GlobeSt.com: Can you give us a brief description of the ABC Green Home 3.0?

Slevin: The ABC Green Home Project is a series of high performance Affordable, Buildable, Certified energy-efficient demonstration homes developed by Peninsula Publishing, a national home-building-industry media company based in Newport Beach, CA. The homes are shared from design through construction with a national audience of 200,000 home-building-industry trade professionals in print and online. PenPub built a team of design partners who consulted pro-bono on the design of each home, in collaboration with SoCalGas and SoCalEdison, which also got behind the project. Peninsula Publishing approached its own advertisers who agreed to donate their materials and, in some cases, labor. Volunteer-based Habitat For Humanity Orange County was the home builder, alongside BCA Development, an Orange County-based home-building business. Danielian Associates was the architect.

GlobeSt.com: How has collaboration worked to design and develop this project?

Slevin: Our design team partners worked up the architecture, civil, structural and MEP engineering, as well as landscape design, solar design and smart-home technology for our home builders Habitat and BCA Development. The design team also worked closely with our product partners to select their best materials to use in each home, to reflect the desired architectural theme and to achieve the best energy-saving results. The ABC Green Homes use a specific exterior-wall design and advanced framing layout, as well more robust insulation inside the walls and under the roof deck. This allows for a conditioned attic space and for a home that sips energy and water, versus a traditional design. We design and engineer our way to the energy goals we set ourselves. Any builder can do this, if they so choose.

Thanks to this collaboration between multiple agencies and companies, others will certainly learn and benefit from the efforts. The ABC Green Home 3.0 will be open to the public during April to serve as a learning tool for others in the home-building industry. After the tour period, the home will be offered for sale to three veteran families. Two other ABC homes under development in Santa Ana by Peninsula Publishing and Habitat for Humanity Orange County are also for sale to veteran families.

GlobeSt.com: What can other builder, developers and investors learn from this project?

Slevin: That it is in fact possible to create attractive, affordable, simple-to-build and third-party-certified, energy-efficient, high-performance American homes by effectively tasking your consultants to achieve specific energy goals—in this case, net zero energy—whereby the homes create more energy than they require. The materials are all available through the current national home-building-industry supply chain. Nothing made from “unobtanium” was used to build these homes. All the parts sourced are readily available over the counter from a local home builder's supply yard. Net zero energy represents a real opportunity to create healthy well-built homes for American families that cost very little to own and operate and provide a real savings to the home buyer and a very small carbon footprint on the environment. The home will be rated by the six big national energy ratings organizations, including LEED, Build it Green, the DOE's Builder Challenge, Energy Star and the National Green Building Standard adopted by the NAHB. All of the consultant- and design-team members services are being provided on a pro bono basis.

GlobeSt.com: What were some of the biggest challenges and how were they overcome?

Slevin: From the developer's point of view, creating a team who will agree to work pro bono and lining up all of the necessary materials was pretty straightforward, as firms are pleased to showcase their skills and their capabilities and the ABC Green Home project allows them to do just that, without a huge out-of-pocket expense. Sourcing the lots is hard. Creating the architectural design that works best and that best suits the lot and the neighborhood demonstrates that any home can become a net-zero high-performance home. What distinguishes our homes is the nature of the designs and the method of construction.

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FULLERTON, CA—It is possible to create attractive, affordable, simple-to-build and third-party-certified, energy-efficient, high-performance American homes by effectively tasking your consultants to achieve specific energy goals, Peninsula Publishing publisher Nick Slevin tells GlobeSt.com. Slevin is also the developer of the ABC Green Home—a prototype for future construction, especially on the net-zero-energy front. The third installment of the ABC Green Home project will grand open today in Fullerton, CA.

The ABC Green Home was first launched in 2012 with the construction of the ABC (Affordable, Buildable, Certifiable) Green Home 1.0 at the Orange County Great Park, in conjunction with the Solar Decathlon held at the park in October 2013. Spearheaded by Slevin, working in partnership with Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas and Habitat for Humanity Orange County, the ABC Green Home's mission is to design and build a series of net-zero-energy homes that serve as examples for the future development of high-performance energy-efficient homes as California marches towards implementation of its net-zero regulations in 2020.

The ABC Green Homes are designed to be built in existing neighborhoods or as stand alone, well-optioned custom homes. The homes all use sustainable, energy-efficient building materials that are readily available from any building industry materials supplier.

We spoke with Slevin about the latest installment of the project and how it checks all the boxes stakeholders find relevant in the development of energy-efficient homes.