Prototype Sustainable All-steel House Completed in Eight Weeks; Pricing Announced for Future Homes

Blue Sky Homes LLC, which is championing better methods and materials for the construction of houses, announced today that it completed its first prototype all-steel home in eight weeks. The company also announced pricing and availability for the first home designs that it will offer for sale based on designs demonstrated in the prototype home.

Palm Springs, California (PRWEB) June 21, 2009 -- Blue Sky Homes LLC, which is championing better methods and materials for the construction of houses, announced today that it completed its first prototype all-steel home in eight weeks. The company also announced pricing and availability for the first home designs that it will offer for sale based on designs demonstrated in the prototype home.

All of the homes will feature the Blue Sky Homes Building SystemTM which means they can be built quickly, are economical to build and operate, earth friendly and architecturally satisfying. The Blue Sky Homes Building System makes extensive use of cold-formed, light-gauge galvanized steel. This steel is used to create what is known as a moment-resisting frame - an incredibly strong and efficient structural technique commonly used in commercial buildings but seldom offered in residential construction.

Most of the elements of the Blue Sky system are fabricated in a factory to exacting specifications and then shipped flat to the construction site where they are quickly bolted together.

Speed of construction is one of the key attributes that the company hoped to demonstrate with its first prototype house. The house, a 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath home in the Southern California desert town of Yucca Valley, was fully framed in three days and the house was completed and furnished in eight weeks.

The company said that future homes of this size could be completed in less than six weeks. Such rapid construction will dramatically reduce the number of trips to the job site by contractors and tradespeople, reducing costs and further improving the home's environmental credentials.

"Our approach is a total building system that uses factory precision to create a custom home in a very short time frame," said David McAdam, one of the founders of Blue Sky Homes. "Unlike 'prefab' offerings where entire sections of the house are assembled in a factory and then trucked to the site, our system relies on elements that are manufactured off site and assembled on-site. We are therefore not restricted to section sizes that can fit on a truck or be lifted by a crane, allowing us to create what is essentially a custom home in a matter of weeks."

In designing its homes the company has paid particular attention to sustainability. Beyond just using "green" materials, the Blue Sky Homes Building System takes into consideration the durability and lifecycle of the home, waste of materials and time and health aspects of the home.

The company's steel framing is made from approximately 70 percent recycled materials and is itself 100 percent recyclable. Steel framing has a dramatically longer lifespan than wood framing and the bi-directional moment-resisting frame is ideal in earthquake zones. Steel is also impervious to insects, will not twist or crack, is highly resistant to fire and does not harbor mold.

The company's factory fabrication virtually eliminates on-site waste and all scraps from the manufacturing process are recycled. This is in contrast to traditional home construction where much of the material delivered to a site ends up in landfills. The Blue Sky Homes Building System also reduces process waste through fewer trips to the project site and limited need for error corrections.

The company announced preliminary pricing for its homes, along with availability. Initially it will offer three home sizes, along with one casita. The homes are 1,000 square feet, 1,500 square feet and 2,000 square feet and the casita is 500 square feet. Base models of the homes are priced at $246,000 for the 1,000-square-foot home; $424,000 for the 1,500-square-foot home; $445,000 for the 2,000-square-foot home; and $175,000 for the casita.

Pricing includes all customary finishes and appliances, engineering, architecture and delivery but excludes site-specific items such as utilities, required earthwork or municipal fees.

Initially the company is offering its products in Southern California, where it is based. The company said it expects to begin serving other areas of the country later this year and that it is actively recruiting top-quality general contractors in targeted communities. Eventually its products will be available in all 50 states and in many other countries.

The Blue Sky Homes prototype and homes being announced today were designed by o2 Architecture. Solterra Development built the prototype home in Yucca Valley. Both o2 and Solterra are based in Palm Springs. FCP Inc. of Wildomar, Calif. is providing the structural engineering for all Blue Sky Homes' products. Accelerated Building Technologies in Pennsylvania provided the exterior modular wall panels used in the project. The panels, known as steel thermal efficient panels (S.T.E.P.), carry the trade name accel-E. They consist of expanded polystyrene extruded with light-gauge steel upright pieces.

The prototype home in Yucca Valley "floats" over a boulder-strewn landscape on six columns. Those columns are the only places where the house touches the land. This means that virtually no grading was required and that very little of the fragile desert was disturbed. The exterior of the house features a standing-seam metal roof atop a graceful single-slope shed roof, corrugated steel siding and a generous punched-steel front deck.

Inside the house the floors are polished concrete while the extensive built-in cabinetry features FSC certified materials and bamboo fronts. Countertops are all Vetrazzo, a very green product that makes use of glass from curbside recycling programs. Interiors in the home are the work of Christopher Kennedy Design of Palm Springs.

About Blue Sky Homes
Blue Sky Homes champions better methods and materials for the construction of homes. Its homes feature the Blue Sky Homes Building System, which consists of light-gauge steel used to create what are called moment-resisting frames. Such frames are very strong and offer great design flexibility because walls are not load-bearing and thus can be placed virtually anywhere. All of the steel elements are factory fabricated to exact requirements and then shipped to the job site where they are quickly bolted together. The system allows the company to build homes with very strong environmental credentials given the near-total lack of construction waste, the speed of construction and the choice of materials that are manufactured with large amounts of recycled content.

Blue Sky Homes, LLC is based in Palm Springs, Calif. For more information visit http://www.blueskyhomesllc.com or call (760) 774-2495. For more photographs of the prototype visit http://picasaweb.google.com/blueskyhomesllc/CompletedPrototypePhotos#

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