Green-building advocates are paying attention to the Green Built Hotel planned for Oroville, an agricultural community in north central Washington. The hotel is unusual not just because its prefabricated panels will be shipped in containers to its destination at the south end of town and then assembled in fairly short order. The building is being designed to perform to the Passivhaus standard, which would make it one of the first Passivhaus hotels in the country.

The project will use components from prefabricated-housing producer bôd Structures. Known until very recently as American Container Homes, bôd Structures aims to build good quality houses more quickly and for less cost than is typically possible using standard construction techniques. The company’s product line includes single-family and multifamily structures; small commercial buildings such as classrooms, clinics, and hotels; and dormitory-like buildings for emergency use.

With manufacturing being handled by modular-housing specialist Clayton Homes, and financial services managed by investment firm Guggenheim Partners, bôd Structures is trying to expand the market for buildings that are made in the U.S. but also are capable of being shipped to almost any location, where, the company says, they are unloaded, unfolded, and assembled in days, without compromising insulation. Depending its location and code requirements, the exterior walls of a single-family home might be insulated to a minimum of R-11, the ceiling to R-38, and the floor to R-20, although the home also can be built to provide extremely high levels of thermal resistance.

Given Oroville’s location, about 4 miles from the Canadian border, we’re guessing a relatively robust level of insulation – and certainly airtightness – is being built into the Green Built Hotel. We’ve asked bôd Structures for particulars, which we’ll include here as soon as they become available.