Home & Garden...

Postgreen and ZeroEnergy Design are going to be constructing an urban infill home for just 100K. The main goal of the house building project is that the home ends up using only 53% of the energy that's normally used by a standard new home, while still keeping costs at a smaller level. Another goal of the project is to achieve a LEED Platinum rating. The home is being built in Philadelphia where costs to build any home are considerably more than 100K.

The 100k house is going to be a great case study in proving that a well-made green home can be built for about the same as a traditionally built home - or possibly even cheaper than a typical home.

According to the press release, Chad Ludeman, President of Postgreen, notes, "In order to accomplish the lofty energy goals for the home on our budget, more time and care must be taken during the planning and design phase of every aspect of the home from insulation to HVAC equipment... ZeroEnergy Design is the perfect company to ensure that we will get the most bang for our buck in terms of energy efficiency on the 100K House and we are excited to have them be part of the project."

Aspects being concentrated on first include the best passive ways to save energy, because passive allows more bang for less money. Then the team looked at actual active energy systems, to analyze their efficiency, and lastly renewable energy systems were discussed. So far solar thermal is the top contender.

You can follow along with the entire process at 100k house, and so far it's an awesome read. Budgets, design ideas, and materials are all being posted about. I love this whole case study. When we built our home it was under 100K but in an area easy to build fairly inexpensively. This project will show that green can be built anywhere for less than some think. It should be fun to follow along.

[image via flickr: New renderings of the 100K House with new stucco & Hardie siding]