The Two Point Five Beta is well on it’s way to being a real house, but before we get all the way there we thought we would take the opportunity to show it off a little. On January 6, 2011 we will be hosting a tour of the project. We will run the event from 3 pm to 8 pm so that we can cover those who want an excuse to leave work early and those only available after hours. There will be plenty of information strewn about the house as well as guided tours by members of the Postgreen Team throughout the event.

It will probably look a bit more done than this.

Okay, so that’s the “Tour” but what’s the “More”, you ask. Well, we figured we would take the opportunity provided by having people come out to cover a few more exciting bases. So, if any of the following interests you, be sure to get to this event. In addition to the tour we will be . . .

• Featuring the new Avant Garage Project
• Introducing Hybrid Construction (our new company)
• Premiering our new kitchen line including a fully installed demo.
• Announcing our first South Philly project (if you want to hear about it first you need to be at the event)
• Sharing delicious refreshments

The whole Postgreen Team will be around for the event so there will be plenty of answers available to any questions you might have. We hope to see many of you there.

So, to sum up:

What: Two Point Five Tour and More
When: Thursday, January 6, 2011 – 3pm to 8pm
Where: 2061 E. Amber St., Philadelphia, PA 19125 (map)

If you would like to attend we ask that you please RSVP. You can do so on our Facebook event page or by emailing me at nic@postgreen.com. Please also feel free to share this event with whomever you like.

Questions can be asked and answered in the comments.

Philly Beer Week begins this Friday, June 4th and runs until Sunday, June 13th. The return of Beer Week usually means a slight slump in our productivity, but it has, in the past, been made up for by a notable rise in morale and a significant dulling of that constant stress-related pain that being a start-up real estate developer seems to produce. It has also, informally, led to a kind of, impromptu, beer aided, open meeting situation. Imagine us comfortably camped in one of our favorite beer tasting emporiums (usually Memphis Taproom for their unrivaled No Repeat Beer Week), when we receive a call from someone interested in getting together. “Come on down,” we say, and a short time later that trip to the pub becomes an interesting, and occasionally fruitful, business encounter.

We liked the feeling of justification we got from those meetings so much, that we have decided to make Philly Beer Week an official Postgreen Open Meeting Week (With Beer). That means that we will be available, at one location or another, to meet with absolutely anyone who wants to join us for a glass. We have even compiled a list of respectable reasons why you might want to meet with us:

1. You want to buy something from us
2. You want to sell something to us
3. You want to hire us
4. You want us to hire you
5. You want to ask us questions
6. You want to give us answers
7. You want to drink a beer and pretend its about business
8. You want to conduct business and pretend its about beer

And, for those of you without respectable reasons, we have developed a list of absurd ones. Keep in mind that for our purposes, these are still just as valid:

1. You want to photograph us in our native habitat
2. You want our opinion on your latest screenplay
3. After reading our long winded blog posts you want to just sit and talk at us for a while as payback
4. You want to beat me in Rock Paper Scissors
5. You want to tell us your favorite joke
6. You want Chad to call your significant other and explain your increasingly incapacitated state
7. You want us to name your new dog (Awesome Dog?)
8. You want us to join your scooter gang (I hope someone chooses this)

And of course, the most important reason for meeting with us during beer week:

1. You have the overwhelming desire to buy us a beer

So, if you want to meet up with us during Philly Beer Week, send me an email with your favorite reason(s) and the day and time you would like to meet. If the time is still available, we’ll let you know where we are going to be, and the rest will be easy.

Now, use the comments to give all of our readers more great reasons to meet with us, or tell everyone the reason you picked.

This Saturday, as in tomorrow, is the Trenton Avenue Arts Fest. It is a great neighborhood event that features artists and crafts people selling a huge variety of interesting stuff. There is also plenty of good food and beer, and the famous Kinetic Sculpture Derby, an event not to be missed. The whole thing kicks off at noon and if you live in or around Philly, we suggest you make an effort to come.

Cool, you say, but why mention this on the 100k Blog? What does this have to do with Postgreen or sustainable building? Well, there are two good answers to that . . .

1. This event is a great opportunity to see why we build houses in this neighborhood. We think this festival exemplifies much of the spirit and energy we love in Kensington. It is something we are looking for as we research projects in other areas.
2. It is a great time to see the newly installed facade on the Skinny Project just half a block away from the festivities. This project features house tattoos by the talented Candy Depew and is an impressive sight. The entire facade is not quite finished yet, but all the panels are up and it’s definitely worth a glance.

We hope to see those of you in the Philly area out on Trenton Ave. tomorrow. If you want to find me I’ll most likely be at my wife’s booth on the NE corner of Trenton and Susquehanna. Stop by and chat if you’re out and about. Now here is a little teaser to entice you . . .

As always, the comments are a good place to announce your plans to attend or apologize for the logistics of distance and/or obligation that prevents you from doing so.

You may remember a little discussion we had about our Triplex idea. Well, the idea is moving toward reality. Tomorrow night we will be having a voting meeting with the East Kensington Neighborhood Association to determine whether or not the neighborhood will support the variances we need for this project. The key discussion point will likely be the appropriateness of increased density that our plan proposes. We, of course, believe it is the perfect location for denser housing as it is within a very short walking distance to the subway line. We also believe that the tenants this type of project is bound to attract will be a great addition to an increasingly vibrant neighborhood. If you think similarly about urban development or would like to hear more, please come out to our zoning meeting tomorrow night.

Where: Coral Street Arts House (map)
When: Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 7:00 p.m.

All are welcome to come, but we would particularly appreciate the support of those of you who live or work within the East Kensington neighborhood. This is a voting meeting and a few more positive voices always help.

If you plan on coming, shout it out in the comments.

The Building Industry Association of Philadelphia is offering a tour of six green projects in Fishtown including three of ours. On this tour you will get to see The Ice House and a couple “before and after” homes from Green Revolution Realty. You will also get a chance to check out our original 100k project, the Passive Project and the Skinny Project. The Skinny should be particularly interesting as it will just be entering the framing phase of construction.

This tour does involve a bit of money, though the cost is lower if you are a member of the BIA, DVGBC or GPAR. The price of entry also includes an open bar happy hour at Memphis Taproom (our satellite office) which we think completely justifies the cost of admission.

The tour will be held on Thursday, April 8th regardless of the weather. Registration will begin at 2:00 pm at the Ice House and the whole deal will wrap up at Memphis Taproom with a happy hour from 5-6:30 pm. If you want in on this thing, sign up soon (PDF download). The price goes up $10 after April 5th.

We will be out at each of our sites answering questions all afternoon and at Memphis soothing our sore vocal chords afterward. I hope to see some of you out there.

The Passive House is finished and waiting for its new owners. Settlement will be happening very soon, but lucky for us we have a small window of time where we can still show the house off. That’s right, it’s tour time!

This is short notice, so in an effort to give everyone the best chance of seeing the house we will be having two open house times for the Passive House. One will be during the day for those of you who like to skip out on your job and those of you who have reserved your daylight hours for rest and recreation. The other will be in the early evening for those whose diligence keeps them occupied during the day and for those that curse and studiously avoid the light of the sun. So, choose from one of the following times and we’ll wow you with the wonders of the Passive Project.

Passive House Open Houses:

Where:
2320 E. Amber Street
Philadelphia, PA 19125

When:
Thursday, December 17th

Time 1:
11 am to 1 pm

Time 2:
5 pm to 7 pm

We hope to see plenty of you out there. If you know you can come send me an email at nic@postgreen.com or tell everyone in the comments. Don’t forget to mention which time slot you’ll be attending.

This will just be a quick update post to let you know a couple of interesting things that are happening in Postgreen land. I’ll keep it uncharacteristically brief and to the point.

Award 1: What do the 100k House project and a skyscraper in Shanghai have in common? They both showed up in Architect Magazine’s Annual Design Review. We received an honorable mention which, while not a full on victory, is still quite an accomplishment for a little single family project in Philly. Not everyone that goes to the Olympics wins gold, but they are still Olympians and that looks pretty good on the resume.

Award 2: We haven’t won this one yet. Not by a long stretch, but we still could with your help. Philebrity, Philly’s own blog about . . . well . . .  nearly everything, has nominated Postgreen as Business of the Year. Your vote could help us actually win. So head on over to Philebrity and vote.

Speaking Engagement: Brian Phillips (of ISA fame) and I will be speaking at the Homes Within Reach conference in Harrisburg, PA this Thursday afternoon. Our session is called Reducing Long-term Energy Costs in Single Family Homes, and will mainly be a review of our various projects. The session is T13 in the agenda and starts at 2:15 p.m. It may be a little late to tell you about this one. If so, I apologize, but perhaps some of you are already going and will stop by our session.

That’s it for now. If you are going to the conference let us know in the comments and we’ll try to make sure we say hi.

I know a lot of you out there have been anxiously waiting for another opportunity to watch me stand in front of a room full of people and talk (humor me). Well, lucky you, that opportunity is coming at the beginning of October. In fact, two such opportunities are on the horizon.

The Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit is a very long name for a great event that will be held Philadelphia this fall. The summit describes itself like this . . .

Creative industry types from across the world are coming to the City of Brotherly Love for Innovation Philadelphia’s second Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit on October 5-6, 2009.  Whether you are an entrepreneur, a graphic or web designer, business exec, or something in between, there is sure to be something for everyone with more than 100 speakers scheduled for this year’s event.  With a variety of panels and workshops, and keynote speakers such as Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert and social media guru Peter Shankman, the Summit is bringing together the best of the best from an assortment of creative industries to network, exchange ideas, and share information. Check out www.GCECS2009.com to register and to see all the latest news about the Summit.

This summit, which sounds like an otherwise professional and well crafted event, has decided to include me in their program not once but twice. On Monday, Oct. 5 at 11 I will be doing a short Pecha Kucha (20 slides at 20 seconds a piece) on the 100k and the future Postgreen Homes it has spawned. Then, on Tuesday, Oct. 6 at 10:30 I will be on a panel titled “Green Aesthetic: 21st Century Architecture” which is described like this:

Sustainable design has revolutionized the way architects, engineers and interior designers go about developing new residential and commercial buildings. Consumers are not only concerned about the environmental impact of their project, but also want a design that is aesthetically pleasing. At the new convergence of green building and design, where both are equally important, there is a tension for designers and architects to deliver a product that meets both requirements. Explore how practitioners are balancing sometimes competing interests of design and sustainability and how new models and materials are constantly being developed to move the green movement forward.

The fact that I am not an architect or designer doesn’t seem to concern them. Perhaps they are looking for another type of voice on the panel or maybe I am just the last pick for the kickball team. Maybe they read my old blog post on modern architecture and got the odd impression that I know what I’m talking about. Either way, I agreed to it, though I may try to pass this one off to someone else on the team.

So, if you haven’t already, mark the dates in your calendars. Even without my contribution, this should be a great event. I am particularly looking forward to hearing what Peter Shankman of HARO fame has to say. If you have other sessions you would like to plug or anything at all to say about this (words of encouragement welcome), do it in the comments.

If you haven’t heard yet, we are having a party this Thursday evening to announce some new homes we plan to build. If you are coming, you probably like modern architecture, affordable homes, sustainable design or some combination of these three. No matter which is your fancy, we think you have great taste and want to reward you for coming to our party and helping us drink both kegs our friends from Memphis Taproom are bringing with them.

We came up with offering a free 2.0kW solar PV upgrade from EOS Energy Solutions. That’s a pretty small array, but our homes aren’t too large either and they’re pretty high on energy efficient ingredients. Some people smarter than us have calculated that this small array is all it could take to make one of our Postgreen Homes “Net Zero Energy” as long as you are not abusing the outlets too much. Net Zero Energy basically means you are selling as much energy over the course of the year to PECO as you are using from them. Depending on rates, you will often be paid more by PECO than you pay them, for a negative annual utility bill. In a few years when the rate caps expire, it will be even more ludicrous.

This is a big deal. Get excited. We are.

To qualify, you need to come to the party, choose and reserve your house. You will have a week or so to make your final decision on actually putting your money where your mouth is, so don’t feel pressured. If you ultimately move forward, EOS will assist you along with us, in obtaining the proper federal and state rebates that make this PV array possible. We at Postgreen will kick in the remaining balance as part of this one time promotion.

We have one project of three units that will qualify for this promotion only. These are the next three homes we plan to build and we are calling it the Skinny Project. You will have to find out why at the party. So, put this offer in your head when considering what to do tomorrow night (or most likely tonight when you read this). You could sit home and watch reruns of Greys Anatomy or you could come drink our free beer, eat our delicious apps, listen to some sweet music, talk to interesting people and take us up on our offer to eliminate your energy bills forever (or at least the next 30 years or so).

In addition to designing extreme green kitchens, we were thinking you would want to see how amazing the Postgreen Homes Launch Party is going to look, so we’ve mustered up some floor plans and sketches to show you. The pictures below feature the gallery space with display boards located throughout the space. Computers will be available for guests to test-drive the new site, and some computer screens will even be projected to show everyone in the room your home customization in progress.

Drinks and appetizers, a bangin’ DJ and of course Nic and Chad, all for your enjoyment, what more could you ask for in a hoppin’ summer affair. So be there.

If you are planning on coming to the party, let us hear about it in the comments. That is also a good place to tell us how cool our party plans look.