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Modular green home showcases speed and style
From: http://content.usatoday.com/
Building a green home doesn't have to be a costly, drawn-out endeavor. It can be done quickly, seemingly overnight, at moderate cost, as recently happened in St. Paul.
On a sloping corner lot, a custom home arrived in several modules via truck and was quickly pieced together and finished on site in June. It's one of a dozen models -- the X-Line 012 -- designed by Hive Modular, a Minneapolis-based prefab company, and built by a factory partner.
The two-bedroom, two bathroom home -- chosen as "This Week's Green House" -- has a two-story living room, with lots of natural daylight, that makes it seem bigger than its 1,864 square feet.
PHOTOS: Tour green homes across the USA
"If the home is well-designed, you can get away with less," says Paul Stankey, co-owner of the company, begun in 2004. He lives in another of the models, a three-bedroom, 1,778-square-foot house that costs $105 monthly to heat in winter's coldest subzero temperatures.
He says the new St. Paul house should be even more energy-efficient, because it has copious amounts of spray-foam insulation (walls, R-30; roof, R-55) that help create an airtight envelope. It has efficient lighting, Energy Star appliances, high-performance Jeld-Wen windows and geothermal heating/cooling. It cost just slightly more than $200 per square foot, including its locally made custom cabinetry.
Stankey says his company, one of several offering contemporary prefabs, can deliver homes almost anywhere in North America, because it works with about 10 factories -- two of them in Canada.
"There's no recession up there," he says about Canada, where his company is now doing most of its work. He says clients there have a much easier time getting loans. In contrast, he says American clients typically put down 50% of a project's cost or pay with cash.
Stankey says the prefabs take five to 12 weeks to manufacture in the factory and once they arrive on site, four to eight weeks to assemble and finish, depending on how much is custom work. Prices range from $200 to $250 per square foot.
He says several carried the Energy Star label -- "we surpassed that with leaps and bounds" -- and one earned the top, or platinum, rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. To save money, he says, the models don't automatically come with a green certification; clients can seek that on their own.
When his company started, he says, clients mostly wanted the biggest home for the buck. In response to rising energy costs and tax credits/rebates for efficiency upgrades, he says, more are now requesting a better-insulated home.