Our Innovations -
Millennium III Homes

Recognizing that the construction techniques used in building houses hadn't changed much in the last 50 years, Executive Vice President David Faganel decided to reevaluate all of his firm's methods and techniques to see how they could be improved. His goal was to build a house that is truly energy-efficient and one that provides a healthy environment for today's families.

He began by attaining the services of one of the country's leading authorities, the Cold Climate Housing Center affiliated with the University of Minnesota. After 18 months, during which all construction personnel went back to school to learn new state-of-the-art techniques, the first Faganel Millennium III home was built.

"The most important thing we learned," says David, "Is that in order to achieve a 'performance-built' house we had to think of it as a system rather than an assemblage of disjointed components and products. We also learned that some of the old bromides about construction are not entirely valid. For example; it is not necessarily true that wall thickness and increased insulation (R-values) means increased energy efficiency. Since easily 20 to 40% of the exterior of a home is made up of doors and windows, which limits the effect of increased insulation and increases potential for air leaks, the only way to assure energy efficiency is to control the interior environment by making the structure as air-tight as possible. Tightness alone, however, can result in serious problems like damage from moisture retention and stale, unhealthy air. By incorporating an air exchanger in our Millennium III homes, that continuously exhausts stale air and brings in fresh air, we not only solved these problems but produced a quality, energy-efficient home that few, if any, other builders in the area offers."