The Green Blog

We finally have the new(er) website up enough to test its operation, and I’d love to get your feedback on it. Our goals were to make it easier to develop local communities anywhere in the country by providing localized content for each major geographical area.

To do that, we’ve adopted an open source framework called “Website Baker”, which allows us to customize pages (with PHP and other techniques, if you must know). The website now stores information in a database, so that we can provide it to you depending on the area you are most interested in (usually wherever you live). When you sign up for an account, we ask for a Zip Code. This allows us to identify which geographical area you are in. After that, information can be presented to you with a preference for your area. If you want more, then you can ask for everything or request a different geographical area.

On the new website, the first place to stop is usually the Table of Contents. (There’s a link in the menu bar at the top of the page.) Just like with a magazine, you can look through the table of contents to find an area you want to see.

The first area in the TOC is the Forums area. From here you can go to “The Greens”, which provides information about services specific to your geographical area. Services include Meetup, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. Other areas you can reach from the Forums include our Meetings and Events page, local resources helpful to build or maintain a green home, and access to the professionals page.

After the Forums we have the Green Homes Ideas area. This provides access to our home samples (links to articles in the media about green home projects either under construction or fully built) and the video log. We’ve expanded the video area so that it doesn’t just pull up our YouTube channel, but allows you to add videos that you’ve hosted on other sites and play them right from the video log page.

For businesses in the community, especially those in the SF Bay Area, we provide a way to list resources and events for free. In addition, companies can expand their listings and get their own page on our website, where they can provide additional information. These expanded services require payment, which we’ve implemented through Amazon. For now, signing up for these expanded services is free. Sponsors will be taken through the usual Amazon payment steps (while we finish testing the system). During testing, all payment steps go through the Amazon sandbox and sponsors will not be charged. This way, they can test what it would look like to have their ads run on our site.

There’s more to come. We are implementing additional services on the site, but this should give you an idea where we’re going. We are creating the foundation for a thriving green home community in any geographical area. I hope you, too, will consider us the local community for building green homes.

–Rich Wingerter

Cross posted from Home Energy Pros.

Home Energy Pros is a great place for professionals in the home energy field to gather online. We need more communities where people committed to green homes can meet and network. This is why Green Making is building a new website that will facilitate community at the local level. We are expecting to have our site in beta testing early next year (2011). Isn’t that just around the corner?

The new site will allow anyone in the U.S. to find events and resources in their neighborhood. It will also help them find online communities, such as Home Energy Pros, where they can interact with people that share their interests. Green Making is currently sponsoring online groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as a YouTube channel and Meetup groups for the San Francisco Bay Area. As the online community expands, we plan to include more community resources for sustainable building, energy efficiency, improved environmental quality, eco-friendly landscaping and other elements of green homes.

We believe that the twentieth century was the century of expansion, but that the twenty-first century will be the century of sustainability. Building strong community around green concepts is the seed from which that better world will grow.

–Rich Wingerter

If you’ve followed this blog closely, then you’ve noticed that postings are few and far between. One day, that will all be passed. But, for now, I’ve put my priority on building the business and not building the blog.

What does it take to build the business? One thing it takes is a lot of networking. To that end, I’ve worked out a rough schedule of meetings, which you can follow on our Meetup.com groups.

A great meeting to go to will be next Wednesday’s < a href=”http://www.meetup.com/Green-Making-for-the-Silicon-Valley-Area/” target=”_blank”>Go Green Without Going Red meeting, which brings together several members of the local building community to talk about how the typical homeowner can approach turning their home more eco-friendly. I’m preparing to record this talk on video so that we can capture the information for release in various formats.

Setting up a good set of meetings has been a considerable problem for many reasons. One reason is that finding suitable public meeting space that doesn’t break the bank is difficult. Another is that publicizing meetings takes time and money. For the Green/Red meeting, for example, I’ve employed Full Calendar to get the word out to about two- to four-dozen websites. In addition, we posted this to local newspaper sites (such as the Mercury News) and the local Meetup group. (We expect to repeat the panel closer to San Francisco, so I did not list it for the San Francisco Meetup group.) A third difficulty is finding the right speakers for events. Susan Davis of Spectrum Fine Homes was kind enough to help organize speakers for next week’s event.

Beyond the meetings, I’ve also been hard at work on the next revision of the website. To make time for this activity, I had to suspend the news links service. Once the website is revised, I plan to restart that service because I think it provides a lot of value. If you have an opinion on this, then please let me know.

Also this month, we’ve joined up with the Clean Tech Open, a competition for business plans. “CTO” gives out prizes to those business concepts that will do the most to promote sustainability. By providing social networking for the green home building community we believe we are in a position to accelerate the adoption of sustainable building and operational practices across the entire home industry. So, we have entered the “green building” category for the contest and have been working on an executive summary of our business, due to the judges on May 30. Yikes! That’s only days away!

A pleasant reward for entering the Clean Tech Open is that they have assigned us a mentor, Michael Mahre, who has extensive experience in the construction services industry and the private venture sector. He has already been invaluable in helping us to put together our summary. In addition, I’ve persuaded Steve Mezak of Accelerance to help research and develop material for the Clean Tech Open.

At the same time, to help move things forward, I’ve drafted additional help to provide marketing services for those in the green home construction sector. This includes a marketing associate and a dedicated collateral developer. This allows us to flexibly respond to this demand.

By far the biggest draw on my time, however, has been the networking aspect of developing relationships with the design and building firms in the area. To do that, I’ve been participating in many meetings, including US Green Building Council guild meetings, Build It Green local chapter meetings, and recently a NARI mixer, which brought me into contact with a number of people doing interesting things.

For example, Jim Stoch is organizing the Generation Green Expo for September in San Jose, CA. We expect to have more about this show later on.

I also took up Veena Amanpaul’s invitation to go look at their showroom in Fremont, CA, Water Concepts. They had some very nice copper basins from Native Trails. Copper, of course, has natural antibacterial properties, and Native Trails (in San Luis Obispo, CA) makes some products from recycled copper and reclaimed wood.

Water Concepts also had some interesting materials and finishes from Robern, but their website (robern.com) doesn’t have any additional information. If they get back to me with additional information, I’ll post it.

I met a number of others at the NARI mixer, and I’ll post them in the Recent Finds area of the website when I have a chance.

I also have to say that participating in the Sustainable Building Forum has put me in contact with a number of thought leaders in the local green home building and remodeling communities, as well as provided access to a wide variety of firms that provide specialized services (such as SIPs, ICFs, and home performance testing). For more on this, check out the Recent Finds page and go to the Silicon Valley Area Meetup group page for a description of the forum. (Look for the most recent meeting, I’m listing one for each week.)

We are also developing a business around marketing green building services in the online world. We have developed tools and techniques for architects, designers, builders, and others to interact with the online world. These services are derived from our experience in social networking, business processes, quality assurance, and research on new developments (such as those detailed in the Groundswell book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff). From this, we’ve developed a report process that provides insight for businesses about their reflection on the social Internet. For more information, please contact us.

When I talk about our experience in social networking, this includes growing experience on Twitter. Please look for my Twitter posts. You can find out more by going to our Twitter information page, where you can also sign up.

A number of other projects have come up that I’ll need to deal with, as well. But, as you can see, there’s plenty going on right here at Green Making! Please help by participating in our forums or writing an entry for the blog. It is a great way to publicize what you’re doing.

–Rich Wingerter

It took a little time, but finally we were able to hold a green building meeting specifically for our San Francisco Meetup group, Green Building. Nils Davis of Keeping the Lights On came and talked about the passive house conference.

Nils attended the 13th International Passive House Conference 2009 held last week in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He reported that over a thousand people attended the conference, where they got the latest update on passive houses, buildings so energy-efficient that they don’t require a heating or cooling system.

A number of people new to the Green Building group showed up for the meeting (at Prana restaurant, part of Temple nightclub). We took suggestions for future venues. (If you have a suggestion, please contact us). We need someone from the group to step forward to be the point person for the group, someone who can be the host for future meetings, so if you live in San Francisco and can help us out, please volunteer!

Some members stayed after the meeting to tour Temple. From the left: (top) Nils Davis, 150 year-old Buddha statue, Rich Wingerter; (bottom) Florence, Alex, and Kathryn

One question that came up was whether to be a member of both the San Francisco and the South Bay Meetup groups. Events are placed on the calendars depending on whether we think that people in that area would be interested in the event. For many events we cross post them to both groups because we feel that the topic or speaker would be worth a little travel. Also, events in the middle of the peninsula are likely to be within easy travel for both groups. So, my advice is to join the group that centers on the place you are closest to. If you are closer to San Francisco than to Silicon Valley, then the Green Building group is a better bet. If you are near the Palo Alto-Santa Clara area, then the Green Making for the Silicon Valley Area is probably better.

Temple provided us with a tour of their facilities, which aim to be a totally green nightclub. From the vertical garden on the front wall to the green roof being installed, the owners are committed to building a sustainable operation. A new piezoelectric floor to be installed will capture the energy of dancers to create lighting. Most solid waste is diverted from landfill.

Nils provided a detailed update from the conference. Passive houses represent a huge step toward building zero-net energy houses, but making them widespread in the U.S. will need to overcome some barriers. Only about 20 to 30 passive houses have been built in the U.S., mostly in the mid-west. Nils said that he thinks cities need to provide incentives to builders and the concept of the passive house needs to be publicized. Then it is a matter of making the proper materials available, such as heat exchanging ventilators and high-performance windows and doors.

We plan to schedule Nils for a meeting in the South Bay so he can tell us more about the conference. Please look for the announcement on our Meetup group.

I want to thank everyone who came to the meeting for helping to make it a success!

–Rich Wingerter

As noted in Green Salon Opens in Menlo Park, we are expanding our in-person meetings to include the Green Salon, as well as Green Making member meetings. The Green Salon meetings are a great way for people who are interested in developing a green career to meet others, network, and possibly pick up opportunities.

The Green Making member meetings are the place to meet with others who are interested in green building. These are designed to bring together many interested “green” parties:

• Architects
• Engineers
• Government Agencies
• Interior Designers
• Non-Profit Organizations
• Primary Contractors
• Real Estate Agents
• Subcontractors
• Suppliers
• Technology Developers
• Trades
• Writers and Journalists

And, of course, those who want to build a green home to live in or sell.

You can get more information about all meetings at our Meetup group Green Making for the Silicon Valley Area. Join Meetup.com and keep these meetings on your calendar!

In addition, we now have a professional group on LinkedIn. This group, the Green Making Home Construction Professional Group, is designed specifically for architects, engineers and primary contracting companies. You must be a professional in one of these areas to join. You can visit the group here, but you also need a LinkedIn account to join the LinkedIn group.

We hope you will take advantage of the new services from Green Making. Thank you for your support!

–Rich Wingerter

Monday, I attended the State of Green Business Forum sponsored by GreenBiz.com and held in the PG&E auditorium in San Francisco. You can probably find out everything you need to know about the conference itself elsewhere, so I just want to touch on the most important observations here. (You can see videos of the conference here.)

Obama Panel (from the left): Joel Makower, Jeff Anderson, Sanjay Wagle, and Holly Kaufman

Observation 1: It’s no longer fringe. I estimate there were four to five hundred in attendance, nearly filling the auditorium. Most of these people were official corporate suit-wearing managers, not tie-dyed, granola eaters (at least during the work day). They also spoke corporate-speak: “Innovation as a Green Strategy”, “Energy Efficiency Rises Again”, and “Is Water the New Carbon?” Officially, the conference featured the role out of GreenBiz’s latest “State of Green Business 2009” report, available free here (with registration). We are not wiring up mud huts with our hands and spare bailing wire.

Observation 2: Sometimes green is only skin deep. One participant (Peter Williams of IBM) noted that if green is centered in CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) then the company isn’t serious.

Observation 3: Just because we’re experts, doesn’t mean we know what we’re talking about. One question to a panel was, “Is this just a fad?” See Observation 1. Look, the first time this came around in the 1960s there were 3 billion humans. Now there are nearly 7 billion and we’re looking at 10 to 12 before it’s all over. The average person in the U.S. uses five times as much energy as the average person worldwide, but everyone wants our standard of living. (Well, YMMV, but as a generalization….) So, are we going to produce seven or eight times as much energy in the world as we currently do to fill all that need? Using oil- and coal-fired power plants? Not! QED.

Observation 4: It’s still not obvious how to sell “green”. Another question that came up was, “Why has it been so hard to establish clear needs?” The reason seems obvious to me: the needs are global but people feel needs on an individual level. I don’t need to buy sustainably planted wood to put up studs in the wall, but if no one does it then all our forests may disappear. Figuring out how to turn this tragedy of the commons into a personal tragedy is the key to selling green to consumers.

Observation 5: You can’t go it alone. Maybe this is a corollary to Observation 4, but if your company does green and your competitors don’t then they are playing you for a sucker. To get around this, Levi Strauss developed the practice of bringing their competitors into the loop. To preserve watershed, for example, they went to other clothing manufacturers and created a “CEO mandate”, which brings them all together to set standards for water use.

Observation 6: You don’t need to go it alone. At least, you don’t always need to. Many companies are reluctant to implement energy-saving changes because they doubt manufacturers’ energy-saving claims about products. To combat that, PG&E is doing product testing that can tell their customers whether products live up to their claims, according to Lee Cooper of PG&E.

Observation 7: Laggards are losers. That’s not an observation from the conference, but it is an important concept in evaluating when you are going to jump on the green bandwagon. You might want to consider what Geoffrey Moore has to say about the motivations of early adopters vs. laggards. What drives an early adopter? The knowledge that they can sometimes use new technology to steal a march on their competitors and reap the huge profits that follow from capturing markets early. They are willing to trade high risk for high rewards. So, if you are a high-rewards type, don’t wait too long to get on the green bandwagon. See Observation 1.

–Rich Wingerter

Working with my friend, Nils Davis, we now have some in-person meetings going in the Silicon Valley Area. Nils hosted his first Green Building Salon at the Round Table Pizza in Menlo Park, CA. Attendees represented a wide variety of backgrounds, including architecture, marketing, interior design, and product management.

Nils observed in his notes several themes that came up, including the role of liability in holding back innovation in the building industry, the perception that green is more expensive than brown, and that success will require that the whole green market move across the chasm from early adopters to mainstream (a concept promoted by Geoffrey Moore).

A number of attendees are looking for career changes that will land them a “green” job. As I noticed at the recent State of Green Business Forum, pinning down exactly what a “green job” is eludes even the experts. But, on an individual level, it’s not too hard to identify what it means. For me, it would be a paying job in the home building professions (architecture, engineering, construction or whatever) that combines my experience as an alliance manager with my background in understanding green building needs. For Kirsten at our meeting, it would be finding interior design clients who are “green enough”. (I think this means that care about what they put in their homes—Is it non-toxic? Is it from environmentally sustainable materials? Etc.) For others, such as Janice or Corinne, it might be a job with a solar company or a role in marketing translating between the green needs of clients and the green desires of the company. For Phil and other architects, it might mean finding differentiators that lead to green business.

As a result of the meeting, Nils is setting up a new professional group on LinkedIn that will bring together people who are looking for green jobs. (You can visit the group here, but you need a LinkedIn account to join.)

One huge value to this group is bringing together such a variety of backgrounds. Attendees had backgrounds in textile design, evidence-based design, daylighting, market adoption, congressional activity, the semiconductor industry, and much more.

More Green Salons are planned. In addition, Green Making will be sponsoring a similar in-person meeting in Sunnyvale on 11 February 2009 at the Palace Café on Murphy Street, Sunnyvale, CA. This meeting will focus more on residential green building and we are inviting everyone in the area who has an interest in building green homes. This will be an informal, round-table meeting for us to get together and get to know each other. Future meeting will probably include a short presentation by someone in the trade.

Information about all meetings can be found on our Meetup group Green Making for the Silicon Valley Area. Join Meetup.com and keep these meetings on your calendar!

–Rich Wingerter

Acting on a tip from my friend, Greg Merrill, I went to California Paint Company on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale, CA, to look for eco-friendly paint. Greg says that Benjamin Moore is higher rated than Kelly Moore (which I mentioned in Green Shopping) by Consumer Reports for paint quality.

At California Paint Company I talked with Thomas and he gave me a tour of the store. (He did this because I kept asking questions like, “Is that all you got that’s green?”) Benjamin Moore, like the other manufacturers, seems to be trying to eliminate VOCs from their paints. They have just replaced the Moorcraft Super Spec® line of low-VOC paints with a new Eco Spec® line of zero-VOC paints. (Of course, low/zero-VOC refers to the base, and tints can add additional VOCs.)

There are two big differences between the Eco Spec and the Super Spec paints they are designed to replace. The first is that Super Spec is designed to be low-VOC (below 100 grams/liter) and Eco Spec is designed to be zero-VOC (zero grams/liter). According to Thomas, the other is that the newer paint has the full range of colors that Benjamin Moore offers, unlike the former product. However, the Benjamin Moore literature says that Eco Spec has limited colors, so I would double-check on this before buying, although this may have changed since their brochures were printed. Colors in Eco Spec are waterborne, which means that the paint can be thinned with clean water and all you need to clean up is water.

Thomas gave me comparison prices for four different types of paint they offer. This runs the spectrum from their older Super Spec paint, bought primarily by contractors, through Regal® (the paint probably most often purchased by the public to do their own painting), to Aura® (“quite simply the finest paint we’ve ever made” according to the Benjamin Moore literature), to the new Eco Spec (again for contractors, but for green purposes maybe really the best paint of the bunch). I might note here that the literature says that Aura is also a waterborne paint that “meets the most stringent environmental regulations”. It may, but as “only” a low-VOC paint, it isn’t the most environmentally friendly.

What about price? First of all, the older Super Spec was considerably cheaper than the other paints. Just getting the contractor paint could save you 28% over getting Regal, or 44% over getting Aura, and that’s without dithering on the price. If you were a large contractor, you might be able to get a better deal. What do you give up for this? Well, one thing is the color options, which had not been as good. (But with Eco Spec, this problem apparently disappears.) For another, the consistency of the color may not be as good. You may not get exactly the color on the paint chip from the store. For a homeowner or designer trying to make their color scheme work, this could be a big consideration. But, on the other hand, Thomas told me that Super Spec tended to match better if you had to patch it.

Second, the newer Eco Spec carries a 35% premium over the older Super Spec. This is a fairly substantial premium for getting a zero-VOC base. On the other hand, Eco Spec is actually cheaper than both Regal and Aura (by 2% and 24%, respectively). So, if you are considering buying Benjamin Moore, then it is definitely worth a look.

Is this the best deal? Probably not. While Benjamin Moore might beat Kelly Moore in quality at Consumer Reports, the Eco Spec at California Paint Company was more expensive than the Green Coat at Kelly Moore. Since prices may vary considerably between stores and between projects (perhaps if you negotiate a good deal), I’m reluctant to provide a percentage comparison. You may also find that the quality matters more for your project. But, shop around, as they say.

In addition, California Paint Company carries Natura ™ zero-VOC paint, a premium waterborne paint. This wasn’t available at Sunnyvale and I didn’t get a price, but Thomas said they carry it at their Palo Alto store. This is a designer product, maybe comparable to the Yolo paint carried at Kelly Moore. In the Natura literature, it says that Natura follows the Gennex® color platform, but that Eco Spec has limited colors. It would be interesting to compare the price and quality of Yolo and Natura to see which of these might offer the best buy in this category, and to further compare them with their contractor-grade competition.

While I was at California Paint Company, I shopped for other green products. Before engaging the staff, I wandered around to see what else was available. I immediately saw a “green” paint thinner, but little else. I looked through the wood stains and noticed that a number of the cans were marked with their VOC levels. These ranged from maybe 300 to 500 grams/liter. I didn’t expect wood stains to be particularly green, so I wasn’t too surprised. After checking out the paints, I asked Thomas if he knew of any other products that had noticeably changed to greener equivalents. None came to mind.

I asked him about the green paint thinner. He said that he had had one person return it, complaining that it didn’t work. That’s kind of disappointing, but perhaps not fatal, especially if the trend is to move from oil-based paints to waterborne paints. Nevertheless, I suspect we will have oil-based paints around for a long time, so a good solvent would be a plus. On the other hand, a green thinner seems like an oxymoron.

I also asked about the wood stains. Thomas said that they didn’t have any that were low-VOC (where this means under 100 g/l), but that companies were working on that. So, we may see some waterborne stains on their shelves in the future. (I’m not knowledgeable enough to know whether waterborne stains are available generally.) Generally, if you wanted to “stain” wood in an eco-friendly way, you would probably use a wax or other natural finish. I’m not able to find a reference to the type of wax finishes I have in mind, but Aglaia Natural Finishes produces biodegradable plant- and mineral-based products with no petrochemicals or artificial resins.

One of the things I noticed about California Paint Company that I liked was that they had good information on colors and other paint factors. For example, I picked up a nice gloss level chart that shows 10 levels of gloss with paint samples (all in Hazy Blue). I also found a nice, but content free, brochure on how “the natural world can inspire a vision of the way we want our homes to look and feel”. Information on the Aura paints was particularly good, and there were good displays of color chips. They had a really excellent brochure called “Color Language: a color guide for home decorating”, which would be helpful for the non-designer to get some clues. (Designing a room so that the colors work is no small feat, and this only covers some of the basics. However, the limited advice they give is solid.) So, for the shopper who can’t afford a designer, or one that wants to independently research their facts, there was abundant material to help them out.

I also noticed that Benjamin Moore has partnered with others, such as Pottery Barn, to come up with color schemes. They had a brochure with Williamsburg colors and a corresponding brochure about visiting Williamsburg, VA. I personally find their Willamsburg color scheme particularly attractive, so it may figure in paint for our home at some point. (But I wonder how it would go with the southwestern motif I’ve got for other furnishings, like rugs. Hmmm.) Anyway, for whatever reason, I found the color options broader here.

Now, I know I’ve been remiss in not getting back to OSH HQ to find out about their green products, but I’ve still got it on my schedule. Maybe next time.

–Rich Wingerter

It’s time to get back to the blog. What’s taken so long?

I suddenly noticed that it’s been weeks since I posted the last entry. In the meantime, there have been a lot of changes.

We’ve added a totally new feature, Home Samples. This allows you to look up your geographical area and find samples of green homes in your area if we have found them in building our website. We tend to find descriptions and articles about homes while preparing the news for On the Horizon as we do our research every business day.

By the way, finding the news for this feature turns out to be a major time commitment. We don’t use any kind of automated news source. That would be fun! But the problem is that automation leads to duplication, redundanication, and boringization. The premise of “On the Horizon” is that it saves you the time to parse through endless lists of possible news items. A simple search, like find me (green news house-design OR home-design OR architecture) can land you 50,000 entries or more. Who wants to look through all of that? So, we look through the results and find you the top three stories for the day, the ones that really mean something. When we find other stories of interest, we add them as bonus stories. But the core of On the Horizon is the technical changes that will make a difference in how homes are built and operated in the years to come.

We have also started echoing these stories to Twine , a service that collects Web links. The new Green Making twine has started to collect members from all over the world. If you are not already a member of Twine, consider becoming a member and joining our group. You can set up an RSS feed from Twine to receive your On the Horizon news in your news reader.

In addition to Twine, Green Making has established groups on Facebook and Meetup. By joining the Facebook group you allow other Facebook members to see your interest in green residential building and see who else in your area is interested. By joining our Meetup group, you not only can find others in your area who are interested, but potentially meet them in person. Green Making is now sponsoring in-person meetings in the Silicon Valley Area where you can meet architects, builders and others who are interested in creating green homes.

To round out our social networking offering, we have also set up a directory of Twitter users. This allows you to find others in your area who are interested in green homes and follow what they are doing as they pursue their interest.

And there’s more. Which I’ll get to in the next post!

–Rich Wingerter

Clayton Homes (in Maryville, TN) builds manufactured homes, and they have now designed the iHouse, a green, energy efficient manufactured home, probably the first from a major manufacturer. They introduced their first iHouse at the Clayton home show in Knoxville, in late October, and have a possible commercial release date of various versions of the iHouse as early as May 2009.

Greenotter of Santa Fe, NM, took such a liking to the iHouse that he created the The Clayton I-House, a blog that tracks its development. He’s put together a comprehensive review, including pictures and interviews with people who have previewed models. He’s agreed to some excerpts from his blog:

From Is Clayton’s new “i-house” the Prius of homes?

I’ve been reading about manufactured homes including prefab/modular, kit houses, and green houses and conventional houses of all sorts, log, domes, yurts, for decades. I didn’t think a manufacturer would jump on green as quickly as Clayton has. GM and Ford didn’t care about fuel efficiency, and were fine with waiting to see where Toyota and Honda went with hybrids, because they were doing just fine selling trucks and SUVs. So, maybe Clayton has gotten the smart idea, that while they are doing well now, they want to be like Toyota, on top of the important green trend instead of behind it. No matter what you thought of “trailers” in the past, this step toward green is significant.

From Some photos of the Clayton i-house

From The wutizit factor of Clayton’s i-house

The iHouse has the “wutizit factor”.

It is the type of structure that might cause a passerby to say:

“What is it?”

“Some kind of single-wide right near a utility shed or phone company switching shack?”

When people are looking for a house, they don’t usually want a high wutizit factor, even if the three top priorities of “location, location, location” are perfect. If you see people pointing at your house, you want it to be because it is handsome or cute, not because they are trying to figure out what it is.

Greenotter compares the iHouse with Marianne Cusato’s “Katrina Cottage” and the Cavco solar “Freedom” park model (click through to see the pictures). This is the kind of feedback Clayton should be looking at.

From New article about the iHouse

It is time for people’s interest to shift from bigger houses and granite counter tops, to green, especially lower energy usage. Also, why can’t “future house” intersect with affordable house, as it does in the iHouse, rather than being an unaffordable architectural vision filled with expensive electronic gadgetry.

The iHouse is not the only small, green pre-fab house on the horizon, and I’d like to get more information about them on the site. Not only is the economy putting the squeeze on house sizes, but there’s a real need for affordable houses for the workers of the baby boom generation. So, I’m hoping for more articles from those of you interested in compact and affordable green houses.

–Rich Wingerter