Next Generation Homes

Sustainability and Green Building

Seven Keys to a Better Home

A revolution in housing is taking shape - and Tucson is nationally recognized as being in the forefront of many aspects of it. Professionals come here from all over the world to see it. Now, through the Tucson Homeowners Alliance and the annual community Tucson Innovative Home Tour, the opportunity is open to everyone. Homes on the tour offer a treasure of ideas for better ways of doing things. Key concepts include ...

Solar and Environmental Design
Fit in with your natural environment. This is about living life with the natural flow instead of against it. With passive solar design, sunshine is about all you need to keep your house toasty warm in winter. It also makes it a lot easier to keep from becoming toast in the summer. The roof is fast becoming a very valuable resource for homeowners, for both energy and water. It can supply a large portion of your domestic needs.

Orientation
Start in the right direction. Studies show that, in Arizona, house orientation alone can make a difference of 50% or more in heating and cooling costs. Face your house south and you have the sun in your face, nature’s sweet breezes will be at your back and you can whistle an Irish tune. But if you have big windows facing that eastern or western summer sun, the heat pours through them and you pay or you fry.

High Insulation, High Thermal Mass
Create the ultimate building envelope. To keep your home comfy, would you like it to work like an ice chest or a paper bag? Insulation keeps the cold and the heat where you want them. Thermal mass stores heat in the winter, coolness in the summer and thereby stabilizes your indoor temperature. On the tour, you can see straw bale, rammed earth, adobe, masonry and many other good ways to do this.

Heating and Cooling Naturally
Connect with natural cycles. These concepts add up to a revolutionary new way of making your house more comfortable than you thought possible, with cost reductions of the same kind. In the winter, sun shining through the windows heats the interior mass during the day, and that residual heat keeps the house nice and warm during the night, repeating the cycle the next day. Likewise, during the summer, the cooler can run at the peak of its efficiency in the coolness of the morning, pumping coolth into the mass, then shut off for the rest of the day. The result? – less expensive heating and cooling equipment and a huge reduction in operating costs.

High Energy and Water Efficiency
Cutting waste adds up to big bucks. If past is prelude, it doesn’t take long before utility bills start rivaling mortgage payments. Most of the energy we use is wasted, our utility payments literally going up in smoke. Likewise, most of the water we use just goes down the drain. With modern technology, residential energy consumption can easily be cut 75% and more, water 50 - 75%. There are many ways to do this.

Designing the Total Home
Think wholistically. Consider the house as a complex system of interacting parts. Optimize each part and then the system as a whole. Good design can make the difference between a house that will keep you happy always and one you can’t wait to leave. The new concept of building science teaches us to think comprehensively of a house as a set of interacting systems. Ignore this and you end up with things like indoor air pollution and sick building syndrome. This is about health and safety as well as comfort and savings.

Good Choices
Think long term. Some products and materials last a long time with little or no maintenance. Others don’t. For example, the typical asphalt shingle roof needs to be replaced about every 10-15 years in Tucson. For a bit more, you get a metal roof that will easily last the tenure of your ownership of the home. There are many good choices to be made for a house where paying a little more for higher quality reaps big returns over the long run.

And one more to get through the door ...

Universal / Lifetime Design
Life is change. Design your home for living. Do it right in the first place. Design in flexibility and adaptability, so you can easily change things as your life and circumstances change. So often, when our physical condition changes, we end up having to leave the house we love because it would be too expensive to change it. Yet, if we made wider doorways and hallways and bathroom spaces in the first place, it would cost next to nothing. A house for all seasons, all abilities. Flexibility, adaptability. What a concept. Thanks to the good work of the Tucson Commission on Disability Issues, this important concept is coming to life in Tucson. We are very pleased to work with CODI to promote and use these important concepts.

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