Welcome Vantage Seafoods
Posted by adrian in Marketing, New Clients on December 15, 2011
Vantage Seafood, Seattle
Welcome newest client Vantage Seafood
Welcome are newest client Vantage Seafood, LLC in Redmond Washington. Vantage is seafood broker that specializing in crab products. We started working with them 3 months ago to extend their reach and give their monthly newsletter a polished finished look. In addition to working on branding and distribution we help set up a tracking and a contact management system where they can actually see how many and who is reading their letter, this helps them understand quickly what their clients are looking for.
Their average opening of their online campaigns is averaging 35-37% open rate.
Game Changing Lighting at Seattle’s City Cabins
Posted by adrian in City Cabins, Marketing on November 29, 2011
Builder Martha Rose, president of Martha Rose Construction in Seattle Washington, is electing to upgrade traditional builder grade incandescent lighting in her new homes, City Cabins in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood, with ultra-compact and extremely efficient Juno Mini LED Downlights and Gimbals.
The living rooms of City Cabins will be displaying the much sought –after “quiet-ceiling” architectural designed fixtures featuring Mini LED Downlights and the Gimbals that feature a 30 degree aiming and 360 degree rotation, perfect for adding a bit of drama to your favorite work of art!
The beauty of this type of task lighting is that it produces virtually no heat while enhancing visual comfort while using 1/10 the energy of traditional lighting. The lights are expected to last 50,000 hours which equals about 5 years if you left them on 24/7.
Rose mentions “sustainable building is all about doing more using less.” This type of think has influential in their selection of light bulbs for the “Cabins.” It just makes sense to use more efficient bulbs that use less wattage even though the cost is greater but once you look at the whole profile or payback for a LED bulb compared to a standard incandescent bulb it makes more financial sense.
A typical incandescent bulb would take 60 watts to produce 800 lumens where a CFL bulb would take up to 15 watts and a LED would take up to 12 watts to produce 800 lumens. The initial cost of an incandescent bulb is small compared to the cost of the energy it uses over its lifetime.
City Cabins are due to be competed in December of 2011, for more information visit CityCabins.com or contact Adrian Willanger 206 909-7536.
New Homes on Queen Anne Hill approaching net-zero
Posted by adrian in Articles, City Cabins, Marketing, News on November 23, 2011
New Homes on Queen Anne Hill approaching net-zero
City Cabins builder Martha Rose’s passion for sustainable building can be traced back to the energy crisis of the 1970s. “The Carter administration started giving grants to people with innovative about how to use less energy,” mentions Rose.
When Rose learned about the Built Green program in Seattle in 2003 she thought this would be natural transition for her company to become “certified green home builder.” Her company was already following much of the guidelines on the Built Green checklist.
Since 2003 many of Rose’s project have become more energy efficient than the previous projects. Rose continues to push the energy saving envelope utilizing new techniques in building science and material innovations to get closer to the goal of building a net-zero home.City Cabins in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood are getting very close, the two high-performance come with many built in features that most builders charge extra for such as increased insulation, quadruple glazed windows, heat-recovery-ventilator, and extremely high-end Energy Star appliances.
The homes are at finishing stage and are scheduled to be completed in December 2011. For more information visit CityCabins.com or alternatively contact Adrian Willanger 206 909-7536.
Is Your Home Ready for the Cars of the Future?
Posted by adrian in City Cabins, Marketing, News on November 17, 2011
Is Your Home Ready for the Cars of the Future?
Several major auto makers like Audi, BMW and Volkswagen are leading the way utilizing lightweight auto body materials and electrified powertrains to build cars of the future. RMI has come out with a 5 step program that outlines how we can reduce our oil addiction by 2050. Read the full article by Jesse Morris and Greg Rucks
looking for a high-performance all electric home in Seattle visit CityCabins.com
The Art of Sustainable Building in Seattle
Posted by adrian in Articles, City Cabins, Marketing on November 4, 2011
The Art of Sustainable Building in Urban Seattle
The art of sustainable development starts by analyzing the building site and coming up with a site design that protects natural and other features that exist on the site. Builder Martha Rose elected to reuse a large percentage of the existing foundation from the existing 1940 duplex for their latest urban project City Cabins in Seattle. Retooling and reusing the existing foundation was a key component in reducing pollution from construction activities by minimizing soil erosion, topology disturbance, waterway sedimentation and dust that would have taken place if they had elected to use traditional construction methods.
The three story homes are designed to take advantage of the views of Fisherman’s Terminal and the Olympic Mountains to the West while providing natural daylighting and privacy without feeling like you’re in an urban-fishbowl. The homes are slightly terraced off the street separated by an elevated sidewalk from street level. The terracing offers the City Cabin homeowners privacy from the pedestrian’s view while the top of terrace offer a level platform for sitting, greeting neighbors or just enjoying the view.
The raised sidewalk is a unique urban pattern that adds to the walkability of the North Queen Anne neighborhood, configuring to the natural terrain the walkway offer increased pedestrian safety from automobiles, view corridors and green planting strips that separate the sidewalk from the street.
City Cabins are scheduled for a mi-December completion for more information visit CityCabins.com or alternatively contact Adrian Willanger 206 909-7536.
New Homes with Juice on Queen Anne Hill
Posted by adrian in Articles, City Cabins, Marketing on October 27, 2011
City Cabins in Seattle
New Homes with Juice on Queen Anne Hill
According to a recent report by Pike Research by 2015 automakers worldwide are expecting to sell more than 3 million electric vehicles. Forward thinking builder Martha Rose, president of Martha Rose Construction, is making it easy for home buyers to have an electric vehicle by pre-wiring their new City Cabin homes for Electric-Vehicle (EV) charging stations.
Going a bit further Rose has installed a 2KW photo-voltaic system on one of the two homes, the other is pre-wired for solar and an EV station, the solar array will produce enough electricity to power an electric vehicle between 7,000-10,000 miles a year depending on the make of the vehicle.
This trend is something that designers and builders are starting to look at across the country; Monday KB Home announced that it will build all its homes under the Build San Antonio Green program starting in December. KB Home is one of the largest homebuilders in the country.
City Cabins two high performance homes locate in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle are due to be completed in December of 2011. For more information visit the web site CityCabins.com or contact Adrian Willanger 206 909-7536.
City Cabins to Shine a Bit Brighter
Posted by adrian in Articles, City Cabins on October 24, 2011
City Cabins to Shine Brighter
Home builder Martha Rose, president of Martha Rose Construction in Seattle, is adding arrays of LED lighting to her latest project in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. The projects, City Cabins, are all-electric powered homes.
More lumens equals more light
Rose mentions “sustainable building is all about doing more using less.” This type of think has influential in their selection of light bulbs for the “Cabins.” It just makes sense to use more efficient bulbs that use less wattage even though the cost is greater but once you look at the whole profile or payback for a LED bulb compared to a standard incandescent bulb it makes more financial sense.
A typical incandescent bulb would take 60 watts to produce 800 lumens where a CFL bulb would take up to 15 watts and a LED would take up to 12 watts to produce 800 lumens. When searching for high efficient LED bulbs, at the top of the list, we found the CREE that would produce 950 lumens using only 9 watts of electricity, the bulb retails for $79.95.
As the popularity of LED lighting increases the price will start to come down along with the passing of the 2007 the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) that was signed into law. The Department of Energy (DOE) issued new energy efficiency standards for fluorescent and incandescent bulbs. It will be phased-in 2012 through 2014 (California will begin one year earlier starting January, 2011)
City Cabins will use both CFLs and the next generation LED lighting for their lighting solution of their new homes.
City Cabins are due to be completed in mid-December and are now available for pre-sale. For more information about these two-high performance homes visit CityCabins.com or contact Adrian Willanger.
Green Steps on Queen Anne Hill
Posted by adrian in Articles, City Cabins, Green Home Building, Marketing on October 19, 2011
Energy Heel at City Cabins
Green Steps on Queen Anne Hill
Award winning green home builder Martha Rose, president of Martha Rose Construction in Seattle, believes building a high-performance home you really have to pay attention to the small details.
At her current project, City Cabins in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood, prior to installing the drywall Rose has a thermographic inspection by building performance consultant Tom Balderson.
Using an infrared camera they look check for cool spots in the exterior walls. This helps Rose determine if there is any air infiltration that needs to be sealed prior to drywalling and also as a quality control measure to make sure the insulation has been installed correctly.
After the drywall has been installed, taped and all the finished work has been installed Rose will have Balderson do a blower door test to look once again for any air leakage, the leaks will appear has as contrasting colors on the viewfinder of the infrared camera.
City Cabins are perhaps the most energy efficient spec-homes on the market today in the Pacific Northwest. The homes are slated for a mid-December completion. For more information contact Adrian Willanger, LEED AP. Or visit the website CityCabins.com.
Made in USA Gaining Traction with Homebuilders
Posted by adrian in Articles, City Cabins, Green Home Building on October 18, 2011
Exterior sealing City Cabins
Made in USA Gaining Traction with Homebuilders
A September 2011 article written by Kirk Johnson published by the New York Times about a Bozeman Montana general contractor whose goal is to build a new home made entirely of materials made in America has influenced other builder around the country.
The article is written about general contractor Andres Lewendal’s plan that would help the struggling construction industry and would offer relief towards the nation’s economic recovery.
“The point is that little things can add up,” mentions Lewendal. “I think we could solve this recession if everyone shifted just 5 percent of their purchases to U.S.-made products.
Cedarland Homes owner Tarek Saad who builds in Oklahoma was inspired after reading an article about a home being built in Bozeman Montana made entirely of American products. Saad is now committing his business to the Boston Consulting Groups challenge that predicted “that if every builder used five percent more American products, the United State would see 220,000 more jobs right now.
Most builders would agree the cost of buying USA made products may add 1-3% more to the total cost of building yet, some builders believe their getting a better product, seemingly a small concession that could create more jobs.
Seattle builder Martha Rose, president of Martha Rose Construction, agrees, her company focuses on sourcing as much locally made materials as possible for their City Cabins project in Seattle.
Queen Anne Real Estate Price Trends
Posted by adrian in City Cabins, Marketing on October 14, 2011
Queen Anne Real Estate Price Trends
The median single family home price as of October 14, 2011 East Queen Anne (zip code 98109) is $800,000.
The median single family home price as of October 14, 2011 West Queen Anne (zip code 98119) is $711,000.
Using Median Price is often a very good proxy for indicating real-time market activity because sellers in a market will typically price their home according to other similar homes in that market. This is not a perfect science, yet most sellers with help from their real estate agents tend not to overprice their homes choosing to price closer to where it will eventually sell.
Both zip codes, 98109 & 98119, have showed steady price increases since the beginning of the spring market. While West Queen Anne 98119 is showing signs of rising pricing East Queen Anne just started showing signs that it may be starting a seasonal “flattening.”
For a more detailed breakdown by zip codes contact me Adrian Willanger
