noise
3. Low-density housing with sufficient green space
4. Personalized, natural, human- and family-oriented housing and settlements
5. Building without causing social burdens
6. Natural and unadulterated building materials
7. Natural regulation of indoor air humidity through humidity-buffering materials
8. Low total moisture content of a new building that dries out quickly
9. Well-balanced ratio between thermal insulation and heat retention
10. Optimal air and surface temperatures
11. Good indoor air quality through natural ventilation
12. Heating system based on radiant heat
13. Natural conditions of light, lighting and color (more…)

If you had to imagine the greenest home in California, what images would spring to mind?  Would it be some clay, dome shaped structure perfectly exposed to solar angles, or maybe an ultra chic, boxy looking modern beauty with massive windows facing a valley?  What if I told you that this home sits on a pretty standard residential street in Santa Clara and an untrained eye wouldn’t even notice any “greenness” about it if they drove by?

Meet the “Bluebird” residence.  This Earth Bound Home’s show house  is also the personal residence of founder David Edwards.  Rated as the Greenest Home in California by Build it Green organization, the original 1400 sq. ft. ranch style home was added to and remodeled, creating a 3100 sq. ft. 4 bedroom, 3 bath home with an office and workout room.   Awards range from Acterra’s Business Environmental Awards Built Environment Award to Build It Green’s South Bay Best New Home award for the 1996 Green Home Tour. Come with us on a video tour to explore all the ingenuity, design and careful choice of materials that went into this project.  (Also see a list of “green” features below the video.)

This home’s many green features include:

• Small 2.7 kw Photovoltaic solar electric panels provide all of houses electrical needs
• Solar thermal renewable energy systems
• An inexpensive and no maintenance Grey water system waters the only plants in the entire landscaping that require water, the clumping Bamboo.
• A 1400 gallon underground rainwater cistern collects rainwater every winter
• All FSC wood framing and FSC certified Brazilian Cherry Flooring
• Home built with Structural Insulated Panels(SIPs)
• 65% more efficient than Californias’ Title-24 Energy Efficiency requirements
• $155/year gas bill, $4/year electric bill, $132/year water bill
• 93%  recycling and reuse of building demolition debris
• Half of all windows were purchased from salvage yards, saving over $10,000 over new windows
• All doors on the first floor were salvaged, saving $3,000.
• All trim throughout the house was salvaged from old redwood decks, fences and the siding on old houses. It was milled on site and the shavings used as mulch on the landscaping.
• New One Lawn Synthetic Lawn contains no heavy metals and requires no maintenance or water. None of the landscape requires supplemental water and saves approx. 50,000 gallons of water a year.
• House uses 31,285 gallons of water a year, for 5 people. This is approx 84% less. than the average household uses(~110 gallons per person/day- including irrigation)

Photo and home description courtesy of Earth Bound Homes

When most people think “green” homes they imagine solar panels and fancy energy saving gadgets.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  We invite you to explore with us a passive solar home in Saratoga (Bay Area) designed by a local architect Hari Sripadanna.  The home has achieved a LEED Gold rating and truly stands as a model for sustainability in our community.  After all, Hari bought parts of his house on Craigslist! 

Obviously, we could not cover all the fascinating details in the video so if you want to learn more, please read Hari’s comments and see design plans right below the video.  Enjoy.

by Hari Saripadanna (parts of the article was originally posted on the GAB Report):

With increasing popularity of green building and passive solar design, it is important to understand that sustainable design is more than a collection of credits. The key is to create synergy between building systems and practices that multiply each other’s benefit. One can create more value simply by choosing two or more complimentary sustainable design elements that play off of each other. The combined effect is more than the benefit when these design elements or systems are used alone. 

I would like to share with you some synergistic concepts used in the design of my house and show you how (more…)

So do green homes cost more? When comparing construction costs of green homes there seem to be all sorts of figures floating around.  Some builders say it does not cost much more to build sustainably, and some say it could cost anywhere from 5-20% more to build a truly green home.  Much of those added costs however, can be recouped via numerous rebates and long term operational costs as in the case of this newly build home in Menlo Park.  Come with me on a tour and meet Bill Lacs from Lacs Design and Construction and see this newly constructed property that boasts many elements of sustainable design and technology.  Perhaps you will be surprised why this home owner decided to spend a “few” extra bucks at the end…

In a market where hardly anyone is building green in San Jose, this newly constructed house in Milpitas area stands as a monument of energy efficiency and inspiration.  

It is about 35% more energy efficient than a standard home and prides itself on green elements like engineered lumber, radiant barrier roof, solar water heater, energy star furnace, extra thick insulation, excellent indoor air quality and much more.  

Come with us on a video tour and discover for yourself what makes this property truly unique.

This beauty is a five year project by Green Earth Construction, a Milpitas based and family run company.  Sylvia Leung and her husband had a vision to go green 15 years ago and are finally able to marvel at the fruits of their labor.  In addition to what you’ve seen on the video, keep in mind that the home is wired for solar and if one decided to invest into solar panels, one’s utility bills for the most part of the year could be virtually zero.  Now that’s a good number, isn’t it? 

Building green normally commands higher costs so perhaps the most pleasant detail about this home is that when considering a dollar per square foot basis, the home is priced comparably to a 25 year old home.  If you like more details, you can find all the info under Featured Listings on http://GreenHomeParter.com.  Feel free to contact me directly with any questions. 

Oh yes, it’s a bit scary out there, isn’t it… Ooooh, the real estate Halloween indeed.  Existing home sales nationwide fell 27.2 percent in August from the previous month to 3.3 million, new home sales are at the records low.  Brrrrr, chilly indeed. 

Bay Area, however, seems to be weathering the storm pretty well.  The inventory is slowly rising and sales are slowly dropping, nothing too dramatic for the time of the year.  Some buyers are out and about happily hopping around buying homes and some are understandably a bit apprehensive. 

So let’s see if we can broaden our view of the horizon though.  Yes, the market is not perfect but it rarely is!  The thing is… if it’s cloudy a bit but the weather is favorable, a good captain will sail out not waiting for the sun to come out because he knows it may not come out for a long time.  Goods will spoil, time will be lost, days will turn to weeks and months will go buy staying in port drinking rum.  Where I am heading is… if you want to buy a home – it is very unlikely you will time this market to find most optimal conditions.  Life is always in a flux and so are the markets, would you agree? 

You see, even though “experts” say a home is no longer a safe investment, no one is saying that a Mercedes is not a safe investment.  How about a new boat or that 401K at work… are any of these safe investments?  A house is a house, it’s a home, it’s the place where your children grow, and it’s where you spend your days and nights living your life.  One really can’t put a price on the kind of joy that comes with homeownership. Ask anyone without a home whether it’s a dream of theirs to own a home and you’ll likely hear a resounding “yes!”

You see, its these intangibles of home ownership that will keep this market alive.  You probably know (more…)

Imagine you’ve hit it big or you’ve finally saved up enough towards a decent down payment towards purchasing your own home and you have one major requirement – you want it to be a truly sustainable place to live, a green home so to speak. 

What’s important for you about the green home?  What matters?  How will you decide?  These are reasonable questions, aren’t they?

I find there are three types of eco friendly house buyers out there and I’m dying out of curiosity to find out where do YOU find yourself in this equation.  Below are three different mindsets, please read through them and let me know which one you relate to most.  There’s a survey at the end of this post and if you could answer the questions we will all be very curious to find out about the dominating trend in our area.  Now it is more than likely you will be a mix a all three personalities but please pick one that you feel would stand out for you.  Let’s have some fun!

1.     Economizers.  This is the class that is concerned with the idea of saving money by wise use of resources.  This category also entails land lords who are counting on a life-cycle cost analysis and the value of various earth friendly features that can boost their cash flow.  For economizers the mighty cash is the king and all the rest of the ecological issues is less important.   

2.    Idealists.  This is your typical Organicsons household.  They take environmentally conscious living very passionately and believe that (more…)

First off, a few burning questions… Have high upfront costs derailed your renewable energy or energy efficiency projects? Would receiving positive cash flow from day one make your clean energy project more attractive? Are you worried that it may be difficult to recoup your investment in clean energy if you sell your property?

To resolve these issues and accelerate the implementation of energy upgrades to commercial and residential property, cities and counties across the nation are offering PACE, a new financing model for clean energy projects.

To learn more about how PACE works and how it can benefit businesses and homeowners, I recently spoke with Dennis Tsu, who manages Business Development for Commercial PACE with Renewable Funding. Based in Oakland, Renewable Funding is the leader in the turnkey administration of PACE programs.

What is PACE?

William Dinkel: Could you please provide a brief summary of PACE programs for our readers?

Dennis Tsu: First off, PACE is an acronym for Property Assessed Clean Energy. The basic concept is to allow residential and commercial property owners to borrow money from their local governments to use for making energy efficiency or alternative energy improvements to their properties, and then to pay that money back through a (more…)

Who said green homes have to look like hay barns?  Here is a great example of how sustainability does not have to define the aesthetic.  This was exactly the idea behind this ultra chic “Hillside House” in Marin that is on track to be the first Platinum LEED certified home in Marin County.  

Scott Lee, the mastermind behind the project and the president of SB Architects, said he and his family envisioned a sustainable and warm home that would be comfortable to raise children and did not aspire to museum quality finishes.  They wanted some quirky interior design elements that would make the house playful and inviting and that is exactly what they have accomplished. 

Lee’s brand-new home, a 2,100-square-foot, four-level dwelling built on a 50 percent slope, is clad in Western red cedar. It’s tucked into the hillside on three floors and fronted with glass, wood and balconies.

To an interview given to Houzz, Scott says the house is really quite small by custom home standards. It’s just 3 BR and 3.5 BA. “We didn’t want or need a large home.  The house appears (more…)