The Alley House 2 project is completed and “officially” on the market for home tours. Here’s a great feature from Mother Nature Network with details and images.
Evergreen homes: Alley House 2
When describing March’s featured ‘Evergreen home,’ resisting alliteration is futile: A magnificent, modern modular home in Madison Valley that’s currently on the market for over half a million.
Tue, Mar 06 2012 at 3:20 PM EST
For this month’s installment of “Evergreen homes” — a monthly series of posts in which I break out the geographical bias and spotlight green residential building projects from my home state of Washington — I’m doing some legitimate valley-hopping as I move north from southeast Seattle’s Rainer Valley, home to February’s featured project, Columbia Station, to Madison Valle , a French restaurant-heavy nabe located east of Capitol Hill. Like the homes that comprise Columbia Station, today’s featured home, Alley House 2 from Cascade Built, is targeting LEED Platinum, is an urban in-fill project, boasts a not-too-shabby-for-Seattle WalkScore (69 out of 100), and is within proximity to a killer bakery. It also just hit the market for $599,000.
Here’s what you’ll get for the price: an eye-catching, butterfly-roofed prefab abode with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Measuring 1,687-square-feet, the David Foster Architects -designed home is packed full of sustainable features: Advanced framing, EPA WaterSense fixtures and appliances, “way beyond code” insulation and windows, a heat recovery ventilator, ample natural light, FSC-certified bamboo hardwood flooring, a mini-split heat pump, no-VOC paints and finishes, rainscreen siding, and recycled content countertops. The modules themselves were factory-built by Method Homes .
Outside of the solar PV- and green roof-ready home, you’ll find drought-tolerant landscaping and permeable paving. There’s also a one-car garage that can be converted into a home office, workshop, or mother-in-law apartment. And while we’re on the topic of mother-in-law apartments, it’s worth noting that Cascade Built founder Sloan Ritchie is also behind Backyard Boxes, a line of eco-friendly accessory dwelling units that I featured back in May 2010.
And, of course, there’s the matter of neighbors. Alley House 2 is located right next door to Cascade Built’s original Alley House, one of the first LEED Platinum (non-modular) homes in all of Seattle. That said, Alley House 2 is only the second modular home in Washington to target LEED Platinum certification (Greenfab ‘s 1300 Series model home in Jackson Place was very recently awarded with LEED Platinum certification making it the first). I guess the home’s “Platinum Alley” address is totally justified (the actual street address is 216-B 26th Ave. E).
For more, check out Alley House 2’s official listing as well as this photo walk-through over at Curbed Seattle. It’s also worth checking out a series of photos of the home’s installation over at the Cascade Built Facebook page if you’ve never seen photos of a factory-built modular home be “dropped” before. Beyond LEED Platinum prefabs, Sloan Ritchie and the CB team also have some interesting homes in the works including a Passive House project in nearby Madison Park and four homes for the Clearwater Commons green co-housing development near Bothell.
