We've all heard of building energy efficient homes, but with a new grant, a Black River Falls couple is taking their plans to the extreme.

The Chambers' are building a Green Max, net zero home that will produce just as much energy as it consumes.

Tom Chambers says the overall cost is $325,000 to build, but a $50,000 grant from Wisconsin Public Power Inc. and an additional $16,000 in energy incentives will help them complete this technological wonder.

After more than a year of planning and several blueprints later, the chambers are finally able to build their Green Max home.

"We always, both of us have been conscious of sustainability and conservation,” Chambers says.

Solar panels will help the home produce energy, but there are many other energy saving aspects in the home to help it break even.

"First thing you have to do is build a home that is isolated from everything exterior,” Chambers says.

"We've added additional foam insulation under the basement slab. There's two inches of foam there. There's two inches of foam on the exterior of the basement walls. You can see we've added an inch of foam all the way around the exterior of the wall,” says General Contractor Todd Paige.

He says they built the home using 2x8s instead of 2x6s to increase the amount of insulation in the walls.

Another interesting aspect of the home is the windows. For example, the windows on the west side of the house will be treated to let more heat from the sun in during the winter, while the windows on north side of the house have been treated to block heat from the sun during the summer.

The Chambers’ home will be heated by a geothermal heating system.

And the hot water...

"It's called a power drain, which will actually take the hot water that's going down the drain, pull the heat out of there and heat the water that's in the hot water heater,” Chambers says.

So this 1,800 square-foot home is an energy example for the future.

"There's a lot of things that are out there and are available, they just haven't been used really,” Chambers says.

The Chambers’ say their energy consumption habits will have to change as well, making sure they're not using more electricity than they need to.

And it’s not that they won’t ever have an electric bill, it will be a trade off of sorts.

"There's going to be times when the home is using more energy that it is creating. And at that time they would be incurring a bill for that; however there's also going to be many times when the cells will generate more electricity than the house is using. At that point the energy meter literally spins backwards and they can sell the excess power back to the energy company,” Page says.

Page says the contractor says the home should be finished by January.