The FreeGreen Blog

FreeGreen 08 Road Map

Posted August 6, 2008 05:18 by David

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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

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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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The Simple Villa is Coming

Posted June 20, 2008 12:10 by David

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Hello All,

Just wanted to share our progress on the next Product Line, the Simple Villa.  We will be back with more info early next week.

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And Then There Was Print...

Posted June 18, 2008 02:48 by David

Tags: printing

Hello All,

A big announcement today for FreeGreen is our new plan set printing capabilities. More...

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Quick Update - Keep An Eye Out

Posted June 11, 2008 13:57 by David

Tags: simple villa, printing, pr

Hello All,

Just a quick update tonight:

1) We have now set a date for the release of our next FreeGreen Product Line the Simple Villa.  We are aiming to get this out on July 7th.  We apologize for the slight delay on this but with the July 4th weekend in the way this is what we think is realistic (even FreeGreeners have to take vacations).

2) It looks like we are going to have some big PR announcements coming over the next few days so stay tuned.  We should know more tomorrow or early Friday on this and will certainly let you know as soon as we do.

3) By July 7th we are adding a new feature.  You will now be able to PRINT YOUR PLANS through FreeGreen.  Now we must admit that this will not be a free service.  We did look into it but could not make it work.  For a very competitive $60 per construction document set you will be able to print our plans (in 24" by 36" format) and ship them anywhere in the United States.  For our non-US users we are working on the details for outside the US shipping and will have that up and working soon.  We hope that you will support us through this service and come to use for all of your FreeGreen printing needs.

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And For Our Next Trick.....

Posted June 6, 2008 09:42 by David

Tags: simple villa, builder product line, builder house plans, freegreen built work

Hi All,

Thanks to everyone for your continued support and interest.  We have now broken 2,000 plan downloads (OK, we will now stop announcing plan download achievements until 10,000), 1,500 registered users, and are getting 30,000 visitors a month.  Again, not too bad for being around for 2 months and a week.

So the question that everyone has been asking is:  “what is up FreeGreen’s proverbial sleeves” More...