The chief executive officer for Clayton Homes, a national manufactured and modular home builder, began wondering how his company could wed the words “affordable” and “green-built” quite a few years ago.

Kevin Clayton’s goal was to bring sustainable and energy-efficient housing to those who typically could not afford it. In 2008, Clayton asked members of his home design department, Andy Hutsell, associate AIA, and Wes Boyd, AIA, to “run wild with it.”

The result was the “I-house,” which comes in at $93-per-square-foot plus the cost of building the foundation and setting it up, which can cost another $12,000 to $20,000, depending on the lot and the type of foundation chosen – slab, crawl space or full basement. The $20,000 option brings the cost-per-square-foot to $108 – more than the $63-per-square-foot of a volunteer-built Habitat House in Orange County, according to Habitat construction supervisor Tom Finn – but far less than the $155- to $180-per-square-foot that local builders have been charging for homes featured in my stories over the past two years.

Clayton Homes, a Berkshire Hathaway Company, unveiled its first I-house at the annual shareholder meeting held May 2, 2009. Since then, Clayton Homes has been slowly rolling the I-house out across the country. For the next month, a model can be seen at the Clayton Homes in Youngsville, just outside Raleigh, although the home has been sold and is ready for shipping, those interested can walk through it. To be sure an I-home or its less expensive sister, the e-home, are at the sales center you visit, go to the ClaytonHomes Website, insert your zip code, and then call the stores nearest you.

The core I-house comes in a one-bedroom 763-square-foot layout and a two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot layout. Optional “flex space” is connected by decking or walkways to the core house. The flex space, which has a private bath, can be 268 to 620 square feet. It also has the option of a deck roof to expand outdoor entertaining space.

On Clayton Homes Website, you can see a 2010 model with more outdoor living components, a more defined front entry, more bedrooms under the same roof, a warmer color palette and more natural materials for the home’s exterior. The signature butterfly roof remains as does the open, airy layout with both public and private spaces. For a video of the 2010 I-house modifications go to www.claytonihouse.com/iHouse.

The first I-house sold in North Carolina went to Joe Hill of Catawba County. He purchased a 2-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot core I-house and a 268-square-foot flex space with deck roof and ground-floor decking from a Clayton Homes dealer in Statesville. To see photos of his house, go to www.facebook.com/pages/Clayton-ihouse.

Hill used all of the options except the solar panels and attaching downspouts from butterfly roof to an underground cistern or above ground bladder to capture rainwater. He set his home on 17 acres in the rolling Piedmont that has views of Grandfather Mountain in the distance. “I like the idea of green living and reducing my carbon footprint and a house we could age in that was very accessible,” Hill said. “I work with the handicapped in the health care industry, and this house doesn’t have a whole lot of issues and any it has could be addressed quickly.” Hill said he loves sitting in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and enjoying scenes of the outdoors without getting cold. All I-houses have Anderson thermal-pane low-e windows.

“We set the heat at 66 degrees and it never varies, and my power bills are significantly lower than the mobile home we were living in on the land,” Hill said.

He also likes the feeling of being outdoors. “I feel like a little kid in a tree house on the deck on top of the flex space,” he said. “I love to eat up there and watch the birds and stare at the stars at night. Out in the country with no streetlights you can really see the stars. Up on the roof deck, you are parallel to birds in the trees.”

Hill says his wife likes the kitchen and the comfort of the house. There are tall ceilings with cabinets just as high for storage space. The Hill’s two-bedroom design has a wardrobe and laundry room combination, which his wife loves.

The one-bedroom version has the laundry stacked in the kitchen, which Hill says would not appeal to him, but does to a friend who has one in Florida’s Palm Beach area. It also has high-end amenities that Hill didn’t want, such as all LED lighting, a rainfall shower, sound system built into the walls, graphite carbon fiber fixtures, and doors that open with a touch of the finger.

Solar panels, a 2 kw and 4 kw PV system, are available for the I-house and installed from one of the 34 home building facilities across the nation – five of which specialize in building I-houses. Clayton Homes’ East coast factories are located in Knoxville, Tenn and Richfield, N.C. Hill’s I-house is 16-feet wide, has Energy Star appliances, no VOC paints and sustainable wood products, such as bamboo flooring. Hill said that if he had to do it over again, the only thing he would change would be the bamboo flooring, which is sustainable, but softer than oak and doesn’t stand up as well to work boots, ladders and dogs as well as oak, stone or slate would.

But when all is said and done, Hill is more than happy with his I-house. He says he prefers it greatly to the 14-foot manufactured mobile home he was living in.

“It’s amazing what two extra feet in width does to the feel of the room,” Hill said. “It is actually two-and-a-half, because the walls of the mobile home take up space and you are left with a room that is about 13-and-a-half feet wide. It’s hard to fit furniture in that space. But there are lots of options with the I-house. Plenty of space for my artwork on ceilings that are nine- to 11-feet high, too.”

“I hope more people can go this directions because sustainable is the way we need to go to save the planet,” Hill said. “We are going to wear out our resources. I recycle everything – we have only a small garbage bag of trash when I go to the landfill weekly.”