Sustainable Mountain Home

Sustainable Mountain Home
The barn houses a solar PV system that can produce up to 9.5KW, which covers most of the home’s energy needs
This Truckee home not only received the highest Build It Green GreenPoint rating (199) of any home in the Sierra Nevada, but one of the highest in the entire state of California while still expressing beautiful Tahoe mountain style.

Contractors Association of Truckee Tahoe (CATT) awarded the home the 2013 Sustainable Building Methods Project of the Year award. Tahoe Quarterly Home Awards also named this home the winner of the 2015 Eco-Friendly Award. read article


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We built a home in the Lahontan Community in 2002-2003 that was designed by Kurt. We had already experienced a home designed by Kurt in Tahoe Donner that we had purchased earlier. Our satisfaction with the Tahoe Donner home was the reason we went to MWA for the Lahontan design. Having had some experience living in the Truckee area, we had some specific needs that we wished to be addressed for the Lahontan design. We articulated these needs in the form of a four page memorandum that we handed to Kurt when we sat down to discuss the project. Kurt took us to some completed homes that he had designed to help us visualize some ideas.

A couple of months later we were told that the draft plans were completed and ready for our review. We were delighted when we found that Kurt had found a way to address all of our needs. From our point of view the design was perfect. Moreover, Kurt had done this while taking maximum advantage of the attributes of the building site: the view of Lookout Mountain, the beautiful meadow and wildlife refuge behind the house and the lovely grove of Aspen trees on the property. We have lived in the home for 4 years and continue to be delighted with the design.

We found working with MWA to be easy and efficient. The communications were excellent every step of the way. Email was used to facilitate communications as we lived in the Bay area while the home was being built.

Overall, we found Kurt and MWA to be very responsive to our needs and very efficient to work with. The project was completed on budget and the architectural design costs were very reasonable.


-- Charlotte and George Hawley
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