ARVADA, CO Custom Home
The Right Environment
Some people build a home because they want more space, or a better view, or a fresh start somewhere new. This client needed a home that would not make her more sick. After years of searching for a living environment her body could tolerate, her mother found Phoenix Haus through Bill's Origin Story about growing up unable to breathe in his own home. They booked the call the same day,
The Challenge
Our client is extremely sensitive to the environment around her, with her body reacting to air quality, noise, vibration, materials. She and her mother had looked at everything. Retrofitting an existing home was not viable because of the materials, the hidden moisture, and the compromises baked into decades-old construction. Standard new builds came with off-gassing adhesives, inadequate ventilation, and mechanical rooms placed with no thought for the people sleeping nearby. Healthy home marketing was everywhere, but homes that could actually deliver it were not. In the end, the family bought a vacant infill lot in Arvada and started again.
The Journey
When they found Phoenix Haus, they had done the research. They understood fresh air systems, airtight envelopes, and why the materials inside a wall matter as much as the wall itself. What they needed was confirmation that a builder existed who took all of it as seriously as they did. The conversation moved quickly to specifics of the home, from the mechanical placement to eliminate vibration transfer, to fresh air delivery, to the non-toxic materials used throughout. The things other builders treated as upgrades are our baseline, and that was the alignment they had been searching for.
However, the project carried an added layer of complexity. We are the first panel manufacturer to move through Colorado's new DOLA Factory Built Residential program, a state-level certification process requiring stamped mechanical, electrical, and plumbing designs submitted for review before production. The process was new for everyone, took three months to navigate, and pushed the setting date back in ways nobody had planned for. Through all of it, our client and her mother were patient.
When the panels finally went up, the home they had spent years trying to find started to take shape on a lot they had specifically chosen because nothing else would do.
The Result
The home is built to the standard she needed, airtight, well-ventilated, mechanicals placed and isolated to prevent the vibration transfer that had made other spaces difficult for her. As per our guarantee, we held our fixed price through the entire process, absorbing costs that arose from the factory certification program without passing a single change order to the family. The number they agreed to at the start was the number at the end. She will move into a home designed around how her body actually works. It turned out that finding a story about a boy who couldn’t breathe in his own house was the right place to look.
The conclusion?
If you've been told that healthy building is a premium add-on, we'd like to show you what it looks like as a starting point.
Non-toxic materials, fresh air systems, and airtight construction aren't features we offer but the ethos for how we build. If that's what you've been searching for, we're ready to talk.