slhomer's blog

Today I visited several houses featured in the USGBC's Greenbuilt tour which included 20 houses in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos. I visited three homes in Santa Fe, all very different and special in their own way.

First was Casa Ballena del Sol (translates to Sun Whale I think), an 1800 sq ft home in the southern part of town. This rustic home is totally off the grid and makes heavy use of passive solar, has abundant lighting, and features clever use of recycled materials such as telephone pole vigas and recycled blue jean and plastic bottles. I especially liked the floor plan which featured a living area in the middle, with rooms on four sides, which provided ample natural light due to the surface area of the house. There were also various shady outdoor nooks outside of these side rooms which provided a nice way to spend time outside of the house.

Next on the trail was the Meyer Residence on the ridge east of town, above the Old Santa Fe Trail. With tremendous views of the valley below, this home has a modern flair and is still under construction by owner/builder Klaus Meyer. Klaus and his building partner Joaquin Karcher are focused on popularizing a flavor of passive solar building that has become common in Germany, which they're calling the Passive House. They have also developed a wall system which they're calling the Super Insulated Wall. The SIW is framed with 2x4s and dry wall, covered with natural plaster, and densely packed with cellulose insulation. It has an R value of 50!

The last house I visited was a 3000 sq ft ultra-modern and high-tech building on the north side of town built by owners Joday and Cara Feyes -- the Santa Fe Dream Home. Multi-leveled and geometric, this new home is built primarily with ICFs and numerous recycled or other smart materials (I loved the cork floors), has a water harvest roof system, and like the others I saw today, also uses passive solar (they plan to add active soon). The modern technology was also impressive, including a home theater, and some of the sensor systems such as the whole-house lighting and a weather-monitoring irrigation system.

I've posted more images of all of the homes in the gallery for you all to see.

It's great to see so much green building activity and innovation happening in New Mexico and the continuum of technology and various styles being implemented.

I'll try to see a few more homes tomorrow in Albuquerque. The tour is from 10-4 and tickets are $10 and can be purchased at any of the houses included in the tour.

Broken concrete recycled into a wall on a residential street in Albuquerque: this wall was laid up with some mortar, but it could have been laid up dry. The material works really well for retaining walls, also. It's attractive, cheap, and easy to work with (for someone with a strong back).

This particular wall really wasn’t laid up that artfully – the joints aren’t staggered as well as they probably should have been, and it’s not so level – but still, I think it looks good. It’s certainly functional. And, there’s no shortage of broken-up concrete – it's readily available.

I had a big pile of broken-up concrete that sat for a l-o-n-g time before I found someone to lay it up into a low retaining wall. My neighbors weren't very happy about this part of the process!

I have an arbor - a ramada, we call it here in the Southwest - with a grapevine growing up over the patio on the southwest corner of my house. It keeps the hot summer morning sun from heating the windows and the walls in that part of the house, filtering the harsh light and providing a leafy green cool that is soothing and refreshing. The birds (and, once in a while, a raccoon) love the grapes - I don't get very many. Then, in the fall, the leaves fall off, the sun shines through the windows, and the inside space is warmed and lit with bright light.

I have five Sun-Lite Thermal Storage Tubes placed along three large, contiguous south-facing windows with a roof overhang--what the manufacturer calls a "direct gain water wall." Translucent, they absorb and store solar energy while transmitting natural daylight. There are daily wide temperature variations here in Albuquerque throughout the year, which are tempered by the water in the tubes--in the summer and winter, they store the sun's energy during the day and give it off slowly at night, minimizing variations between day and night temperatures and the need for artificial heating and cooling....The tubes also temper the view. Natural light comes through, but the view to my neighbor's not-very-attractive carport is diffused while the trees beyond are visible above them.

When we bought the tubes second-hand, they had never been used. New, the five-foot tall, 18"-diameter tubes cost $174 each. They come in four standard sizes, from four feet to ten feet tall.

I love the way they look and the way they soften what can be pretty harsh light in the southwest. Adding the element of water and the tubular forms bring a quality into the space that contrasts beautifully with the angularity of the walls and ceilings.

The Solar Components Corporation website offers a number of other solar products worth exploring.