South Fork Pretty Good Homestead

What Makes this home Green?

Welcome to this little homestead on the South Fork. Benny, owner of Confluence Building Co, and his family have lived here in the Saxon neighborhood for 8 years. After challenges buying in the area, they decided to write a letter to the owners of a neighboring parcel to where they were living at the time.

They purchased these 40 acres in April of 2021. A well was drilled that summer, a yurt was constructed on the property in the fall, built out during that winter, and the family moved onto the property in May of 2022. Design for the main house began in February of 2025, ground was broken when the permit was stamped in early August of 2025. For Benny, the ability to collaborate on the design and have a say in so many of the details was a dream come true for him as a builder.

This house was designed and built with the pretty good house principles in mind. Benny is of the belief that when building passive houses, what actually makes it green is lost and instead folks hyper focus on air tightness and using very expensive and specific materials coming from faraway places instead of using materials that are available regionally. Of course, there are all different levers that can be pulled during the course of a design and build but it is important to step back and think.

Two other aspects that makes this project worth sharing are the community that supported it and helped make it happen, and the unique and complex design with simple details. In Benny’s words, “The green building community tends to reinvent the wheel every time we build a new house or come up with a new wall assembly, and I think it would behoove many and save clients and builder money and headaches, if we simplified some of our approaches.”

Constructed Date: August 2025 – Current

Number of Bedrooms: 3

Number of Bathrooms: 2

Area: 1740 sq ft, with 600 sq ft unfinished basement

Features