Energy-Efficient Homebuilding
PeaPod Homes

By Chelsey Lewis

For a new homebuilder interested in going green, sifting through the mountain of energy-efficiency information available today can be a daunting task. Understanding this, one company has taken green building to the next level by providing prefabricated homes with the promise of significantly reducing energy costs, no research strings attached.

PeaPod Homes, inconspicuously headquartered in a single suite in a small office building in Sturgeon Bay, Wis., is turning heads in the green homebuilding world with its innovative design. Recently a winner of the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest and a semifinalist in MIT’s Ignite Clean Energy competition, the homes feature a modified double-envelope design that passively uses the power of the sun and the earth to significantly reduce energy use.

The concept of the envelope home, however, is nothing new. Ekosea homes came out with the first double-envelope design in the 1970s. Like many energy fads, however, consumers’ interest fell to the wayside when the energy crisis waned. Other companies tried reviving the concept since Ekosea, with limited success. Mark Rittle, one of PeaPod’s founders and its current director of sales and production, worked for one of those companies and built a double-envelope home for himself. The home, however, turned out to be an “energy pig.” When asked by a customer if the home actually worked, he had to honestly reply it did not.

“I started thinking, there’s got to be a better way to do this,” Rittle says. He realized the weakness of the home was in its walls, which were made from logs – what he described to be a poor insulator. Rittle decided to team up with an architect and a building science expert and started modifying the double-envelope home.

Instead of wood, PeaPod’s external walls feature structural insulated panels, which are made from two pieces of plywood and 6 inches of polystyrene. This insulation technique creates the same effect as a cooler, maintaining a consistent internal temperature in the home. Windows and shade overhangs are positioned to maximize sun exposure during the winter and minimize it in the summer.

The space between the exterior walls of the home and the interior living walls creates a room known as the sunspace. Here, sun enters through carefully placed windows. The interior walls, made from southern yellow pine logs, collect and store the energy from the sun, and a convection loop circulates the air around the home. The air also travels through the ground, using the earth’s natural temperature to heat or cool the house. The design essentially creates a home within a home.

When starting the business, Rittle realized how overwhelming it can be for consumers interested in energy-efficient building to sort through all of the information available.

“There’s this big push to do green building, but green has kind of been what they call green-washed nowadays. And nowadays, a builder will just put a little extra insulation in the walls and goes ‘Oh, look at my green house!’ Well, that’s a bunch of crap,” he says. “There’s some truly green houses, and there’s some scams.”

Rittle’s goal was to be a part of the former.

To accomplish this, Rittle says their company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on research, including extensive computer modeling to reveal just how energy efficient the homes will be. According to the models, the owner of a 2,000-square-foot PeaPod home would pay a $200 energy bill this year. And although the homes are prefabricated, homebuilders can customize their homes with more space and renewable energy add-ons such as solar panels.

Rittle’s green Earth Day 2005 shirt and bike in the corner of his office reveal PeaPod Homes is not just another company looking to cash in on the green craze.

“Stop me if I sound like a salesperson,” he says as he passionately explains the home’s design and the research behind it. For Rittle, the company is about providing people with a simple way to live truly energy-efficient lives.

“I want to live my values,” he says.