The Pretty Good House Blog: What Is a Pretty Good House? – GreenBuildingAdvisor

The Pretty Good House Blog

The first in a new monthly series unpacks the principles of Pretty Good House, a balanced approach to designing and building better homes

If you’ve spent any time around builders or architects in the Northeast over the last decade, you’ve probably heard the phrase “Pretty Good House.” It tends to come up casually. Someone mentions it in passing, on a job site, or over a beer. Occasionally someone says it with a raised eyebrow or dismisses it as “the good enough house.”

It’s not.

Pretty Good House, or PGH, is a thoughtful response to a complex problem: building homes. It aims to do better without making them overly complicated, massively expensive, or so rigid that no one builds thoughtfully.

This is the story of where it started, what it means, and why it matters.

It Started Around a Chalkboard

The origin story is refreshingly simple. It didn’t come out of a research lab or a governing body. It came out of a group of building professionals in Maine who met once a month to talk shop. Builders, architects, and consultants would gather, share ideas, argue about details, compare notes from real projects, and learn from each other. It was informal, occasionally opinionated, and grounded by everyday building in Maine.

At one of these meetings, builder Dan Kolbert voiced a frustration many of us had been feeling. There were already a lot of programs aimed at helping to build better—LEED, Passive House, Energy Star, to name a few. All of them have value. All of them push the industry forward. But they also come with layers of certification, cost, complexity, and sometimes impractical requirements. The effort required to prove a house meets the standard often outweighs the benefit of actually making it better.

So Dan said something simple.

“I just want to build a pretty good house.”