Lake City, Colo., — With a 17-year history of producing the most cutting-edge home demonstration projects in the market, Green Builder Media is proud to partner with nationally esteemed Thrive Home Builders to bring to life The Sonders Project, a 220-home sustainable community located in Fort Collins, Colo.
The Northern Colorado community is notable because it showcases Thrive Carbon-Wise, a new building approach to producing carbon-neutral homes. This method focuses on carbon reduction, including both operational carbon, such as the energy used in heating, cooling, and lighting in a home, as well as the embodied carbon from the manufacturing of the home’s components
The age-targeted (55+) Sonders community features a blend of single-family homes, duplexes, and townhomes, all of which have intentionally small footprints, highlighting quality and sustainability (rather than large-footprint living) to meet the needs of today’s home buyers. Production of these homes will begin this fall.
Community development is changing quickly in the United States as enabling technologies, renewable energy solutions, and high-performance products empower building professionals to design and construct homes that are electric, healthy, resilient, connected, and solar powered.
“Sophisticated demand-side energy management solutions and smart home technologies can now optimize resource use and improve indoor air quality without homeowner interaction,” says Sara Gutterman, CEO of Green Builder Media. “Intelligent solar, battery storage, and energy management systems can interconnect homes within a community so that they can harvest and share energy before drawing from the grid. And a new generation of sustainable building products makes net zero energy, water, and carbon readily attainable.”
By applying the Thrive Carbon-Wise building practices to the homes at VISION House Sonders, it’s estimated that a total of 1,023 tons of carbon emissions will be reduced when compared with a 2021 IECC home. As a result, the homes will be healthier for the homeowners, and the negative environmental impacts will be significantly lowered.
“We’ve been witnessing the results of climate change locally and globally,” says Gene Myers, Chairman and Chief Sustainability Officer at Thrive. “Warmer temperatures also mean a longer plant growing season, which contributes to heightened pollen in the air that worsens allergies and asthma. Our healthy homes help with these airborne triggers.”
For more information on VISION House Sonders, visit https://www.greenbuildermedia.com/the-sonders-project-a-vision-house-community
For more information on Thrive Carbon-Wise, visit https://www.thrivehomebuilders.com/
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