Issaquah, WA–A subsidiary of a major Japanese builder hopes the 10-unit townhome development it is building here will set the stage for much bigger things to come.

As a subsidiary company of major Japanese home builder ICHIJO KOMUTEN (Tokyo, Japan), Ichijo USA is offering custom designed homes and new development with quality and super energy efficient technologies in the greater Seattle area.

It is making its mark with zHome here, the development it says “will prove that homes that use zero net energy and 60% less water, have no carbon emissions, have clean indoor air and use only low-toxicity materials are possible and scalable to mainstream home production.”

The project is sponsored by the City of Issaquah, and developed and built by Matt Howland and Ichijo USA,

The designers say it will use only 40% of the water that is normally used in a home of the same size.  A big part of that efficiency comes from standards measures:  Drought tolerant plans, efficient appliances and reduced-flow faucets. 

The most complicated part of the plan is a rainwater catchment system.  Each home’s cistern holds between 1,100 and 1,700 gallons of roof runoff for use for clothes washing or toilet flushing.  Details on the water saving features are found here.

The homes will be net zero, meaning all the power it uses will be generated on site and it has zero carbon emissions.  It will use 1/3 the power of a normal house of its size and all that will come from on-site generation.

 zHome starts first with conservation, using a number of advanced energy-efficient construction techniques to reduce home energy use. This gets the homes about two-thirds of the way there. zHome units then use solar panels to generate and offset the remaining one-third to achieve net zero energy use and net zero CO2 emissions.