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• The Largest Selection
• Highest Energy Efficiencies
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• Experienced Industry Professionals
• Highest Value For Your Budget

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Colorado Cottage and Cabin Company
High Performance structures
Standard Construction Specifications

Every home in this series is designed to maximize energy efficiency while providing classic designs using renewable products in the construction.  All of our homes are built in a factory and delivered to the site.  This state of the art controlled process allows us to purchase materials by the truck load and lead the country in cost effective high efficiency homes.  Your Colorado Cottage or Cabin utilities will cost a fraction of a minimum code built IRC pre fab or site built home. 
 
Air Infiltration
The fundamental enemy of every home or cabin is air infiltration.  This uncontrolled movement of air into the interior of your home has a direct negative effect on the cost of heating and cooling.  Our homes have little or no air infiltration and the clean air inside of your CC&CC is regulated through mechanical air exchangers to provide clean and safe interior air.  It costs money to convert a BTU into the energy used in either heating or cooling.  Our goal is to provide a structure that outperforms standard IRC code based construction by such a wide margin that your BTU conversion lasts at least twice as long inside our structures.

Foam is Your Friend
Every CC&CC home is also a “Foam Home”.  We learned years ago that fiberglass insulation alone has limitations (see R Fairy Tale by David B. South) that would not allow us to create the energy efficiencies we strive for in our homes.  Unfortunately, using spray foam in the walls and ceilings on site built homes is a costly endeavor. We simply add 1/2" high density foam thermal barrier to the walls. This provides a high level of energy efficiency while sealing the home, and provides the added benefit of a very low sound transmission.  Our wall is simple and extremely effective. The key for us is in the “Thermal Barrier” created by adding ½ inch of medium density foam to the wall on the outside of the OSB before we add the low maintenance LP Smartside siding or Cement Lap.

Pine has an R–value of 1.2 per inch.  The stud in your 2 x 6 wall only has an R – Value of 6.5r.  A typical 1,500 SF home has 60 square feet of wall studs, top and bottom plates, and door and window framing.  This is a huge area of your home that has an R– Value of 6.5r instead of R–19.  The ½ foam on the exterior has very little to do with the added 1.7r on the wall, but everything to do with a “Thermal Barrier”.  Think of a foam coffee cup that is 1/8 of an inch thick.  When you pour 200 degree coffee into the cup, common sense would suggest that you would get third degree burns, but you don’t.  The reason you don’t is the “Thermal Barrier”.  When used on your home, you are isolating the extreme heat or cold of the outside environment to the outside under the same principle.  This allows the wall to perform as an inside structure and perform at a level much higher than the R-Value rating of R-21 for the overall wall.

Windows
There are hundreds of window choices.  Our approach to window selection starts with energy efficiency and ends with value.  A good double pane Low-e vinyl window will have an average U value (divide U value into 1 to get R value) of .31 to .33, or an R value of about 3r.  From an energy standpoint, this is the best window purchase for the money.  In a 1,500 SF home, it will cost between $8,000 and $15,000 depending on window type and features to get a window package with an average U value of .25, or R-4.  For under $5,000 you can outfit your entire home with R-5 triple pleated shades that will triple the performance of your window structures.  For our clients that need or want a higher priced window, we offer it, but most of our clients are looking for performance and style in a budget similar to a site built budget.  No matter what window you choose, the biggest key to performance is in sealing all areas around the window with foam to eliminate air infiltration.

Ceiling/roof
The ceiling is a critical factor in the energy efficiency of your home.  Whether you choose a flat ceiling, a nominal vault, or a true vault, you will be getting a state of the art truss structure that allows us to achieve an R-49 standard insulation package by combining a foam encapsulation of Icynene sprayed on the other side of the 5/8 ceiling drywall combined with fiberglass batt or cellulose insulation depending on roof construction.  This highly efficient hybrid system is standard on all our CC&CC structures.  

ICF Foundation
Since we deliver our homes all over the country, we have to price our home as a “home only” price and add site work costs based on location and local codes.  We recommend to all of our clients that they use insulated concrete forms for their foundation walls to complete the energy performance package of the home.  The use of these forms can reduce the energy loss of the floor structure tremendously.  This is the same for both cold and warm climates.

Heating/Cooling
For those of you who have lived in a “Foam Home” you can disregard this section because you already know the secret.  For all the rest, we ask that you approach this section WITHOUT all of the preprogramming you have because you have lived in site built code minimum housing all of your life.  Whether your CC&CC is a primary residence or a weekend getaway, you are about to experience an indoor environment that is amazingly quiet, and has extremely low temperature swings inside the home.  Remember the foam cup!  Whether it’s cold or hot, it can’t get to you from the other side unless you let it.  In warm climates, the home you cooled down overnight with the windows open, will stay cool through most of the day with these same windows closed, and in warm climates the heat gained during the day from passive solar, will stay in the home long into the night if the shades are drawn.  This is important because we all have stereotypes about all the different heating and cooling systems we have known that had to try and keep us comfortable in a home that had scandalous air infiltration problems.  Again, by controlling the air infiltration, you control your environment.  The efficiencies of our homes offer our clients a wide selection of heating and cooling options that are made based on comfort and efficiency per model design.  In our small structures, we are using an electric/hydronic pulse heating system that has almost no BTU loss from the point of origin to the transfer to the room.  Because the room doesn’t leak, this is a very efficient heating source.  Many of our cabins are using a heat rated thermostatically controlled gas stove Like the LOPI Berkshire freestanding stove as the primary heat source and the electric/hydronic as a back-up.  When we use a forced air gas unit for heating and cooling, we use a 92% efficient furnace that is typically 1/3 less BTU output to achieve the same heat delivery as the same size home built to the IRC code minimum.  

All of these and more will save you money and provide a much higher comfort level than you are used to.  Depending on the model, these are standard in your home.  At CC&CC, we don’t care how you use your BTU once you have spent the money to convert it, but we do care about how long you can hold on to it once converted!

Many of our clients are off grid or trying to achieve an even higher level of efficiency than our standard efficiencies.  To that end, we offer a full range of air to air solar heaters, solar compatible construction options, grid tie solar, off grid systems, and extremely high efficiency appliances to compliment your energy needs.  Our partnership with “Your Solar Home” gives you the opportunity to have the Solarsheet 1500G or 1000G installed on your home for a fraction of the price you would pay to do it yourself.  These state of the art solar heaters can provide a great majority of your heating needs for free.

Plumbing
All of our homes come standard with name brand faucets, low flow elongated toilets, and value engineering that shortens the runs from the water heater to the delivery point.  As important as these are to the overall system of energy efficiency, we take it a step further.  All of our homes come standard with gas fired tank-less water heaters.  This is a very important component to our overall goal of EXTREMELY LOW utility bills.  One of the biggest offenders toward higher energy bills is the cost of heating and storing hot water.  You can reduce this piece of your bill by as much as 50% by using a tank-less water heater instead of a 50 gallon tank and heater.  A side benefit to this is that you gain a closet or floor space by not setting one of these units.  A second part to this is the piping.  We all know about copper piping.  We don’t use it.  Instead we use Pex.  Pex is an insulated flexible water delivery product that is both quiet and efficient.  Copper by design transmits heat away from the water into the pipe and surrounding structure while providing a high level of noise.  Pex is insulated and doesn’t transfer the heat the same way which makes it quieter and less expensive to deliver the hot water to the point of use.

Summary
We believe that one of the most powerful ways to save the resources of our planet is to provide structures that use a fraction of our natural resources to operate annually.  We believe that most home buyers share this goal, and would make the decision freely if the cost of the decision was not an added burden to the budget. We strive to use the most renewable products in the construction of our homes while maintaining our important cost controls.  We know that these goals can be achieved with cost effective controlled product purchasing coupled with the technologies and value provided in the factory construction process.  

What’s included?

Every Colorado Cottage and Cabin Company home comes standard as a finished product. This means that your home is delivered finished or mostly finished depending on the design.  In the case of the mostly finished home, all of the materials needed to complete the home are shipped with the home to be finished on site.  Your home includes painted drywall, cabinets, plumbing, flooring, appliances, heat systems, etc...  The standard exterior of your CC&CC home is LP Smart Side siding in either pre-painted or pre-stained.  This premium earth friendly siding product has little maintenance, and provides you a wide range of design options.  The following is a partial list of our highly appointed standard features:

Full material list available upon request with many upgrades available.

CC&CC is also happy to stay in place seeing the project to completion through our network of home installers and site developers (G.C.). We have completed several "second home" projects for buyers or investors from out of the area, managing their projects to completion. A list of references is available upon request.

Allow 4 to 8 weeks for delivery, of the home to your site, and an additional 8 to 12 weeks for completion of the project. Every site is different and presents it own level of ease or difficulty.

We work with clients from all regions of North America including Canada.  The energy savings achieved with these homes are very similar in warm climates as well as cold climates.  Because heat loss or cooling loss is much higher in extreme climates vs. moderate cold or warm climates, you will experience a much better savings in these climates while experiencing one of the most comfortable interior environments you have been exposed to.

We are well versed at working with all of the local codes, and by design, there are very few changes to make on these structures from region to region.  Whether you need a 100# snow load in Vail, Colorado, or a hurricane rating in Destin Florida, we can make these changes for your local conditions at a surprisingly low cost.

If you want to drive a new Mercedes, for the cost of a new Ford, then call us, because we think you would look great in one of our homes.

From all of us here at CC&CC
We look forward to working with you.

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