Residential homebuilders Meritage and Hanley Wood set out to rethink the way homes are built. The result is a safer, more comfortable, healthier home that promotes family connectivity, integrates technology seamlessly and challenges the very materials and processes used in conventional construction.

This “Net Zero Victorian” shows that a standard city house on a standard city lot in chilly Minneapolis can be renovated to be net zero in energy with no sacrifice in attractiveness, space, or comfort.

Against the backdrop of North Carolina’s Lake Fontana, Blue Ridge and Great Smoky mountains, perched on a steep hillside, you will find the “Love Shack.” The “Love Shack,” is far from what anyone would consider a ‘shack.’

These homeowners decided to go for the Living Building Challenge. The Challenge is a strict rating system that leaps far beyond LEED in its requirements for non-toxic, locally sourced materials for every component of the building.

Known as the “Lodgepole Retreat,” the high-alpine, uber-energy-efficient “cabin” with floor-to-ceiling windows and lots of natural light is set among a 30-acre meadow and a grove of lodgepole pines.

John Livermore remodeled his home to make it produce more energy than it used. In addition to the dramatic energy savings, he zeroed out his home’s carbon footprint, stopped paying energy bills, increased comfort, improved his family’s health, and became the first renovated home in Massachusetts to produce more energy than it uses. Best of all – you can do it, too!