Fab Pre-Fab

By OCinSite At-Large | April 07, 2011 1:21 PM

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By Ted Reckas

Greg Brown walks down Seashore Drive in a hard hat, with a stack of pizzas and a big smile. He is a happy man who bought lunch for the crew that just built his house, a block off the beach in Newport. And they literally just built it. They started at 8 a.m., and it’s already done.

The green modular home, which came in four pieces on trucks, was lifted into place by a crane, dropped in between the neighbors’ houses, with a few feet to spare. A small crowd gathered to watch—it’s not every day you see a house suspended in midair.

The home is Orange County’s first LEED Platinum-certified home, the highest recognized designation, and the third of its kind built by LivingHomes, a Santa Monica development firm. At the home’s installation last fall, founder Steve Glenn and Amy Sims, one of the architects, watched and directed when needed as workers moved around under a suspended module that would flatten them all if it dropped. Steve, Amy and their team chat like flying houses are as normal as pancakes for breakfast.

Technically Speaking
Born in Mexico City, Steve is veteran of the tech industry—he started Clearview software and sold it to Apple, then started eToys, Citysearch and six other companies that have since gone public. His circuitous route to LivingHomes started in college.

“I thought I might go into design so I did a summer program and there I learned I had neither the talent or temperament to be an architect, but I learned about developers,” Steve said. He was particularly impressed by Jim Rouse, a mid-century American developer, and concluded the world could use more responsible developers like him.

The first green, modular home Steve built was his own, in Santa Monica in 2006. It was based on the Z6 principle: zero energy, zero water, zero waste, zero carbon and zero emissions. Of the last Z, zero ignorance, Steve says, “You can do a lot to make a green home, but if the people who live in the home aren’t responsible about their resource use…”  Steve pauses for a second, allowing silence to fill in the blank. “…So we do some things to make people more aware,” he finishes.

Greg is aware. When asked why he’s doing this, he says, “We’re showing people that it can be done. We should start thinking about our environment and what we’re doing. Building is probably the hugest issue, particularly commercial building. If people would make that choice…I’m not somebody who believes in the whole, uh, Al Gore, global warming and all that, but I do believe that we waste way too many resources and—”

Hang on. This guy doesn’t believe in global warming?

“I don’t think there’s enough evidence saying that’s going on,” he explains. “Are we wasting resources? Absolutely. Does that have some effect on our environment? Yes, it does. Should we pay attention? Yeah. I absolutely think we should be paying attention, and doing everything we can, and I think everybody has to take some responsibility in that.”

Impressing the Neighbors
Joanne and Miles Larson have lived next door since 1962, when their house was beachfront and there were train tracks in place of Seashore Drive. The Larsons agree with Greg. “We’re delighted to have them as neighbors,” Joanne says. “I would like it if it looked more beachy, but it’s going to be the way of the future. There’s no question about it. We can’t keep filling up our landfills.”

Scott Mayoral Photography

Steve rattles off features of the house, keeping one eye on the crane gently swinging a several-ton module into an amazingly tight space between houses. “For energy, a lot of insulation, special high performance windows, fluorescent lighting, super energy efficient appliances. And this home will have photo panels, photovoltaics, to produce power,” he says.

Instead of demolishing the lot’s previous home, LivingHomes deconstructed it and donated about 70 percent of the materials to Habitat for Humanity. In fact, most of the materials used in the modular home are recycled or reclaimed. The steel that frames the building is made of recycled cars, and the wood is engineered out of wood parts and pieces. The cladding is from recycled bamboo and other materials, while the tile is from recycled glass. All the water fixtures are low flow, Kohler fixtures, and the bathroom has dual-flush toilets and special fans that vent out moisture that can cause mold.

While listing these impressive features, Steve has yet to take a breath, giving the impression that he’s been bringing everyone around him up to speed for a long time. And there are only so many hours in the day. Hence, homes you can build in an afternoon.

Clean Start
Greg feels an important feature of the house is its clean internal environment. “One of the things I’m interested to find out is to compare living here with living in the other house—how we’ll feel in the house because everything that has been used in here is very health-friendly.”

This house has none of the toxic glues, formaldehyde or other chemicals common to many building materials. Even the bar stools are made with recycled seat belts. Which makes you wonder—would anyone buy homes or furniture if they knew they were exuding toxins? After spending a few months in the house, Greg shares his feelings about the home: “We have noticed it’s different, he says. “It seems like the air is … there’s no real tone to it. There’s no smell to it. It feels cleaner.”

Greg says his children—twins Davis and Madison—also like the modular home. “My kids won’t say it in front of me necessarily, but they think its pretty cool that it’s at least moving toward an environmental house,” he says. “Of course, it’s by the beach, which doesn’t hurt.”

The Discipline of Green
Greg and his wife Stacey saw Steve’s design at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Long Beach in January, 2008. They bought it three months later. At Greg’s other home in Dover Shores, the house is filled with LED light bulbs and a timer stuck to the tile in the shower.

“After five minutes you have to get out,” he says. “You have to be disciplined.” He tried to install solar panels at the home years ago. The orientation of the house was wrong, so it wouldn’t work, but that’s not the point. He’s an innovator. “I’ve always been that way,” Greg says, “It’s part of my DNA.”

While soft-spoken, Greg is a man of action. In addition to coaching freshman basketball at Newport Harbor High School, he’s the Orange County Director for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and runs his promotional products company, PromoSeen. His search for eco-friendly promotional products is what turned him on to LivingHomes.

Scott Mayoral Photography

When asked if he thinks one day every house in the neighborhood will be like his, Greg is pragmatic. “I don’t know about here, but somewhere, definitely. I don’t think soon. These things take a long time. I think it’s probably, 10 to 20 years out. They’re not super expensive, but they’re not really cheap. Until they get really, really cheap I just don’t think you’ll see them en masse.”

The cost of the homes ranges from $275-$400 per square foot. “We are around $325,” Greg says of his 2,000-square-foot dwelling. “Not much different from normal home in Newport Beach.”
Greg said he hopes green building becomes the standard in the future.

“I think in the Netherlands that it has just become a normal thing,” Greg says. “You do X because that’s all that’s available.”

The bottom line for Greg is looking forward. “I think it’s a good example for my kids to see that you can do something like this,” he says. “And hopefully other people see it and say, ‘We can do it too.’ Why not be the way of the future?”