Arlington Designer Homes is committed to green building for the health benefits, energy savings, and reduced environmental footprint it provides for our buyers and our community. With constantly changing regulations, technologies and products, buidling a new green home from the ground up isn't always easy - but it's always interesting!

Welcome to our behind-the-scenes blog about green building and remodeling, where you can watch a green home go up step-by-step and learn about using green building techniques for your own home. And visit our website at to learn even more about green building and remodeling.

May 24, 2012

Follow the Construction of our Newest Green Home

Arlington Designer Homes, Inc. is proud to announce that we have submitted our building permit for a new single family home that we are building at 2617 N. Nottingham St. You might have seen us and this property in the news recently. This pipestem lot was created in 1969 and has been taxed as such since its creation, but in 2003 the Arlington County Board changed the building application rules for these types of lots.

Last summer, we became the first applicants in Arlington to file for a type of Special Use Permit under the new application rules for this type of lot. Arlington was a little unsure how to proceed with this new type of permit application, and so out of an abundance of caution, they chose to defer the decision until February. Throughout this time we worked diligently to develop a plan that would meet the needs of our customers, the neighborhood and Arlington County.

Through this process, we came up with a design for the home that will make this a truly unique North Arlington home.  This home will feature a flat green roof, pervious pavers, a bio-rentention area, designated rain gardens, and many, many more features that will help address future rain runoff issues. We plan on creating a site where there is less outfall (runoff water) after the home is built than before. This is just one of the many factors that will make this house so unique, and we are really excited to have the opportunity to build such a one-of-a-kind home here in Arlington County.



We anticipate this new Green Eco-friendly home being built to the Gold standard for both The National Green Standard and Arlington County Green Home Choice standards. This sustainable new home will be a joy to build and an even bigger joy to live in! We anticipate putting the home on the market in January 2013.

Because there's been so much interest in this unique lot and building process, and because this house will have so many special green features, we're going to post a weekly construction blog throughout the duration of the building process. We hope it will be useful resource for other homeowners and builders in Northern Virginia, and for anyone interested in green homes. Stay tuned!