Design

Introducing FHB House: Elevating the Standard of Building

Introducing Fine Homebuilding’s demonstration-home series— developed to educate designers, builders, and industry insiders on building’s best practices.

By Sean Groom Issue 260 - June/July 2016

A Demonstration Home Like No Other From the advanced framing to the air-sealed sheathing to the R-60 ceiling insulation, the construction details in the 2016 ProHOME are progressive. Seeing the details is one thing, but understanding why those details were chosen is just as important. What sets the ProHOME program apart is the emphasis on why particular assemblies make sense, what materials are most appropriate, and how pitfalls can be avoided.

Over the last 35 years, Fine Homebuilding has been a residential building and remodeling resource providing information about everything from basic construction skills to advanced building methods to cutting-edge assemblies to innovative technologies. This house—the first in our history—is a continuation of that teaching mission. We believe that this project, called the FHB House, is the type of house all industry experts should aspire to: modestly sized, energy smart, healthy, flexible, and durable.

To create a valuable resource on designing and building a high-performance house, we’ll include a special section in each of five magazine issues, starting with this initial look at the planning and design of the house, which is being built in East Greenwich, R.I. The four subsequent sections will cover all of the other critical phases of the build. You can find supplemental coverage, including videos, slide shows, and a builder’s blog, at FineHomebuilding.com/prohome.

This article is part of the FHB House series.