Welcome to FreeGreen

Posted March 20, 2008 13:48 by David

Tags: green, home, welcome

Hello Fellow FreeGreeners,
     Welcome to our new website and company. Over time, we hope that this blog will be a forum for us to discuss issues around green design, look at new innovative products, and experience different home designs. As I am sure that there are a lot questions about FreeGreen, I have decided to format this first blog entry into a FAQ of sorts.  I am very aware that our business will cause much conversation, and discussion. I welcome each of you to express your own opinion our our ideas, and look forward to working with you to make FreeGreen the best it can be.

Thanks,
David Wax, CEO FreeGreen

Why Are The Plans Free?

At FreeGreen, our team of engineers and designers work with industry leading product manufacturers to present you with different combinations of products, materials, and vendors. We also provide you with 3-dimensional images, energy simulations, and text based descriptions to help you find the right fit for your lifestyle. Ultimately you and your builder will choose the products and materials that are right for your house. We just hope that our designs serve as a guideline to help build the home you want.

Free Green would not exist without paid placement from product manufacturers. In order to avoid product bias, we present every product and material in a fair and clear light. Users can see ratings from established third party green certification standards such as LEED and NAHB for each product (good or bad), or view their performance through our energy modeling reports. Our goal is to show you a multitude of material and product possibilities through various lenses such as quality, health, and energy performance. In the end, our business is a way of allowing you to have free green home designs by passing design fees onto product vendors.

How Green Are The Plans?

We realize that “green” means different things to different people. What is important is that as a society we are constantly making incremental steps to progress our building culture. Our goal is not to produce the “greenest” possible home but rather a variety of different home plans that will allow people to find a house that fits their lifestyle and in responsible and equitable manner. We hope to produce house plans that demonstrate the green options that are available to a prospective homeowner. As we move forward we will be producing homes of different sizes, different styles, and different levels of environmental commitment. We want to encourage participation in a progressive process rather than dictate consumption.

Road Map

• Through the first week in April we will be doing some testing and working out some of the small bugs remaining on our site.
• Around April 7th we will be launching our site via a number of different blog articles including one our favorite blog, Inhabitat.
• In Mid April we will be adding one or two new plans to the Healthy Family Product line.  The first will be a sloped site version of the existing plan.  The second will be a 2,000 sq. ft. version of the plan named Family of Two.
• By the end of April we will be adding the Suburban Family Product Line
• By the end of May we will be adding the Simple Value Product Line
• In the longer run (summer months) we will be doing a number of exciting things:
  • Adding a section to the site for other architects to submit plans to be listed on our site (open source).
  • Creating a renovation section of our site (download a room, rather than a house).
  • Adding a product review section to our site our blog.
  • Adding our Find a Builder functionality.
  • .....And much more

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