The season for industry-sponsored home tours is hardly over, but a lot of tours aimed at fair-weather homebuyers have already concluded.

One such tour targeted home shoppers in central North Carolina’s Piedmont region with a lineup of homes touted for their energy efficiency and sustainable construction. The Green Homes Tour, an annual marketing event presented by the Green Home Builders of the Triangle, included 36 entries in six counties that were open to the public April 25 and 26 and May 2 and 3. At least one entry, however, stayed open to visitors through June 14 – the Go Green Cottage, billed as a 1,206-sq.-ft. two-bedroom, one-bath cozy with a tight building envelope.

Plenty of foot traffic

Because the stick-built cottage can be constructed and deconstructed relatively quickly – build time is a week, according to general contractor Sun River Builders, which prices the house at $89,900 and up, plus land costs – Sun River was able to install a display version of the home at the Streets at SouthPoint shopping area in Durham and, through a lease extension, leave it in place for 50 days.

The display home included upgrades that would bring the price to $100,000, plus land costs; Sun River also offers a larger version of the home, the 1668 GoGreenCottage, for $125,000.

Built to Energy Star standards, the Go Green Cottage features 2×6 Tyvek-wrapped exterior walls insulated to R-19 and 2×12 rafters insulated to R-30. It also includes a high-efficiency Energy Star electric heat pump, sealed ductwork, low-VOC paint, and a sealed crawlspace. Options include a tankless hot water heater, spray foam insulation, solar thermal hot water, and a PV system.

Overall, the home is designed to be 15% more energy efficient than a comparably sized house built to standard code. The Energy Star rating also qualifies Go Green Cottage owners to a 5% reduction in their Duke Energy or CP&L Retail Energy utility bills.

According to one industry-based blog following the Triangle area, the display attracted lots of visitors, and, for the time being, demand for the cottages has compelled Sun River to limit Go Green builds to North Carolina.

Anecdotal information does indeed suggest green and small (and inexpensive) are, as presented by some builders and by not-so-big-house advocates such as Sarah Susanka, catching on.

Challenges to thinking small

Not that it’s always easy to scale down new construction and extensions. For those who have lived in relatively large homes – properties with, say, 3,000 sq. ft. or more of conditioned space – reckoning with 1,500 to 2,200 sq. ft. can sometimes lead to unexpected exertions when planning their project.

In a March 20 post, for example, GBA advisor Carl Seville ruminated on the homes he has built for himself – one bigger than the next – and how his experiences living in big houses informed his approach to the home he is building and expects to live in for a long time.

Carl initially considered building a 1 1/2-story house in the 1,600 sq. ft. range. But in an early June post, he was contemplating plans for a two-story home with 2,000 to 2,200 sq. ft. of conditioned space.

“Damn, I am behaving just like my old clients right about the time I tell them to just make a decision and go with it,” Carl writes. “Well, I’m not ready to make all those decisions yet, and, lucky for me, I have plenty of things to do before I have to. A friend of mine, sick of listening to me whine about the project, volunteered to be my client for my own house to help me make up my mind. I might have to take him up on that.”