1,400 square feet, built into a Colfax hillside. Insulated concrete form walls, a poured concrete roof planted with wildflowers, polished concrete floors over hydronic radiant heat, and 100% off-grid power.
We built this house so we could stop talking about what resilient, fire-resistant, off-grid construction means and start living in it.
The foundation is a monolithic insulated slab with hydronic radiant tubing cast in — red PEX laid in long loops before the concrete was poured and polished by Urata Concrete. The slab is the finish floor. The walls are Insulated Concrete Form (ICF): styrofoam-and-rebar forms stacked like Lego blocks, then filled with a continuous concrete pour. Every wall in the house is a solid concrete sandwich between rigid foam insulation. Fireproof, soundproof, and thermally efficient.
The roof is the unusual part. It's a poured concrete slab — pumped at sunrise, hand-finished by our crew and Urata — then waterproofed with EPDM rubber membrane, layered with soil, and planted as a drought-tolerant wildflower meadow. A living green roof on a concrete structure. The power system is 100% off-grid: a 15 kW tiltable solar array that doubles as an EV carport, a Sol-Ark inverter, HomeGrid Stack'd battery storage, and a Cummins RS 30 propane standby generator with 660 gallons of fuel. The house runs entirely on sunshine in summer, mostly on sunshine the rest of the year, and on propane during long winter storms when the batteries run down.
Heating is a propane-fired hydronic boiler feeding the radiant slab — it holds 74°F through winter for about $60 of propane a month. Cooling is a Fujitsu mini-split that keeps the interior at 68°F through summer. Internet is Starlink. Water is on a well. The whole property lives off-grid by choice, not necessity, because if you build the systems right from the start it's a better way to live.
Everything on this page was placed by the same hands that will show up at your job site. For the concrete finish we brought in Urata Concrete — the same specialist we subcontract on our largest commercial pours.
Use the arrows, dots, or your keyboard to step through. On touch devices, swipe.
Fire-resistant custom homes, off-grid power systems, ICF construction — or a regular ranch house with a well-built foundation. Come talk to us.
