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.

What if your home was so efficient that it produced as much energy as it used? What if you never had to pay another electricity bill? Green dreams like this are coming true all over the world. Whether you’re building or remodeling, a net zero energy home is well within your grasp.

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.