Green Prefab

Green Prefab

New World Home Unveils New York's First LEED Platinum Prefab House

Mon

Sep

Modular design-builder New World Home has earned the first LEED Platinum rating in New York State for a prefabricated house. The 2400-square-foot house, in New World's Carson style, was assembled in Jeffersonville, New York in upstate Sullivan County and is just the second LEED Platinum home in New York (after an affordable single-family house in Schenectady that we've not covered here at gbNYC copped the honor earlier this year). The company's designs aim to blend in with the local architectural vernacular by "converging traditional design with next generation green technologies and highly efficient modular manufacturing methods;" the Jeffersonville home is no exception. Its tight thermal envelope, though, should save 65 percent in energy consumption over a conventional house, according to the project's LEED for Homes provider Steven Winter Associates. All of New World Home's projects are built with FSC-certified lumber under a scant 60-90-day production schedule; other base green features include:

BIM Meets Prefab: Suburban Prototype Home, Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey

Fri

Dec

by Stephen Del Percio

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We hear and read a great deal about the promises- and potential pitfalls - of BIM in the context of its use as a tool for sustainable design. Accordingly, we were interested to read in the most recent issue of Dwell about the Suburban Prototype Home in Bergen County. Designed by Hoboken-based Nastasi Architects for clients in the New York City suburb of Woodcliff Lake, the designers used a BIM model to successfully execute the curves and angles of a steel and glass addition to a traditional suburban ranch residence. Essentially, BIM is colloquial for advanced computer modeling design programs that allow designers to create 3-D models of a project that are loaded with extremely detailed information, at a level of precision that reduces construction time and waste and assists in the type of integrated design necessary for a truly sustainable project.

For the Suburban Prototype, Nastasi was able to transmit electronic drawings to its detailer and fabricator that set forth both geometric dimensions for the project and details on the strength of materials. The firm was also able to build a model of the property’s energy consumption by loading data on the angle of the sun, prevailing wind speeds, and average temperatures for the exact coordinates of the project site. The drawings sent to the fabricator were extremely precise, allowing it to manufacture the addition’s structural elements at comparable cost to conventional construction. John Nastasi told Dwell that he hopes to install similar types of additions on hundreds of homes, calling BIM modeling “more flexible and adaptable than other prefab methods that rely on mass-produced components and materials that are put together the same way over and over again.”

The premise of BIM - a 3-D design model that can be transmitted from architect, to client, to fabricator - offers sustainable designers an unprecedented level of control over their projects.

Green Prefab in the Catskills: Alta Log Home, Fleischmanns, New York

Thu

Dec

by Stephen Del Percio

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USGBC’s LEED for Homes (“LEED-H”) Pilot Program is now closed; the organization’s constituents voted on its final approval during a period that ended a few weeks ago, and the system’s formal introduction should be forthcoming shortly. Three projects in New York State earned certification from USGBC under the Pilot Program, and we’ve presented two of these residences to you previously. The Morrisania Homes, a Silver affordable housing development in the Bronx, made our list of the top five 2007 New York City green buildings, while the Callahan House in Skaneateles, just outside of Syracuse, received Gold early this summer.

Alta Log Homes is a Catskills-based manufacturer of prefabricated wooden log residences. It offers fifty different models, as well as custom designs, and its Greenbriar model in Fleischmanns earned New York’s aforementioned third LEED-H rating (Certified) back in August.