ENTRY DETAIL - Building: Professional Built

Images

Entry Details

Entry Description

Reclaimed Space: Sustainable, Modern

Modern, sustainable designed, prefab homes built from reclaimed materials. Our beautiful, energy sipping homes feature single pitch roofs for solar and rain catchment systems, cross-wind ventilation, recycled newspaper insulation and reclaimed 100-year old hardwood oak flooring.

Our whole-community process benefits neighborhoods by removing eyesores and hazards, preventing the material form ending up in landfills and properly valuing the material for respectful reuse in new construction.

Our homes are the product of disassembly. We've taken materials destined for landfills and incorporated them in new construction.

Each design is therefore unique as available materials change for each new project.

To create energy conserving homes, we've designed them smaller than average new homes with open floor plans. Sturdy, transportable construction makes the homes resilient to frequent moving, which our show homes do frequently.

All our homes are deliverable by truck (not 18-wheeler), simple personal trucks with a trailer. To create larger designs and more complex configurations, we have modular construction. The homes are built in our warehouse in large sections and assembled on-site within one day.

This makes it easy for our clients to expand or re-configure their homes over time. Or even move them entirely should they want to. Some of our larger potential clients such as summer camps may envision entirely different configurations in future seasons and our homes' repeatable transportability and flexibility makes them adaptable to changing future conditions.

We reclaim 70% of the materials used in each of our homes. Much of the rest is certified sustainable lumber.

The home itself is off-grid ready and energy sipping when on the grid. We start with a smaller, wide-open floor plan with cross ventilation and passive solar design. And we use blown recycled newspaper insulation. So the whole home is easily maintained at a comfortable temperature with little energy. We use a single pitch roof to integrate solar power and also for rain catchment.

Building prefab, we're able to maintain strict controls over construction. This has two profound effects. The first is very little waste. Whereas the average home creates 8,000 lbs of waste, 80% of which is recyclable, our homes create less than 300 lbs of waste, nearly all of which is recycled. The second is drastically reduced transportation impact. With all our materials and labor in one place there's far less transit pollution.

We've created 8 green management and sales jobs and all these employees can telecommute.

We've also created about 16 local green construction jobs: 4 carpenters, 2 painters, 3 electricians, 2 plumbers, 2 insulation people, 2 roofers, and local runner to gather materials.

So, we've created 24 total green jobs, all local, a third of which can telecommute.

Our homes use local reclaimed materials, preventing them from ending up in landfills and preserving the character of neighborhoods. We employ local craftsman and staff and build in our local facility. By so doing we have a dramatically positive social and economic impact on our community.

Because our process and product is sustainable we have a positive environmental impact on both our community and also the larger global community.

And our homes are the better for it. They're beautiful, comfortable and inexpensive to maintain.

Entry Metrics

Because a Reclaimed Space home only requires concrete in the pier and beam foundation versus an entire concrete slab, as compared to the average US home, we use about 57 fewer square yards of concrete.

Because all the wood we use for siding and floors is reclaimed, we're drastically reducing the use of new wood in construction. What wood we do use comes from certified sustainable sources.

We use no carpet in our homes. We have all hard wood floor made from reclaimed oak and pine.

We reduce green house gas emissions in both the construction and design of our homes.

Our homes are pre-fabricated in a tightly controlled manufacturing environment which reduces error and total build time. It also reduces travel to and from the site because all our labor and materials are in one place, within our city limits. And because nearly all our materials are reclaimed and locally sourced, the emissions required to acquire these materials is drastically reduced.

And because our designs incorporate smaller, but more open and efficient floorplans, cross ventilation and good insulation with passive solar, they are easy to maintain at comfortable temperature which greatly reduces energy consumption.