Construction of the 2015 Greenbuild Unity Home started in earnest last week at Unity Homes’ production facilities in New Hampshire. The 1,620-square-foot LEED v4 Platinum, net zero-energy demonstration home--a partnership between BUILDER, Unity Homes, and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (C2C)--will be on display at the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, Nov. 18-19 in Washington, DC.
You might think the project team is crazy to start building a show home just 40+ days before the conference, but this is exactly why we chose Unity Homes for the project. In earlier posts I’ve mentioned Unity’s montage process, which integrates planning, design, engineering, scheduling, specs, and construction in-house from day one, and leverages the power of computer design and CNC machinery to maximize the company’s precision and efficiencies. The rubber meets the road in the shop, but it has been an incredibly smooth process due to montage, which in our case included a complete “virtual-build” of the Greenbuild Unity Home. All the decisions have been made and all the guesswork has been removed from the process. (Click here for a time-lapse video.)
Unity’s system is based on pods and panels. Like all of Unity’s design platforms, the 2015 Greenbuild Unity Home conforms to this integrated approach that links design directly to rapid construction. Two pods containing the kitchens, bathrooms, laundry room, and mechanical room are being laid out and assembled, ready for shipment, including cabinets, appliances, fixtures, and finishes. This approach puts the most intense and costly square footage within the controlled environment of Unity’s shop and labor force. The rest of the home including floors, walls, and roof are being built and shipped as complete panels with framing, sheathing, subflooring, wiring, insulation, windows and doors, and interior and exterior finishes in place. A typical on-site assembly of the shell on the foundation takes Unity’s trained crews one to three days. At Greenbuild we’ll have six days to enclose, finish, and furnish the show home before tours start on Nov. 17. See you there!
