EcoCraft Homes

We worked with Eliot and Karen of EcoCraft Homes on the preconstruction of our eco-friendly dream home. Both were focused, knowledgeable, and organized. They knew a lot, and when they didn't, they reached out to someone who did. We had worked with a well-reviewed local architect previously, and spent twice as much money for a small fraction of the work EcoCraft was able to do for us with ease and on a much more reasonable budget. While the architect always had aesthetics in mind, they never seemed to have our personal aesthetics or our bottom line in mind. I found the team at EcoCraft to be incredibly respectful of our financial limitations, and to be transparent with costs from start to finish. The preconstruction on our very challenging property included multiple meetings with the City, lots of paperwork, and what could have been real headaches. EcoCraft made this part of the project a complete breeze. Lastly, they use SIPs construction, which means your eco-friendly dream house will go up much more quickly than with many other building methods. Highly recommend them!

I worked with EcoCraft for about a year designing and building my dream home. I wanted a small, energy efficient home designed for me to age in, after watching Parkinson’s disease force my dad to leave the home he loved. They hooked me up with people who got my vision, from architect to artisan to site graders and landscapers who worked with me to create a “ruin garden” from the foundation of the old home I couldn’t save from the wrecking ball. It was a dream come true to see my vision become drawings become boxes on the factory line and finally be assembled together in one day into the house I now enjoy every single day.

Ecocraft homes says all the right things but could not perform at the level they promised. As wonderful a home they say they can build, I was hopeful they would rise to the occasion and be able to manage the constrution of my passive home, with prefab construction. Our project together up through final pricing, dragged on beyond their schedule, was priced much higher than initially budgeted, and caused me to incur additional fees because of their inability to oversee and magage the project and their prefab builder, SMI. I provided them with mostly complete architectural drawings which we had altered for a prefab build (converting the house into boxes to be built in factory and delivered by truck). With these updated architectual drawings, their manufacturer, SMI, produced inaccurate shop drawings that caused me to incur additional architectural fees because EcoCraft didn’t adequately review the plans, and missed key errors that my architect uncovered. The limited capabilities of SMI to construct a high quality, finish, one story living space on foundation, passive style home in their factory, with non-toxic materials, using an exterior cedar wood finish, was too complex. Much of the exterior insulation and siding finish work, would have had to be performed on site, minimizing the benefit of prefab construction. Ecocraft wanted money up front for estimating the job, which is unusual for construction companies. When I cancelled the project after five and a half months of back and forth, after losing confidence in the ability to build my designed house, they kept most of the deposit money I had provided, charging me for their estimating time, including the shop drawing work at SMI that was inaccurate.. Additionally, they wanted to use a contract which was typical of a low quality tract home builder and they weren’t able to address important terms which would be more typically found in a contract for a custom home, prefab or not. High quality contractors don’t function that way. When pricing was finalized, their attempt to bill me as a typical home contractor, showed no cost savings to traditional home construction, as they had said would occur. The prefab home would have actually cost me more money than typical home construction project. Yes, I would have saved construction time, but at the pace the project was moving, the time savings would have only been a few months. As much as I wanted to build a prefab home with Ecocraft, I cannot recommend their services and suggest that for those interested in using this company hire their own architect, have an attorney to help with contract negotiations, set a specific timeline, not provide a preliminary construction pricing deposit and beware of the pitfalls of using this building.

We moved into our new home in January 2016, and as we are closing in on our one year anniversary, we can say that from start to finish we enjoyed working with EcoCraft and we LOVE our home. Everything was spelled out clearly, from preconstruction through completion, and we always felt that EcoCraft had our best interests in mind. No process of this length or complexity is without some bumps, but we felt we were listened to if we had questions or concerns, and we feel problems were resolved to everyone's satisfaction. We felt that EcoCraft went above and beyond to deliver the home we wanted.

EcoCraft Homes is building our new modular home. Groundbreaking is tomorrow, we are so excited! They have made the design and planning so easy. They explained everything very clearly and have been very acommendating with my ideas. I will post after our home is completed with photos.

The community speaks great about this contractor. They're so detailed that it's perfection. The materials we're cut and all of the caster we're made by the Company. I'm impressed and always will be. Alma

We set out to build an extremely energy efficient house and to keep it within 10% of normal cost. With the help of EcoCraft we did it! Before we met Elliot from EcoCraft, we had tried to line up other contractors, none of them were willing to build much differently than what they were used to. With EcoCraft, we built a house with R=36 walls, windows of almost R-10, attic R-80. Passive solar heat, solar electric and solar hot water included. All of this within 10% the cost of a normal home. Add to that, the house is beautiful! We highly recommend EcoCraft. Last but definitely not least, Elliot and Chris were awesome to work with. Their personalities blended so well with ours and we began to feel like they were family. We truly miss talking to them now that the house is complete.

Our experience with EcoCraft Homes was very positive. Everyone who worked with us on our home were cooperative, flexible and knowledgeable. There were several occasions that they went out of their way to make things go smoothly. We toured their factory facility and were impressed with the quality and workmanship of their product. The house was set on time as scheduled and the rest is history. I would highly recommend a modular home built by EcoCraft Homes.