News: We purchased a lot in August 2025 in Fort Collins, Colorado, and are designing and value engineering a ~2000 sf, 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 story home. If you are interested in receiving project updates and perhaps participating in design charrettes or discussions, and receiving and sharing data and information, please join our email list. We are starting with this one single-family home, but we intend to build orders of magnitudes more attainable, sustainable homes. We love to engage with others who have similar values and goals, which like to do 1:1 and via the Fort Collins Building Science + Beer Group.
Sashcara plans to build high-performance yet attainable homes in Northern Colorado. We want to enable more families and individuals to enjoy the financial, social, and psychological benefits of owning an excellent home and for the homes to have a small environmental impact. Those together will make our communities stronger and more resilient.
We intend to have a positive impact on everyone involved. We want those who work with us to earn a living wage, enjoy a high level of health and safety on the job, build valuable skills, and be treated with dignity and respect. We want ourselves and our partners to earn a reasonable profit which will enable increasing investment in this work.
We believe we can achieve high performance through building-science best practice. We will drive cost down through intensive whole-system value engineering and the utilization of innovative means, materials, and methods, all to remove unnecessary material, labor, and build duration. By optimizing our design and methods to build units fast, efficiently, and at scale, we aim for all parties to earn a sufficient total profit through a relatively small profit per unit.
The table below is a rough draft outline of the eight top considerations for our homes. They are listed in rough order of priority, but we work hard on all eight. Homes are the most expensive thing most of us buy, so it's worth the effort to get them right.
We share our aspirations as an invitation to others who might collaborate with us in some capacity. We welcome input and constructive debate and criticism regarding our aspirations and how we can achieve them, as we are eager to learn and to share information and learnings with others who share our vision. Do you think any important "details to consider" are missing?
Constructive criticism and debate will be important, as there will be tough choices regarding target conflicts, i.e., situations where achievement of one target reduces achievement of another one, and optimization must be done on the system level.
For instance, we want resilient roofs, but heavier gauge steel reduces affordability, so we must weight marginal costs and benefits. But fortunately some of the most important targets are complementary: comfort, health, and sustainability increase, and recurring operating costs decrease, with great insulation and air sealing, which have a modest up-front cost.
If you have any advice, suggestions, or questions, you can reach me, Erik Mikysa, at "erik@[the domain name of this website].com" (I try to confuse spam bots), or you can leave a voicemail for me at Nine-Seven-Zero-449-9994.
Important note: the content here is not marketing or sales material for our homes - we will share actual details about each home we build individually after construction.
| Attribute and aspiration | Details to consider | Means |
|---|---|---|
| Safe: very high level of occupant protection. | Ability to withstand exposure to and protect occupants from hazards including: wind, wind borne projectiles, snow, hail, flood, wildfire, extreme heat, extreme cold, and seismic | Robust design Careful material and assembly selection |
| Healthy: environment which maintains and increases wellbeing. | Air quality, humidity, condensation, mold, light, sound, green space (yard) |
Air: mechanical filtered ventilation, low-emitting materials
Light: daylight-optimized layout and glazing, smart lights with circadian rhythm function. Sound: acoustic insulation. |
| Affordable: ownership of a high-performance house possible for many more. | Build cost, operating and maintenance cost, total cost | Design: simplicity, value engineering, sys. optimization. Build: lean construction, panelization/modularization. Operate: low maintenance materials and equipment, efficient mechanical systems. |
| Comfortable: a high level of occupant comfort. | Thermal uniformity, air flow, sound (also mentioned above) | Tight envelope, balanced heating, cooling, and ventillation with zoning, high efficiency windows, acoustic insulation. |
| Sustainable: do not ruin things for future generations. | Lifecycle (embodied + operational + deconstruction): energy consumption, emsissions of GHG and more, material toxicity. What is missing? | Modeling to forecast environmental costs and identify reduction opportunities. Meticuolous air sealing and robust insulation to achieve a high-performance envelope. Optimized shading strategies. Renewable energy integration. |
| Resilient: low maintenance and replacement costs over decades. | Susceptibility to UV, temp. extremes & swings, bulk water, water vapor, frost heave, soil expansion/contraction, vermin, insects, etc. Maintenance requirements | Materials and assemblies which are highly resistant to or protected from the hazards.
Structural redundancy. Backup systems. Elevated foundation. |
| Adaptable: accommodation of evolving needs and new tech. | Modification potential | Accessible crawlspace and mechanical areas.
Modular floor plan. Service cavities or conduits for electrical/plumbing. |
| Attractive: highly attractive (interior + exterior). | Subjective assessment: elegant, simple design with curb appeal and interior quality that people enjoy. | Integrated architectural/design thinking including proportion and massing studies
Digital design iterations with user input |