A new video was just released on the 100k House, and it is definitely the best one we’ve seen yet.  The video was made by Babelgum, and we are very impressed with their work. Everyone interviewed sounds fairly well prepared (which I have trouble believing was true), and the house looks great. The shoot itself was pretty long and arduous, but the result is worth it.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Unfortunately, it won’t be me spinning underground hair band hits or Chad and Courtney’s madcap morning drive time extravaganza, but Postgreen will be on the radio. This Thursday at 3:00 p.m. eastern time the season premiere of Ecoman and the Skeptic will feature Chad and I waxing philosophical about the 100k House, green building and maybe even a little marketing if I have my way.

You can listen to the show in a few places. It will be aired live on both The Green Talk Network and the VoiceAmerica Variety Channel. It will also be available live and for download at the Ecoman and the Skeptic home page.

Those of you who have queries or simply want to make things difficult for us can email questions to the hosts at ecoman@philau.edu or theskeptic@philau.edu. Or, if you are feeling even more inquisitive or mischievous, you can call in during the broadcast to 1-888-346-9141. Just remember, Chad doesn’t answer questions about the years 1995-1997 and I won’t talk about El Paso.

Hope you all tune in and then come back here to tell us what you think in the comments.

We were fortunate enough to have the 100k project mentioned yet again by Inga Saffron in the Philadelphia Inquirer and on Philly.com this weekend. Sure, the mention was just a small part of a long piece on up and coming Philly architects and our mention was just part of a description of ISA’s awesomeness, but we are still honored. It is nice to be a part of what is happening in the architectural vanguard of our city.

The story is well written and definitely worth reading.  However, there are just a couple small details we want to correct/clarify.

First and foremost, the 100k did not cost 200k to build. We are not sure where that particular misconception came from, but the hard construction costs (labor and materials) were right around the projected 100k number. Perhaps the 200k number in the article was an attempt to understand the full cost of the build including land and soft costs. Either way, we want to make it clear that we we did not come in at double our goal.

Second, and less importantly, the wall panels we used (SIPs) were not pre-wired. Our electrician probably would have liked it if they were. The panels do come with electric chases cut through the insulation but wiring still needs to be pulled through. It is also important to note that SIPs are far from finished panels. They are simply panels made of insulation sandwiched by two sheets of OSB.

Other than those minor corrections, we were very happy for the publicity. You should all read the piece and, if you’re brave, get involved in the discussion on Philly.com. As always, there is a very vocal reactionary element making noise over there, but perhaps one of our readers can provide some reasoned opposition to the conversation.

We have had some busy days here at Postgreen and as a result, we haven’t kept you as up-to-date as we should. So, let’s consider this post a little catch up. For the sake of brevity, we’ll do this in list form . . .

1. There is a great new video of Postgreen up on Facebook. This video was produced by Reel Stuff and the production value does a nice job of making us look better and smarter then we actually are . . . just like it does for movie stars.
2. Speaking of Facebook, Postgreen now has its own page. Check it out, become a fan and be on the short list for all of our future events and happenings.
3. The Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit is coming up and I’m speaking at it . . . twice. Monday, Oct. 5 at 11 a.m. I’ll be giving a short Pecha Kucha (think Ignite Philly) talk on the 100k Project. Then, on Tuesday, I’ll be on a panel on “Green Aesthetic” at 10:30. That one will include a short presentation on problems as points of inspiration. Sign up for the conference and come make me feel good about myself.
4. I’m also doing a little more speaking for the Design Week shindig. Come to Coldwell Banker Preferred at 223-225 Market Street on Thursday Oct. 8 at 6:00 for refreshments and a little talk on delivering design, sustainability and choice in housing to a market that has seldom seen any of those things. Lynne Templeton from Greenable will also be in the house.
5. I’m not the only one talking. Chad will also be doing a talk at the Passive House Conference in Urbana, Il. If you’re headed out there, be sure to check out his take on Passive House from a for-profit, developer standpoint.

Alright, that’s it for now. Let us know in the comments if you’re coming to any of these events and we’ll keep an eye out for you.

This is just a quick post to let you know that CBS3 decided to put me on live TV. Some would call that a rash decision, even from a local news network, but in the end it worked out alright. I managed to steer clear of the many jokes that might have abruptly ended the interview, and they managed to ask me questions that were only mostly impossible to really answer in a short three-minute segment. In the end we got a little plug for the new site, and I think they got a pretty good interview. At the very least, I had a great time despite the early hour. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Me on the TV

Keeping Up

With all of the press we have been fortunate enough to get recently, including a great article in the Philadelphia Inquirer this morning, now seemed like a good time to provide some info on how you can keep track of what we are doing and why. I know we have given this information before, but we thought it might be nice to provide it again here for those who are new or may have missed it.

The Blog
Since you are reading it right now, you probably know about this blog, but perhaps you didn’t know that you can subscribe to our feed via RSS and have it delivered to your reader (I use Google Reader), or for those who aren’t into feed reading, you can subscribe to receive updates via email. This saves you the hassle of visiting our actual site every time you want to see if we have written something. And if you do become a regular reader, be sure to comment. The conversation is where it all happens.

The Newsletter
Our monthly (we try) newsletter is a great way to get consise information about what is happening at Postgreen. Even those who read the blog everyday may find that subscribing to the newsletter is a useful extra. The information tends to be a little cleaner and more definite than the speculation and hurried prose that sometimes characterizes our blog posts. Subscribe today and we promise we won’t bother you more than once a month.

Email Marketing by iContact

Twitter
Often maligned in the media, we have actually found Twitter to be a great communication tool. 140 characters is often more than enough space to get key messages out. You can follow us under several different accounts.

nicdarling – My personal account which is often as much about beer and disc golf as it is about green building.
chadludeman – Chad’s personal account. You never quite know what you’re going to get.
100khouse – This account follows the ongoing saga of our first project and the research and design that it spawned. Great for construction updates, material ideas and other green building tidbits.
postgreenhomes – Our newest Twitter account is designed to keep people informed on all of our residential projects and the upcoming Postgreen Homes site that is currently under development.

Facebook
We have been somewhat remiss in keeping up with our Facebook stuff but we are there. It is a good place to connect with us for information about events and, as we improve our interaction, new pictures, videos and other content. Checkout our Facebook page and become a fan.

Flickr
Want to see new photos of construction, new floor plans, new renderings? Than you should swing by our Flickr page now and then. We try to post all our newest images there as quickly as possible.

Postgreen
This may be surprising to some of you (it occasionally surprises us), but we actually have a company site at www.postgreen.com. It is not currently particularly up to date, but we are working on a new version of it which should be coming soon.

Catching Up

Those of you who are new might be wondering exactly who we are and what we are up to. You might also not be willing to scan through 250 blog posts to find out. For you we have made a list of 10 key posts that describe the project and our philosophy behind it. If you want to know a whole lot about the project and our company these posts are a great place to start. Be sure to read the comments too. There is always great stuff in the conversations.

1. Why not start at the begining with our very first post.
2. And with a video that gives some background info on the company.
3. See our initial preliminary list of needs and wants for the house.
4. Get a taste for our design thinking and research with this zero energy design post.
5. See the decision making process enacted in regards to insulation.
6. Interested in budgets? So are we. Check it out.
7. Take a look at our LEED situation in a short post with useful links.
8. Want to know our thoughts on Prefab?
9. Here is where we ended up on mechanicals.
10. And finally, check out where we are headed next.

If that isn’t enough or if you were just hoping for something more rambling and esoteric, take a stroll through our Philosophy posts. These will give you some background on the whys behind what we are doing.

Well, hopefully that is enough info for even the most curious among you. If not, let us know what else you want in the comments.

This is going to be a really short post. Those of you accustomed to my normal long windedness should be happy with this nearly scroll-free experience. Don’t get used to it. I’ll be back with the lengthy rants soon.

Recently, Vik Duggal of Konstructr asked me to be on his daily podcast called KCast. I agreed without hesitation. Vik is incredibly passionate about revolutionizing the building industry, and as you know, that is the sort of thing I can get behind. The interview was a lot of fun, and even though it is sometimes hard to listen to oneself talk, I think it went well.

If you have 20-30 minutes check out the KCast episode about the 100k House. If you have more time, listen to some of the others. There are some great guest and excellent conversations. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, so get to it.

As always, the comment section is there for your use.

Well, the Postgreen team finally made the little screen, and it wasn’t even in an “America’s Funniest” context. CBS 3, Philly’s local news team, called us a couple days ago for an interview. We met them out at the site, talked about the project and froze just a little in the 35 degree weather.

We were very impressed with the research and preparation done by Liz Keptner, the reporter. She obviously did her homework, and that made the interview run really smoothly. The short segment turned out very nice for the four hours they had to put it together.

The piece ran on the 4 o’clock news yesterday. Not exactly prime time, but we’ll take it. Check out the article and video on CBS3′s web site (the video is top right).

We are revelling in our new role as television stars, but don’t worry . . . we won’t let it go to our head.

The Philadelphia Business Journal has been drafting a story on our project for a few months now. It came out last Friday to the title of “Little house on the infill.” There are a few slight inaccuracies in the story that I wanted to clarify here as well as a bit of additional info for those of you that might be new to the blog.

1. The construction cost of $100K (& $100 psf) is for hard construction only. Simply labor and materials to build the house on the left of the photo.
2. Our target price range for all homes based on the 100K model is between $200K – $300K. In the future there will be different models, sizes and bedroom options but we want to stick as close as possible to this range.
3. To hit this range depends completely on the location of the homes. We are targeting market rate pricing of standard homes, but delivering better design and LEED standards. If you can buy a $250K rehab in a neighborhood, we hope to offer a better new home of the same size and same price down the street if possible. Land costs and even hard construction costs have less to do with the final price than going market rate of standard homes in that neighborhood…
4. It sounds like the $250 psf cost that Re:Vision Architecture is speaking of may be in reference to some of the popular prefab outfits out there.
5. We are building two homes right now. One is the 100K that my wife and I will be moving into and the other is right next door on the corner that we are selling. It’s on the market now.
6. The next project is two homes down the street. One is sold to Mario and Mel mentioned in the article and the other will be put on the market for sale.
7. We have secured land to build two more homes after that right behind the current 100K project. This makes a total of 6 homes we are working on building in the first half of 2009. Hopefully more will be scheduled for the second half.
8. Mario, Mel and their daughter, Rosario, are awesome.
9. The 100K House is 18′ wide (not 22′) by 36′ deep and is about 1,150 square feet.
10. SIPs stands for “Structurally Insulated Panels.” They are framing, insualtion and sheathing in one.
11. The other members of Postgreen, Nic Darling and Courtney Ludeman deserve to be in the pictures also. Here is a nice pic with the whole gang.

Thanks for reading and visiting. Feel free to ask any other questions brought up by the article and we will be happy to answer them here.

This is our first professionally produced full length video on the 100K Project. It is brought to us by the Philly tourism run blog, uwishunu, and the folks at streettalkin.com. It was a pleasure working with them and we are happy with the results. Check it out an let us know what you think.