My wife and I often contemplate buying land somewhere and building our own house. It would be real nice to raise our kids (when we have them) somewhere that we have room to breathe and run around. I don’t know where or when, but that is our goal in life. I would like several acres to play with and grow our own food, and my wife would like to build her own school wherever we end up. Dreams are good, no?

The house that we REALLY want to build is the Breezehouse, by Michelle Kaufmann Designs. We have been following Kaufmann’s projects for a few years, and even drove all the way to San Francisco one year to attend the Sunset festival just to see the model of one of her designs, the Glidehouse. While we fell in love with it immediately, our current favorite is the Breezehouse. Fully green, non-toxic and reasonably priced…check it out at the link above if you have a few minutes!

That all being said, building a pre-fab house definitely has its advantages over stick built houses, especially when it comes to the environment. I came across this article over at edie news centre that talked about how building pre-fab houses can cut construction waste by 90% due to the efficiency of a factory build. This is what they had to say:

Some of the biggest waste streams in traditional construction are packaging (up to 5%), timber (up to 25%) and plasterboard (up to 36%).

Up to a 90% reduction can be achieved by reducing wastes such as wood pallets, shrink wrap, cardboard, plasterboard, timber, concrete, bricks and cement by increasing the use of off site manufacture and modern methods of construction.

The report also identifies the key off site manufacture and modern methods of construction systems that offer significant opportunities to reduce waste levels on site, including:

- prefabricated kitchens and bathrooms;
- timber frame systems;
- light steel frame systems;
- structural insulated panels;
- pre-cast concrete systems

Count me in! Now when the time comes to build our dream house, not only will we be greening our own life, but we will be significantly cutting down the amount of waste our house would generate during construction. Score!

technorati: Glidehouse, Breezehouse, Construction waste

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