Attainable High-Tech Efficiency

An electric vehicle approach to modular construction

• Development company iUnit specializes in Zero Energy Ready homes. They’ve standardized around modular, in part, because factory building creates an inherently more efficient envelope.
• iUnit has partnered with Champion Skyline, and the two are starting a new community in Virginia. Champion credits iUnit with helping them up their game when it comes to resource efficiency.
• The homes will be embedded with various digital technologies. These will help make them more efficient and more convenient to live in.

iUnit, a property developer based in Ashburn, Virginia, which was founded by Brice Leconte in 2013, is seen as an innovator by its business partners. One reason is its forward-thinking commitment to Zero Energy Ready modular homes that make optimal use of cell phone and solar-power technologies.

The company’s manufacturing partner is Skyline Champion, based in Troy, Michigan. “[Brice is] pushing the envelope,” says Steve Payne, Senior Director of Business Development at Champion’s builder/developer group. “Zero Energy Ready structures have been around for a long time, but they’ve been largely overlooked. It’s people like Brice who won’t let you forget about them. He is bound and determined to be a leader.”

Payne says that his organization, a publicly traded company with 11,000 employees, is following iUnit’s lead by modernizing its materials and processes for modular net zero construction.

Champion’s first project with iUnit was the Eliot Flats apartment building in Denver, Colorado, which it built in 2017. “At the time we built Eliot Flats, it was Denver’s first modular urban apartment building. It was the highest-ranking ENERGY STAR-performing multifamily housing project in Colorado,” Leconte says.

The success of that project has made Champion eager to do more work with iUnit. “Not only can we offer these types of structures for Brice and one of his upcoming projects, but these are also going to become readily available for our customers around the country,” Payne says. “In that sense, he’s been a driver for us.”

Currently, Champion and iUnit are in the process of permitting a 200-unit, build-to-rent modular community in Strasburg, Virginia called Derby Ridge. The homes will be Zero Energy Ready, and will be manufactured using energy-saving materials and equipment.

The development will also include a seven-acre solar farm, that Leconte estimates could produce twice the energy needs of the community. (The amount they’re allowed to generate will be determined by the utility.) He says he is very excited about working on microgrid systems and figuring out how communities can produce energy through distributed generation.

Digital Innovations

In addition to net zero construction, iUnit has been on the leading edge in the use of cell phone-based communication technologies for housing controls. This approach enables resource conservation as well as convenience.

“[Our] technologies allow your home to communicate with, and be managed by, your mobile device,” according to the iUnit website. For instance, the compatible technologies used in Eliot Flats include wireless Bluetooth speakers in every unit, built-in desks with wireless power-charging stations, Nest thermostats, smart water meters and energy-use monitoring.

The Derby Ridge homes will also have this type of equipment. Their smart water heaters will measure water usage and temperature. They will also detect leaks and alert property management — a very useful feature for a rental community. The electric meters can be used to bill tenants, and will provide iUnit and Champion with data they can analyze to help plan further efficiency improvements. Energy-use monitoring will help tenants understand the best ways to reduce their electric bills.

“The reason I called the company iUnit is that the term denotes technology, like an iPad,” Leconte explains.

He adds that he likes to tell people “we’re building the electric car of housing.” He uses Tesla as an analogy to describe how communication devices have played a key role in helping residents actively save energy at Eliot Flats. “If I gave you a Tesla without the feedback loop, without the screens inside the car telling you how your driving habits are affecting the efficiency of the vehicle, it would not be sufficient. There’s got to be a feedback educational loop and that’s part of the solution.”

However, he always comes back to the fact that technology alone won’t make a home efficient; you have to start with a great building envelope. “It doesn’t matter what kind of computers or mechanical systems you add to it; if you don’t get the shell correct, the rest of it is not going to matter.”

Obstacles and Successes

But as forward-thinking as iUnit is, the company has met with resistance from local jurisdictions over zoning concerns, which has led to the cancellation of quite a few projects. It’s not the technology they’ve objected to, it’s the fact that Leconte seeks to lower housing costs, in part, with higher density.

“We’re the tip of the spear,” Leconte says. “The biggest part of it is the approvals. That’s a big challenge. They say, ‘It’s too dense; we don’t have that type of density in our zoning.’ I may sound jaded, but a lot of people claim to want workforce housing. A lot of politicians talk about it. But when a developer comes along and shows them what it looks like, that density is not something they’re willing to provide.”

However, he has persevered. Over a decade ago, he saw the opportunity to use modular construction to build environmentally sustainable workforce housing with an attainable price for the “missing middle” of the market. This is the population earning from 75% to 100% of the average median income. He says that a lot of the homes being built today by other companies are luxury housing.

The Denver project was Leconte’s first foray into modular as a solution. “I called Eliot Flats getting our master’s degree in modular,” Leconte says. “It was a great project for us to learn how to build modular, and to really see what it offered. It validated our business model, and it also showed us just the amount of demand there is for well-built, attainable housing.”

The positive results have helped keep Leconte motivated. He says that Eliot Flats’ apartments rent for $300-$400 less per month than comparable Class A apartments in the Denver area. Part of the reason is that they’re smaller, but he says they were designed to make efficient use of space and there has been no shortage of people wanting to rent them. “We leased up the project in six days. The demand for those units was just tremendous.”

Pursuing Other Options

Besides modular, iUnit is also experimenting with other offsite approaches. In Pennsylvania, it has bought three mobile home parks and is replacing the existing homes four to six at a time, Leconte says. The goal is to replace all of them with new, energy-efficient models.

The park purchases included all the infrastructure: roads, water and sewer systems. The new homes will be manufactured according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s code requirements for mobile homes. Compared to the older models, they will have higher insulation, better envelopes and more energy-efficient mechanical systems with ENERGY STAR certifications.

The company has also built a couple of single-family homes in Virginia with energy-efficient designs. Modular helped keep construction costs in check. “We saved 10 to 20% on hard costs because of the high cost of materials and labor in this area,” according to Leconte. He says that one house sold for $300,000 less than a similar house would have sold for in the area.

One of those homes was set on a precast, pre-insulated foundation. “It was one of the things we were testing in preparation for the Strasburg project,” Leconte says. The precast foundation reduced construction time, and he expects to use more of them in the future.

Kat Friedrich writes about energy, engineering, physics and technology. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering and is the editor in chief of Solar Today.