Manufactured home with a green twist

A Seattle architect is the "guinea pig" for this manufactured house 

By Jesus Chavez

The second of six modules for a unique new home is lifted by a crane to its site on South Lane Street in Seattle. The home's builder says it's the first modular home in the city to attain the highest level of sustainability certification. 

Planted in the middle of narrow South Lane Street in Seattle's Central Area, a 115-foot crane lifted a kitchen module into place on a bare foundation. Five more modules followed, assembled like giant Lego pieces.
Within a few hours in early December, a two-story, 1,790-square-foot home took shape.
The home's builder, Seattle-based Greenfab, says it's the first modular home in the city to target the highest level of sustainability certification from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.
LEED raters have been working alongside Greenfab through the designing and building process, and the official certification is expected two months after the home is finished next month.
"Things are going great. ... It's among the highest scoring projects we've had to date," said LEED rater Tom Balderston. "I think they put a lot into the design process, a lot more than most builders do."
The home boasts many sustainable features, including insulation that reduces electricity usage by 50 percent; an interactive home monitoring system to track energy consumption; a 1,400-gallon aboveground water tank that captures rain for toilet flushing; and three 300-gallon storage basins that filter and treat gray water — water from showers, sinks and the washing machine — for watering the lawn and garden.
Greenfab's first home is owned by its architect, Robert Humble, who plans to move in with his wife.
"As the architect, the contractor and the owner, we can do some things on this house that will really push the envelope," Humble said. "It's a prototype in every sense of the word, and we're using this opportunity to ... literally be the guinea pig on it."
Before Humble occupies the house, it will be open for tours from mid-February through March to show the public Greenfab's approach to sustainable and modular home development.
"We want people to get inspired and become educated on what it does mean to live more sustainably," said Greenfab co-owner Johnny Hartsfield.

This is the first home for Hartsfield and Greenfab's other owner, Swen Grau, who founded the company in January 2008.
Hartsfield was a landscape architect for several firms in Seattle before establishing Greenfab. Unsatisfied with the direction of his career, he said, he decided to quit his job and work out of his basement to address "a need out there, and a problem — people couldn't find a home that was healthy and sustainable that was affordable."
Until recently, Grau lived in Switzerland and worked with Hartsfield through Skype. He moved to the Greenlake area in July with his wife and two sons.
"We just flipped over our life and said, 'Let's take a risk, let's go for some adventure and try to make it better for our kids and the future and do something green,' " said Grau.
Focusing on modular home development is a strategic approach to sustainable development, said Hartsfield. The benefits of modular home construction are numerous, according to Greenfab, like offering a 50 percent reduction in waste generated and 50 percent less time spent in the construction process compared to site-built homes.
Modular homes are built in a factory, which allows more control and efficiency, said Aaron Adelstein, director of the Built Green program of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.
"What materials are used, how the materials are used, reducing waste and toxins — it can be a lot easier to do that in a factory," said Adelstein. "The greenness of the end product is easier to achieve than from scratch in traditional building."
Green modular homes are gaining popularity, defying the stigma of prefabricated homes, and that growing positive perception holds promise for developers in that niche, he said.
"They're considered to be quite chic and quite architecturally interesting now," said Adelstein.
The home's total costs are estimated at $450,000, which rivals the cost of traditional site-built homes in the area, said Hartsfield. This, he says, is the current goal of Greenfab — to offer more value at the same price.
In the future Hartsfield and Grau hope to beat that and offer sustainability at a price lower than the competition.
"For me, there's no way I could afford a home like that, but we want to find a way to make it accessible," said Grau. "We want to give people a choice to build green or not, but not being related to money in the bank."
The struggling housing market doesn't dampen the enthusiasm of Greenfab and their sustainable-development cohorts. They are focused on the future, when Hartsfield hopes sustainable modular home development will have an edge.
"The industry is turning this way," Humble said. "In the last few years it's risen to the point of public consciousness, and now the public is demanding it."