With the support of the Lawrences, we built a very tight, well-insulated, ecologically friendly, and finely detailed home. A normal home requires 40-60 hours of planning before we initiate construction. We spent hundreds of hours on Kickapoo planning, sourcing materials, meeting with the architect, owners, suppliers, and subcontractors before we broke ground.

The end result is a fantastically detailed home which should last many lifetimes. It is the best work we have ever done, and we are very proud of it. In 2008, Kickapoo Dwelling was featured as one of 26 homes worldwide on both the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green Network and HGTV Canada in the series titled “The World’s Greenest Homes.”

Kickapoo Dwelling has been featured in several print and online publications:

• Off the Beaten Path – Eco-Structure Magazine
• Back to Nature – Custom Home Magazine
• Green & Enviable – Condé Nast Portfolio
• Photo Tour – on www.portfolio.com
• World’s Greenest Homes – Planet Green Network
• “WORLD’S GREENEST HOMES” – PLANET GREEN
• The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream by John F. Wasik

Each year, the Rockford Area Home Builders Association has its I.C.E. (Industry Cutting Edge) awards. We entered Kickapoo Dwelling in six categories and won all 6. In the trim category, we were awarded the highest point total by the judges in any category in the history of the awards.

Victor, an engineer, is deeply involved in the promotion of extremely energy-efficient homes. Visit his website at www.solarhomesus.com for more about his business and home.

This was our first experience with SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels), ICFs (Insulated Concrete Forms), earth tubes, and the idea of extreme energy efficiency. This home is so well-insulated and constructed, we were heating it with our work lights overnight with outside temperatures in the teens. We also put our first steel residential roof on this house. An interesting feature of this house is an active solar roof. We pump air from the house under the South facing steel roof and back into the house. Building Pura Vida has changed the way we look at energy usage and ways to minimize it.

Victor and Pura Vida have been mentioned in the book The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream, by John F. Wasik.

The house features:

• 35 arches
• 7 bathrooms
• 44 custom walnut doors
• Two decks and a courtyard
• Five fireplaces
• A deluxe theater with 11’ screen that seats 12
• A safe room
• A Control4 comprehensive electronic system
• Copper gutters
• Exercise room
• 4 bedrooms
• A wood shop with urinal (how cool is that?)
• A stone-coated, architectural steel roof that looks very much like red clay tiles
• A dog shower

The project came in on budget and ahead of schedule by two weeks.

We learned a lot on this project. We used Ipe (Brazilian Walnut) decking for the first time. It was also our first time with the stone-coated steel roof.