Marken Projects is working on another Passive House in British Columbia.  This 3,500-square-foot home, made with a panelized prefab system like the Rainbow Duplex, will house two families and three generations under the same roof in Surrey, British Columbia.  The aim is an affordable structure that uses 90% less energy for heating and cooling than a standard home.  It’ll have triple-pane windows, an HRV, solar hot water, rainwater harvesting, no-VOC materials, and the ultra-efficient and airtight shell.   Construction will take about five months, and I’ll provide an update with more detail at that time.

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When I mentioned a project by students aiming to build the greenest house in Canada (by means of the Living Building Challenge and LEED Platinum certification), I noted that students planned to use “prefabricated straw bale walls.” It turns out they finished this portion of the project using BioSIPs from NatureBuilt Wall Systems in Ontario, Canada.

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The original Mod.Fab installed on the grounds of Taliesin West will live again thanks to a new endeavor between Lindal Cedar Homes and both the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.  Thus, Mod.Fab will be available anywhere there’s a Lindal dealer, except the plan is also available in an additional exterior finish and in two larger sizes, 680 and 790 square feet.

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I like to watch the prefab world closely, but there’s one company that I haven’t mentioned yet.  That company, Deltec Homes, pops up in the news every other week or so.  Indeed, I noticed these homes are selling well in Canada, according to the National Post, and folks in Florida like that the round homes hold up in powerful hurricane weather, according to Wink News.

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