Well maybe not, but he must be close, and should definitely be in the next round of those strangely awesome Dos Equis commercials. The man I’m referring to is Gus Gustafson (sp?). I’d hate to call him just a home builder because I’d be leaving out a plethora of other things he does, and seemingly does well, but that’s what we were there to talk about.
My wife and I had the opportunity to meet this gentleman on Sunday and got a tour of his new home, which is currently under construction. The home is built out of structurally insulated panels (SIPs), which we plan to use on our future abode. Our encounter was limited to only a few hours but we learned about everything from carpenter bees to waste water treatment methods, and all topics covered included tangible evidence to back up any claims that were made.
The home itself is near completion and comes in around 3,300 square feet on two levels (with no basement). The entire freakin’ thing is cooled by one window air conditioner and can run entirely on six car batteries. How? Because of the amazingly efficient building envelope created when constructing a house (or any building) out of structurally insulated panels. Using air exchangers to replace stale air with fresh, the building otherwise loses virtually no conditioned air to the outside regardless of exterior conditions. Because of this simple benefit, electricity bills for the entire house, which include every appliance a standard home has, run in the $20 to $30 range monthly. The level of comfort provided in every inch of the house by just one window-unit air conditioner was mind blowing.
I could write for pages on the other extremely interesting topics we covered but the main lesson to take away from our visit is that the old way of building is not the best way of building. Hopefully contractors of all types will educate themselves on new building techniques and start to incorporate them into their businesses. Only through this process will society speed up its evolution towards the more sustainable.
Oh yeah, using SIPS is faster, cheaper and makes the building stronger. What’s not to like?
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