BY: ROB HOFFMAN
Ecological pre-fab houses and quick, efficient home design have recently piqued a wide interest—and why wouldn’t it? According to Tedd Benson, Unity Homes Founder, “We can build homes that are fossil fuel-free and affordable. We can build homes in 30 days that are around for 300 years.”
Benson and his team recently completed the Greenbuild Unity Home project, a 1,620 square foot pre-fab home with net zero energy standards, recently displayed at the November 18-20th Greenbuild conference in Washington, DC. The home was designed in partnership between BUILDER, Unity Homes and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute. Building the pre-fab elements of the home took a mere six weeks, which was accomplished in Unity’s New Hamshire factory. Even more astonishing, is that these pre-fab elements can be shipped and assembled in three days time. The following time lapse will walk you through the construction process.
The Unity Home is built with a “system based on pods and panels,” according to Builder Online, meaning that each room in the house is assigned to a pod that can easily be shipped and snapped into place. The shell of the house (walls, roof and floor) are also pre-constructed and shippable to be assembled in a matter of hours once they reach their destination.
According to Inhabitat, the home is also “outfitted with the largest collection of Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certified building products ever used in a residential project.” If you were first unsure of what Cradle to Cradle means, it basically describes a building style that seeks to replicate natural biological processes—think of a home that’s designed to mimic the smooth, functioning systems of nature. To achieve this C2C status, they use products like the Naturepedic mattress, SunPower solar panels and Icestone counters, according to Inhabitat.
The home contains two-bedrooms, two-bathrooms and is insulated with recycled fibres to increase the house’s environmental appeal. The house currently costs about $243,000, but could be dropping to around $226,800 in the new year (in case that extra 20 grand was the only thing holding you back). Still, in terms of the average mortgage this is an extremely cheap buy for a house. The most important takeaway from the Unity Home, though, is the glimpse into the future of home building. The shifting prioritization of environmental factors with quick and easy set-ups indicates a future where communities can spring up in a matter of months. Hopefully, this will eventually mean quality housing for cheaper, in areas that need quick infrastructure facelifts, rather than overnight takeovers of green space.
