Green Builder Media has built its first off-grid, self-sufficient, resilient, and carbon-neutral demonstration project. Nestled in a 123-acre inholding within the millions of acres of national forest in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, The VISION Houses at Mariposa Meadows is emersed into the nature surrounding it.
For this project, it was essential to utilize innovative products that boast extreme performance, all while complementing the design of the build. One of the home’s most prominent features is its metal roofing system. The material, donated by Fabral, is our classic 24-gauge 1 ½” SSR metal roofing panels in Charcoal. This roof makes it easy to achieve structural stability and is designed to perform at optimum levels year after year.
According to Ron Jones, owner of VISION House Mariposa Meadows, “The goal of this project is to display the most forward-thinking and impactful products that ultimately lead to a net-zero construction of three homes.” This passion project of his is nearly a decade in the making and should be completed in 2023.
While this is not your average build, it showcases what the future could look like in terms of energy-efficient, sustainable homes. The homes, which are located 13 miles away from the nearest electrical hook-up, also faced the challenge of being at an elevation of 10,400 feet. These factors significantly influenced the selection of materials because they required the building envelope to be highly efficient.
Mariposa Meadows features a wide spectrum of sustainable solutions, from high performance building envelope systems to renewables to enabling technologies, extending into areas such as wildfire risk mitigation, intelligent water, waste reduction, clean mobility solutions, onsite food production, and ecosystem protection. This project goes to show that there is no need for off-the-grid homes to conflict with wildlife or cause hazards to the natural environment. Click here to read more about the 11 tenets that needed to be navigated to create this sustainable enclave.
