Our builder

We signed a building contract with Ken Trever, owner of Energy Efficient Healthy Homes.  It doesn't get any more descriptive than that.  He specializes in building Insulated Concrete Formed homes.  There's lots of information available on the topic, but here's the short story.
   Instead of building a home out of 2x6 wood, plywood, and exterior sheathing, the house is built of stacked hollow Styrofoam forms into which concrete and rebar is poured. What you end up with is an air tight exterior wall with insulation sandwiching about 10" of concrete.  The material itself has a nice R-value but what makes it worth it is that it's fire-resistant for 2-4 hours, tornado and hurricane proof, insect and mold proof.  It also doesn't have the same air permeability as standard wood constructed house so it ends up being much more energy efficient, not to mention sound proof.
   I met Ken at one of his builds near our current house and knew that he would be our builder.  Five years later, here we are.
   We have an initial estimate of the cost to build.  I'm not going to list prices here, but I will list some features.

• ~4800 sq ft. on two stories.
• Full basement to roof ICF construction.
• Clarkdietrich trade ready steel floor joists.
• Cement sub floors on all levels.
• Geothermal (ground source) heating and cooling

I'll update with more info as the process goes along.  Most items will be completely covered by our construction loan.  Some will need some extra money to upgrade.  Project completion time is contracted to be 8-10 months from ground breaking.  Tanja's parents are betting it will take 18 months.  I hope to prove them wrong.

1/8/2017 Update: I didn't prove them wrong.  Ken Trever is no longer our builder.