The FreeGreen Blog

Is FreeGreen The Largest House Plan Company in The US?

Posted November 6, 2008 10:12 by David

Tags: free house plans, house plan downloads, open source

Well, maybe not from a revenue perspective yet, but we thought that we would use this catchy title to grab your attention and let you knowthat we passed 10,000 House Plans Downloads last week (now at 10,313 to be exact).  First, we would like to thank you our users for helping us reach this great milestone.  We are so glad that we could provide designs, dreams, and solutions to so many of you.  That said now for some fun facts around this feat: More...

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Help FreeGreen Win A National Design Award Contest

Posted October 18, 2008 10:08 by David

Tags: cooper hewitt design awards, freegreen awards

Hello FreeGreeners,

Thanks for your time and support.  Have a great weekend, and we look forward to sending out our next newsletter in a week or so, showing our newest house plan, and officially announcing the FreeGreen Builder Program Launch. 

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So....Whatcha Been Up To

Posted September 18, 2008 11:00 by David

Tags: r-control, sip house plans, builder program

Hello All, 

Well we know that we have been quiet for a while now.  The good news is that typically that means that we are hard at work.  From inside FreeGreen Headquarters I can honestly say this has been our toughest and most fun stretch yet.  To give you a feel, we are basically trying to:  Pick and Start on our FreeGreen Challenge Winner(s) designs, Launch our new R-Control SIP design (the Rustic Retreat), Launch our new FreeGreen Builder Program, and Launch a new Builder Line House Plan all at the same time!!

That said, we are planning (and very excited) to announce our FreeGreen Challenge Winners on Sept. 30th.  We have had 100's of great entries and your work o, and commitment to our contest has been awesome.

Also, since you have been so patient, see below for a sneak peak at our Next Builder Line House Plan (un-named today), and our first SIP based house plan (the Rustic Retreat).  We promise to greatly increase the frequency of our blog posts as we know that October is going to be an exciting month for everyone.  We are looking forward to showing what we can do.

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FreeGreen 08 Road Map

Posted August 6, 2008 05:18 by David

Tags:

So after you have launched the first free house plan site in the history of time, downloaded over 5,000 free green house plans, received accolades on almost every major green blog, launched a free custom design contest to help re-design American Housing, what do you do for an encore?  Good question see below for our ideas through the end of 2008:  More...

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FreeGreen Donations?

Posted August 6, 2008 05:06 by David

Tags:

Hello All,

As many of you may have noticed we implemented (today) a Donation Page after users download any of our plans.  That said, we wanted to exlpain the reasoning for this:

1) We have been asked by many of our users how they can support us and our free plans.  Well, this is our answer.

2) We are a young company with many ideas of how to grow and produce revenue.  The reality is that as with any young firm this takes time and effort.  So until we become the next Google, YouTube, or Facebook we could use your help.

We hope that this make sense, and look forward to providing you will a number of new house designs and exciting concepts over the next few months:  See the next post!!

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Who Wants A Free Custom House Design?

Posted July 21, 2008 12:33 by David

Tags: free custom house design, contest

Hello All,

We wanted to take this time to officially announce the FreeGreen, Free Custom Design Contest.  That right, one of our lucky FreeGreen users will get a home designed to fit their needs, lifestyle, lot, energy performance goals, etc. all for free (estimated $50,000 value).  There are obviously many details in the fine print, but the general requirements to enter the contest are:

1. You must own land and be prepared to build a home in the United States 
2. You must be prepared and plan to build your new home in 6 months from the end of the design process
3. You must be willing to share your design process, story, and construction\finished home photos with other FreeGreen users

That's pretty much it.  Just enter and win.  You will be hearing much more about this contest (through our blog partners, advertising, AP stories, etc.) at the end of July (when the contest will start).  We at FreeGreen are very excited to bring this unique and one-of-a-kind opportunity to our users, and look forward to reading all of your entries.  You will be the first to know when we launch the contest entry form.

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So What's Next at FreeGreen

Posted July 10, 2008 04:33 by David

Tags: free custom design contest, builder product line

Hello All,

Well, after working hard through the 4th to get the Simple Villa released we have now taken a breath and decided what will be coming next.  That said see below for some really exciting announcements:

FreeGreen Builder Product Line

After many discussions with some of our FreeGreen Builder Community, we have developed the concept for the Builder Product Line (to be out late July early August).  The intent and implementation of this new Product Line is as follows:

• The designs are going to be very mainstream (trying to hit the masses).
• The virtual tours of these designs will focus on energy savings, elevation changes, and building details rather than copious interior renderings.
• Each home plan will come with multiple elevations to allow builders to use the same plan multiple times in a single development
• Much thought and detail will go into the construction documents on how to make them easy to use for builders and how to show and teach good green building techniques.
• As with all of our plans these will continue to come with Energy Models, Specification Lists, LEED-H\NAHB checklists, etc.
• We in the process of deciding what to do with the CAD files for these plans, but in some way, shape, or form, they will be available

Free Custom Design Contest

Soon we will be officially announcing our FreeGreen Free Custom Design Contest.  At it's highest level we will be taking "design dream stories" from any user who has land and is planning to begin building a home in 6 months or less.  We will review these stories and choose a winner.  This winner will have a custom FreeGreen House designed for them by our team, which will then be released onto the FreeGreen site.  We will then work with the winner to track and present construction\photos\etc.

There will be much more on these exciting activities in the near future......

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The Simple Villa House Plan Comes Alive

Posted June 27, 2008 11:49 by David

Tags: simple villa

Hello All,

Well with our July 7th deadline looming for the Simple Villa we are working hard.  As you can see from the renderings above it is coming along nicely (we think).  With this design we are creating some real differences in our design palettes.  This of course causes some challenges in the construction documents, but nothing we at FreeGreen can't handle.  We look forward to releasing more this week, and helping you have your dream villa on July 7th.

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FreeGreen Website Wins Design Award

Posted June 25, 2008 09:12 by David

Tags: pr, website design

Hello All,

As you can see from the image above, today, the FreeGreen website won the Outstanding Achievement Award in the area of Building & Construction, from the Interactive Media Council.  We would like to thank our web designers Fresh Tilled Soil and our developers at Extension Engine.  We highly recommend both of these companies and we would not be where we are today with out them.  We are very proud of our site and our team, and we look forward to working with these great companies to keep making the FreeGreen user experience better.

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