Finish this spectacular new luxury build exactly as you desire. Sitting on 15 private acres with views of Glacier National Park, conveniently located within minutes of downtown Whitefish in the Elkhorn gated community. 6 bed/8 bath, 3 car garage, and two lock off suites, each with sitting rooms and kitchenettes. Elaborate top quality construction, and a nearly finished exterior, allowing you to customize to your precise needs. Super energy efficient with every construction detail. Electric and driveway roughed in for a secondary dwelling. Top quality appliances are also included. Elevator, interior balconies, mountain viewing rooms, multiple guest suites, expansive family room, private decks and entertaining spaces are all customizable to make your ideal mountain retreat home. A unique opportunity to create your dream home with a head start, utilizing the thoughtful designs and execution of the current structure. Call Tanya at 406-261-4830, or your real estate professional. Home features triple pane windows. Front door is custom solid, double door with hand carved elements. All together, kitchen has 3 ovens and a salamander high speed broiler. 3 thermadore/bosch dishwashers, custom panel French door fisher paykel refrigerator, 48 inch blue aga induction range. Steam oven with air fryer, 1 water drop remineralized reverse osmosis water conditioner. The balance due on the elevator is $29,000.

Bear Ridge is an environmentally thoughtful home situated in the forest at the end of the road in the Elkhorn Subdivision in Whitefish, Montana. The design focuses on human comfort and efficiency using both horizontal and vertical design with an emphasis on providing public and private spaces. With respect for the delicate interface between natural and built environments, the design emphasis has been placed on the footprint-living space ratio, the quality of the building envelope, superior fire performance, interior environmental health quality, and the human interface with the native animals and plants.

This project is the culmination of years of building science research and brings together architectural elements common to Scottish and American designs of the 1740-to 1820s with innovations in building materials that capitalize on Green Building techniques. These focus on careful use of natural resources, minimizing fire potentiality, reduction of construction waste, and reducing the energy to maintain the home.

Building Envelope

Bear Ridge relies on super insulation, passive house design, and solar power to minimize its energy use. The home is built to Montana House 2 standards, which are similar to gold and platinum LEEDs. The building envelope is engineered as a single unit incorporating the walls and roof with positive air-sealing throughout. The wall insulation value ranges between R-28 for the bermed foundation and R-40 for the cam-locked SIP walls. The roof is R - 62. The slabs under the foundation are insulated to R-28 with a R - 5 thermal break. European-style triple pane windows and multi-point locking doors improve the thermal efficiency. A heat recovery unit ventilates the building envelope from the basement/crawlspace to the attic.


Energy Source

An emergency, gas-powered generator is installed outside. Keeping it outside of the building envelope ensures combustion-pollutants do not build up inside and when better technology is available, it is easy to update.

Ecological Building Materials

Materials were selected based on thermal efficiency, fire resistance, useful life cycle, minimizing manufacturing and construction waste, and their contributions to healthy indoor air quality. The material mix includes heavy timbers harvested from the build site, locally milled wood, laminated timber, metal and other materials engineered to appear the same as natural materials with higher performance, fire, and sustainability ratings. The wall and roof panel insulation is poly-alcohol base derived from post-process sugar beets, the custom blended foam will never melt, is fire retardant (Class 1) and has post-consumer recycled content (PET). It has no global warming potential (GWP), no ozone-depleting potential (ODP), no styrenes, no formaldehyde, no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), no brominated flame retardants, and produces no construction waste. The Class A steel roofing uses 25% recycled steel reducing manufacturing & mining waste. Electrical systems operate on LED and plumbing fixtures are low-flow. Interior and exterior finishes with low VOC will be given priority.

Design Aesthetic

Multiple design aesthetics are blended to maximize the interface between the house and the land. First, the house colors mimic the color of the forest and range from medium red-brown to dark brown. Second, the structure is kept compact and fitted to the contours of the land and rock. Third, all building materials are natural or engineered eco-wise materials. Third, care is taken to minimize soil disturbance. Everyone who is working on the house receives instructions about the importance of preserving the native vegetation and animals during the build process. Fourth, native plants are used in landscaping, keeping in mind their water requirements so that after establishment, they will not require supplemental watering.

Interior Landscape

The 5278 sq ft home is designed in "pods" to accommodate a multigenerational family with three integrated, but distinct living areas spanning three floors and a loft. The core house includes 3 bedrooms and 4 baths in 3141 sq feet. Two pods add an additional 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms in up to 2031 square feet. Large public rooms in the center of the house accommodate everyone for community cooking, eating, and visiting. Private spaces include 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, and four sitting rooms. Three of the four entrances to the house are near bathrooms so that household members can complete ablutions before joining the rest of the household. This feature is equally useful for pandemic distancing or cleaning up after time in the great outdoors. The house is well suited for remote work. Each bedroom and sitting room has dedicated, wired work space that keeps office noise to a minimum.

The main floor is composed by a three-car garage (inside the building envelope) and two large public rooms, one formal and one informal. A swing suite can be a project room, bunk room, or hospital-style room for aging in place. Half of the second story includes the primary suite, an office, and a supplemental suite. The other half of the second story includes a pod that opens to an attic loft. This pod has 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2 sitting rooms, and a kitchenette. The basement houses a large mechanical area and a an ADA-compliant pod with suite and sitting area with a kitchenette.