Affordable Green housing for $100k

The goal: to build small, sustainable houses at reasonable prices right in the middle of the city, with easy transit access.

Who\’s doing it?  Postgreen Homes in Philadelphia!

Developers Chad Ludeman and his wife Courtney, shown in the picture with their son, built the $100K House (about Php4.2M) in 2009 as their prototype Postgreen Home in East Kensington, Philadelphia:

The 100k House project is our first and most well known project. Designed as a case study for building affordable LEED homes, these two houses have come to represent our ongoing efforts to build better homes for less. Both homes received LEED Platinum certification and the project won the USGBC LEED for Homes Project of the Year Award

The 100K house is about 111 square meters in area (1,200 sq ft), has two bedrooms and one bath.  Green features are as follows:

DISTANCE TO BUS: 2 Blocks
DISTANCE TO TRAIN: 4 Blocks

AMENITIES / DETAILS

• Solar Thermal
• Solar PV
• Passive House Air Sealing
• Super Insulated
• Solatube Daylighting
• Private Yard
• Full Basement
• Air-to-Air Heat Pump
• Dual Flush Toilet

The pictures tugged at my heart because they\’re almost exactly what I had in mind for my Nuvali house: concrete floors, open plan design, flexi rooms!  

Look at these bicycle hooks under the stairs– great way to combine form and function, which I think is at the core of green design.

The house is green through and through, from pricing, to construction cost and materials, to design and energy needs:

The 100K House is close to 70 percent more energy efficient than the older properties next door, thanks to heavy-duty insulation, tight-fitting windows.

I especially like the emphasis on the lifestyle shift that the Ludemans insist on when one decides to go green.  More than anything, it is a paring down, a return to simplicity:

…for average working people to embrace Postgreen’s ethos, they must take Phillips’s ideas about accepting less to heart. The Ludemans’ home consists of two floors, the first little more than a concrete-floored rectangle housing a living space and the kitchen. Upstairs is Chad and Courtney’s modest bedroom, a small room for their son, Teague, and a bathroom that boasts the only door in the house. Bikes hang in plain view beneath the stairs; a small island with an induction cooktop separates the kitchen from the living space.

The home’s furnishings and fixtures are equally humble. A row of bare CFLs hangs from the ceiling of the living area, and the appliances in the kitchen are sturdy, efficient fare from Frigidaire. 

More on the other Postgreen homes later.

Found via Dwell.com
Images from Dwell
Read more on Postgreenhomes.com