Parco seeks funds for zero emission pre-fab housing

San Francisco-based Parco Homes is using principles from the commercial building sector to launch mass-production of housing with a fraction of the typical waste.

Parco Homes is seeking $5 million in a Series A round to develop a manufacturing line for pre-fab housing, in which the company would sell disassembled, all-inclusive housing kits to independent contractors. The contractors would then assemble the home without needing to measure, cut and design the buildings. 

The business plan seeks to remedy the massive waste in the U.S. residential home-building market, CEO Ben Parco told the Cleantech Group today. He said an average of three to seven dumpsters of waste is produced with each new U.S. residential building, cumulatively making up 25 percent to 30 percent of the U.S. waste stream.

"From a construction standpoint, homes really are the bottom of the barrel," Parco said. "They don't perform well, they cost too much, and they're not very high quality."

In addition to efficient use of resources, Parco Homes aims to use its founders' expertise in architecture to design zero-emission homes with the most up-to-date technologies, Parco said.

"If you try to build a super green home, the 'greenness' is marginal because you're trying to get contractors to incorporate a bunch of technologies they don't understand. As a result you end up with just one or two green features, and they're not necessarily working together," Parco said.

"What's needed  is an integrator, which is what we bill ourselves as, someone who can bring all the pieces together in a smart, cost-effective way that makes it easy. That's where our traction with home builders is starting to happen. A factory fabrication solution is becoming attractive to them because a lot of the work is already done."

The pre-fab movement is catching on in the U.S. but has only established real roots elsewhere, Parco said. It's also a new technology, requiring higher prices (Parco estimates a pre-fab home delivered would be about $250 to $300 a square foot). That's why the company is initially targeting the U.S. West Coast and Hawaii, where home prices are already much higher, making pre-fab more cost competitive.

"The best buildings—the super high-rises, the airports—the best high quality buildings we build today are essentially pre-fab buildings," Parco said. "I saw a market emerging here in the U.S., one that's been around in Japan and Europe for decades. I saw a lot of public interest, but I didn't see anyone solving the problem."

Parco Homes has raised some angel funding and is working to file patents on its technologies. The company expects a round of funding to allow it to design a manufacturing line and build a model pre-fab home before the end of the year. Meanwhile, the four-person shop is working on a consulting basis to architecture firms.

Parco Homes is one of 25 potential new global investment opportunities that the Cleantech Group added to its dealflow database this week—available exclusively to members of the Cleantech Network. Members can click here to search the dealflow database. 

Interested in green building? Here are two other green building companies from the Cleantech Group's dealflow database also looking for funding:

• Harrisburg, Penn.-based Super Insulation Technology is seeking a $5 million Series A round for its new generation of thermal insulation utilizing a conventional extrusion foaming process. The company is a spin-out of ISTN, which provided initial funding of $250,000.
• New York-based IceStone is seeking $3 million in expansion capital for its durable surfaces made from 100-percent recycled glass in cement. The product is competing with solid surfacing and engineered stone, or mined stoned such as granite.

Other companies seeking capital spotted in the past week:

• Charlotte, N.C.-based thin-film solar developer Sencera plans to raise $25 million in funding to expand its production to 35 megawatts of annual capacity. The company recently closed on a $15.6 million Series B round from the Quercus Trust after it disclosed it made thin film solar cells with 8.7 percent efficiency (see Fire sale continues for some cleantech firms).
• Montreal-based Enerkem is seeking C$34 million (US$27 million) in a Series C round of equity financing for its waste-to-fuel and green chemicals technology. Enerkem recently secured C$11 million in commitments from investors, on top of the C$30 million previously raised from Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures, Solidarity Fund QFL, Innovatech Sud du Quebec, and BDR Capital (see Utility poles make cheap ethanol feedstock for Enerkem and Know the name Imperium? You will...).
• Madison, Wis.-based Virent Energy Systems is seeking an undisclosed amount of funding in its Series C round to back its operations through 2011. The company develops gasoline and jet fuel from sugar, using a catalyst to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules. The company has raised about $70 million from venture capital investors, governments and strategic partners (see Biofuel bonanza and Solar jumps to the front of the pack).
• Oslo, Norway-based hydropower electricity producer Statkraft plans to raise a €1 billion, two-part bond. The company plans to raise €500 million in a six year tranche and the remainder in a 10-year issue.
• Dubai-based power generation investor Creative Energy Resources (CERC) is seeking $500 million in equity in the next five years to build a power generation portfolio that includes renewable energy in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. The company says it is close to raising $50 million from the International Finance Corp. CERC has already secured commitments for $100 million from Saudi Arabia's Swisscorp Joussour.
• Santa Clara, Calif.-based CIGS thin-film solar company DayStar Technologies (Nasdaq:DSTI) is seeking an undisclosed amount of funding through strategic partners in order to build a plant.

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