Building or Remodeling Your Home? Go Green for Free

New Site to Watch Offers Free Eco-Friendly Home Plans

Phebe A. Durand
Launched just a couple short weeks ago, FreeGreen is an all-new website with a simple goal: to make green design principles available to the masses.

Industry leading product manufacturers and Free Green's team of designers are working together to create homes that incorporate products and materials that aim to help people design - or remodel - with energy efficiency and other eco-friendly ideas in mind. Currently, the website offers two plans that include 3-D imagery, energy simulations and written descriptions that help visitors match a house plan to their lifestyle.

Currently Offered Home Plans

Just weeks after their launch, FreeGreen.com has two home plans available for download: The Healthy Family Model, and The Suburban Loft. Two more models, The Smart Box and California Casual, are due out soon.

So what are the current home plans all about?

The Healthy Family model's goal is to provide busy families a comfortable, contemporary living space with superior indoor air quality and low energy bills. A large house plan, it includes options like mudrooms, homework nooks, and home offices. Seriously a cool home plan, and definitely one that should meet its goal of helping families of 3-5 people manage the chaos of daily life. Even better, this home plan has been designed with a both cold and mixed climates in mind.

In contrast to the multi-level sprawl of the Healthy Family model, the modern Suburban Loft runs 1200-2600 square feet (compared to 3,000 on the Healthy Family model), and packs it into a tidy open floor plan with high ceiling loft spaces. This product line touts itself as being "great for either a first-time buyer or a downsizing baby boomer", and with its sleek, minimalist lines it does so nicely. Created with a lakefront lot in mind, there are roof decks and built-in options designed to help you have an expensive, custom-home feel from your free, eco-friendly home plan. They also perform as well in hot and humid environments - like most modern designs do - as they perform in the cold northern climates.

When the Smart Box plan comes out, you'll be able to grab a design that can be built for less than $100 per square foot - unbelievable in today's home buying world.

Why This Site's So Special

There is a host of reasons why this site is going to become something huge - from the fact that you get a very detailed plan set for nothing more than a few minutes' time to the energy report specific to the town or city you select (either the place you live or the place you plan to build), there are a ton of other resources bundled with the welcome packet sent to you when you download a plan.

FreeGreen's great design team, behind every plan on their site, can also modify or customize any plan to suit your specific needs.

More than anything, this site is special and really stands out because it is happily flaunting greenness. With businesses and individuals taking major steps to become more eco-friendly, sites like FreeGreen are going to make a huge splash - and an enormous impact.

Published by Phebe A. Durand

A journalist turned instructor who decided that a steady income wasn't worth creative frustration, Phebe Durand (Lolaness) now focuses on ways that technology can enrich our lives, her works range from writi...  View profile

  • FreeGreen's design team can modify or customize any plan on its site.
  • Currently offering 2 plans, the number's soon to jump to 4 eco-friendly models.
  • Build a green home for as little as $100 per square foot? Yup.

18 Comments

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  • Angela - Upon Request2/23/2009

    Great tip for green building!

  • Ed2/19/2009

    Awesome article with a lot of useful information. I'm going to share it with my facebook friends.

  • Tim Brown1/2/2009

    Good learning article, I just wish I had the motivation to even be remotely "green".

  • Harold Sink8/10/2008

    This sounds like something I should check into. Thanks.

  • Secretsides8/8/2008

    These houses sound great. It would be interesting to know what the new houses of the future will look like in 50 years.

  • J. Michael Warner7/6/2008

    Great information. As the price of energy rises it becomes more cost effective and profitable to go green. Makes me very happy to be in the home improvement business.

  • cathiesblogs6/29/2008

    Excellent work here !!!..very informative !!

  • Opher Ganel6/25/2008

    Great topic and great article. Building green on a budget is likely to become ever more timely as energy costs soar, and as the environment heats up.

  • Chris Matier6/12/2008

    Good info, thanks! I am going to be doing a bit of this myself this summer, and I can use all the advice I can find.

  • Mary E. Coe6/10/2008

    Excellent write. Interesting and informative.

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