PLAN 497-32

This house plan is a perfect Southwestern get-away retreat, downsizing solution, or second home. Designed to meld into its sandy surroundings, the desert house maximizes the indoor-outdoor living experience with multiple patios and bi-folding door solutions. Its single level open floor creates a wonderfully entertaining and comfortable living environment. This home is designed with a cut wall enclosure, to hide it’s integrated water reclamation system, and built in cuts outs to store logs for those cold desert nights. If you are looking to build a home-for-two in the Southwest then this is the home for you. The key to this homes beauty is its mix of stucco and wood finishing. This design has a masterful interplay of sandy toned stucco, light wood overhangs, and cedar siding. Its generous patios and bi-folding doors create a home that speak to Southwest living and exploring your environment. This design implements the open plan concept creatively with an indoor-outdoor “great space” for cooking, eating, and entertaining, while still creating ultimate privacy in its master bed and bath quarters. The kitchen is stylish yet functional. Designed with simple but elegant features such as polished concrete floors, light wood ceilings, and simple counter space, this home is a great example of how to achieve high-style, on a real budget. The “great space” was purposefully designed to complement the surrounding desert landscape. How you outfit this space it up to you, but as you can see in our renderings, we went with a minimalist approach which is both budget friendly, and creatively chic.

• LEED for Homes Rating System: Guidelines to meet LEED for Homes certification levels of: Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. LEED for Homes is a national, voluntary certification system, developed by national experts and experienced builders, that promotes the design and construction of high-performance green homes and encourages the adoption of sustainable practices by the homebuilding industry. The LEED for Homes Rating System is part of the suite of nationally recognized LEED Green Building Rating Systems administered by USGBC. Like all LEED Rating Systems, it is the market's leadership system, targeting the top 25% of home building practices in terms of environmental responsibility. LEED provides industry resources and tools on how to "green" any new home. With LEED, homebuilders can differentiate their structures as meeting the highest performance measures, and homebuyers can readily identify high quality green homes. LEED provides national consistency in defining the features of a green home, enables builders anywhere in the country to obtain a green rating on their homes, and assures homebuyers of the quality of their purchases, all based on a recognized national brand. Learn more about the LEED® Rating System here.
• Window shading details: External window shading devices are an effective method for reducing heat gains through windows during Summer. In fact, external shading devices can reduce heat gains by up to 80% if sized and built properly. With this in mind, the founders of Green Living, formerly Free Green, created this page to assist home builders in constructing effective window shading devices. The information we provide includes a zoning map of the United States, zoning charts for proper sizing of shading devices and a variety of shading device styles and materials to suite different tastes and different home designs.
• General Notes: Typically one sheet of general notes pertinent to the construction of the home
• Exterior Elevations: A blueprint picture of all four sides showing exterior materials and measurements.
• Foundation Plan: Drawn to 1/4" scale, this page shows all necessary notations and dimensions including support columns, walls and excavated and unexcavated areas. 
• Floor Plan(s): Detailed plans, drawn to 1/4" scale for each level showing room dimensions, wall partitions, windows, etc. as well as the location of electrical outlets and switches.
• Interior Elevations: Detailed drawings of kitchen cabinet elevations and other elements as required.
• Cross Section: A vertical cutaway view of the house from roof to foundation showing details of framing, construction, flooring and roofing.
• Wall sections and other construction details: Detailed drawings showing wall connections, from foundation to the roof. wall connections to foundation, window installation, siding installation, stair details, and more.
• Framing Plans: Drawn to 1/4" scale. The framing layout is intended to be a suggested layout only. Design loads & weather conditions vary by region. As a result the size, spacing & layout of all structural elements in this home design must be approved by a structural engineer and code official based on your specific site location prior to construction.
• Electrical Plan with electrical symbols legend: In general, each house plan set includes an electrical plan which will show the locations of lights, receptacles, switches, etc. Note: Most Green Living plans have an electrical plan, however some do not. Please contact us to verify.