According to Steve, “there is nothing necessarily more sustainable about prefab homes, except that they create much less construction waste. What makes our homes more sustainable is how we design homes and build them.”

Steve’s own home was the first-ever house that his design studio designed and built, and is an example of radical home sustainability. Built-in 2006, his house, known as the LivingHome RK1, was also the first home ever to be certified as LEED platinum.

What About Household Water Use? 

Santa Monica, California, where Steve’s home is located, only gets 13 inches of rain each year, which is less than half the national average annual precipitation. The RK1 is designed to thrive in this relatively water-scarce region.

Steve mentions that in terms of household water use, “we were the first home in LA County to have a greywater recycling system.” The greywater from the showers and sinks of the home is sent to a tank before being used to irrigate the area around the home. In terms of landscaping, the greywater is used to irrigate drought-tolerant native species that have been strategically chosen for the dry climate of southern California.  There are also low flow water fixtures located throughout the kitchen and bathrooms.

Compared to other homes in the Los Angeles area, these water-saving design tips allow the RK1 to use dramatically less water. “We get a water report each month that shows how we compare to other area homes,” Steve tells us, “and we are usually 70% below the water we would be permitted to use through local regulations.”

Sustainable Materials 

Another important element of the overall sustainability of the RK1 was that it aimed to radically reduce resource use and the carbon emissions associated with the building and performance of the home. All of the major building materials were either obtained from recycled or reclaimed sources. The home has a steel frame, and steel is the most recycled building material with over 65 million tons of steel scrap being recycled each and every year. “Much of the steel used for the frame of our home probably came from old cars,” Steve mentions.

All the wood in the home is also FSC certified to confirm that it was sourced from sustainably managed forests.

The LivingHomes RK1 also includes tiles made from recycled glass, shower dividers that are made from recycled plastic, and countertops that are made from newsprint cellulose. The high-performance insulation in the walls is made from recycled jeans.

To maintain the highest standards of indoor air quality, all of the paints and stains are either VOC free or have extremely low VOC emissions. There are fans located in all of the bathrooms that operate on motion control to take out moisture before it can cause mold and negatively affect the indoor air quality. Steve’s home also includes a fan in the garage that gets rid of any carbon monoxide emissions from vehicles before it can seep into the home.

Even the gas fireplaces contribute to the sustainability of the home. The fireplace burns denatured alcohol, also known as ethanol. This allows the fireplace to burn cleanly while producing virtually no smoke.

As a factory-built home, the RK1 certainly reduced the amount of construction waste while also expediting the overall construction and assembly time. The sustainability features of this home, however, result from an environmentally conscious design process, which is one of the reasons that this was the nation’s first LEED Platinum home.