Tucson Innovative Home Tour
Tucson Solar Tour

A community sharing of new and better ways
to have a much better home that costs a lot less

Practical Sustainability in Action™

"Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand." - ancient Chinese proverb

The Tucson Innovative Home Tour and Tucson Solar Tour are your tickets to greater prosperity. These annual non-profit, non-commercial, community educational events bring people together to share ideas and experience in the search for ways to make homes better and cost less. You can see sustaining homes that fit in well with the natural environment, homes that draw on the best aspects of the local climate for greater comfort with much lower utility bills, and homes with quality and durability for a greater affordability that lasts. In short, it's about how to live in nature's sustaining flow, instead of trying to swim against it. New advances for designing, building and renovating such homes are the focus of the tour, recognized as one of the largest local events of its kind in the nation.

News You too can have a much better home that costs a lot less to own. See and learn about the latest advances in the next Tucson Innovative Home Tour Tucson Solar Tour Next Generation Home Seminar coming November 10 & 11, 2012. This is your best opportunity to see the latest and most important new advances in green building and sustainability. Choose among over 20 exceptional, award-winning and nationally recognized homes, and speak with owners, designers, builders and some of Tucson's top experts. See below for information about previous tours.

News You too can have a much better home that costs much less Whether you are planning the home of your dreams, or improving or adding to the home you love, the Solar Institute can help you do it. The Next Generation Home Project is accepting applications for consulting support for the planning, design and construction of the first Next Generation Homes, as well as renovations of a similar nature.   If you would like a home that is much better and costs much less over the longer term, as well as fit in much better with its environment, be sure to get in touch with us.

Tucson Innovative Home Tour and Tucson Solar Tour
With many highly acclaimed, award winning and nationally recognized homes and buildings this is a fun community non-profit non-commercial learning opportunity to see the latest innovations, speak with owners, designers & builders, discover new alternatives and big savings. It's community sharing at its best.

Live better for less. Tucson's officially recognized Next Generation Home Project found that, through special design and construction, you can greatly reduce the costs of home ownership, yet live much better. New advances in home design and construction are attracting professionals to Tucson from around the world. Now you can see them too. This is the largest home tour of its kind in the nation. Every year, most of the homes are new to the tour and have not been open to the public before. The tour and seminar are organized as a community service in cooperation with many professional and community organizations, educational institutions and government jurisdictions. Homeowners receive no compensation. Proceeds benefit community low income housing programs. Please plan on joining us for the next tour.

The tour includes ...

• New advances for designing and building homes for living better, more comfortably, more affordably and more in harmony with the natural environment.
• A wide range of good practical and cost-effective passive solar and environmental design and technology.
• A wide variety of advances in heating and cooling and other ways to be more comfortable.
• Many kinds of adobe, rammed earth, straw bale, masonry, ICFs, SIPs, steel frame, insulation, thermal mass and other advances in building materials.
• A wide range of healthy home, non-toxic materials, low-VOCs and indoor air quality measures.
• How to incorporate lifetime design, accessibility and visitability at very little added cost.
• Many ways to save energy, water and other resources – and cut utility bills by 75% and more.
• Many other ideas for home and garden, with an emphasis on practicality and cost effectiveness.

"Real homes for real people" is a central theme of the tour, emphasizing practicality and cost effectiveness. Homes on the tour are carefully chosen to give you an opportunity to see exceptional examples of important contributing elements of a good desert-adapted home. You will also be able to talk with homeowners, architects, designers and builders about how they did it, what works and what doesn't.

This year’s tour offers a wealth of new ideas, products and technologies. The sheer variety and range of new ideas and products is amazing. There are many things to interest everyone, including the most advanced and finest homes in southwest!

This special community event is affiliated with the National Solar Tour, sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society and the U.S. Department of Energy. Every year, the Tucson tour has been recognized as one of the largest in the nation, both in terms of the number of homes offered and the number of people who visited them.

Before the tour, the Next Generation Home Seminar provides a unique opportunity to learn in detail how you too can enjoy a much better home at much lower costs. You will not only learn many practical. money saving tips you can put to good use right away, you will also get detailed guidelines on what you can do to have a much better house and substantially reduce the costs of homeownership.

The Tucson Innovative Home Tour is made possible through the enthusiastic support of many volunteers and community nonprofit organizations, educational and government institutions. Our community values are stated below and we stand by them. The Tucson Innovative Home Tour is an annual community educational event based on community sharing. No one with any financial or personal interests in the homes chosen for the tour is involved in organizing the Tucson Innovative Home Tour. Many of the top experts in Tucson contribute to identifying exceptional examples of good, practical, cost-effective applications of advances that can be useful to you in your quest for a much better home that costs you less. No salesmen will call.

These events are organized by the Solar Institute as a community service in cooperation with many other local, state and national non-profit organizations and educational institutions, with the support of the City of Tucson, Pima County, State of Arizona and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Tour Guide 2011 - Review of Homes This year's tour has a wonderful variety of great homes and new innovations, many of which have never been open to the public before. There are many highly acclaimed and award-winning homes and others waiting to be discovered, with the emphasis, as ever, on the practical and cost-effective. There are 20 homes and 4 other special highlights at 18 locations in the 2011 tour. As ever, the Tucson Innovative Home Tour and Tucson Solar Tour gives visitors the opportunity to be among the first to see many of these remarkable homes. Click here to see descriptions and photos of the homes and buildings on the tour:    Home Tour 2011 - Review of Homes - photos and descriptions of homes on the tour

Overview of the 2011 Tour

The Tucson Innovative Home Tour and Tucson Solar Tour have grown to be one of the largest and most diverse tours ever seen in Tucson, or anywhere else for that matter. On this year's tour, you will be able to see the widest range and most extensive variety of new advances ever available in the sixteen years these tours have been offered.

  Special features and highlights follow.

New special feature this year: how to improve your current home
With the recent interest in improving and renovating existing homes, the Tucson Innovative Home Tour this year features five homes that offer homeowners a wide variety of good ideas of how to make homes much better and cost less: This will also be a major topic at the Next Generation Home Seminar on Saturday morning before the tour.
   A recently completed thorough renovation of a rather average mid-town 1955 house that was so extraordinary that it is expected to receive the highest level Platinum LEED rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. The owners report a far higher level of comfort at a fraction of the former costs. This is one of the best examples of practical and cost-effect renovations of an average home that we have seen here. The home was featured in the Arizona Daily Star's special feature on the Tucson Innovative Home Tour in the Sunday home section: Older home sprouts 'green'
   A beautiful renovation of a nice 2500 sq ft 1967 adobe home in one of Tucson's finest older neighborhoods by its owner, a professional architect. It was the first renovation completed under the City of Tucson's new Green Building Program and rated at the Gold level.
   A nice two-story 1980 condo improved by its owner, a professional energy efficiency specialist, on a do-it-yourself basis to such an extent that the utility bills are less than half what they used to be. You can talk with him and learn how he did it.
   The renovation of a small 1921 adobe near downtown on a do-it-yourself basis by its artist owner. It embodies years of low cost DIY, small is beautiful, simple living, low technology, low maintenance, recycling, low energy and water use, conservation and art.
   A very large reclaimed landscape that was once bladed bare of all plant life that was subsequently re-created into an extraordinary home landscape and lush outdoor living space reputed to be one of the finest of native species, wildlife habitat, and attractive to butterflies, hummingbirds and other birds in the state.

Surprising new homes push the envelope
You will also be able to see ...
   The home featured in the Tucson Weekly's feature on the Tucson innovative Home Tour, a new home that is one of the most energy-efficient modern homes ever built in Tucson. Using a wide range of measures to reduce both the need for energy and increase efficiency of energy used, it had attracted widespread attention nationally and won a number of national awards. The designer and builder will be speaking at this Saturday's Next Generation Home Seminar before the Tour.
   The first Earthship home (made famous as the kind of home chosen by environmentally conscious actor, Dennis Weaver) to be built in the Tucson region, and the first built in Arizona in compliance with local building codes, now that construction has just been completed. These houses heat and cool themselves, generate their own power, collect and store their own water and digest their own sewage.
   A very innovative and sustaining rammed earth home nearing completionby one of the top experts in the field, where you can learn the process of forming rammed earth walls for a new home. This location was the first tour sold out for the nation's biggest annual green building conference last year, where many professionals from around the world paid over $1,000 in conference and tour fees to see this.
   A very nice modern new home with lots of interesting and useful features, including passive solar design, high insulation and high thermal mass, energy and water efficiency, 4.7 kW flush-mounted, solar pv system for net zero energy, solar water heating that also supplies a hydronic heating system in the floor, rainwater harvesting and graywater, and much more.
   An owner-built, low-cost, self-sustaining, straw bale home well along under construction so that you can speak with the owner and see how it is built. It will be completely independent of any utility connections, using solar power, rainwater harvesting and a septic system.

Tour Highlights
The Tucson Innovative Home Tour gives you a unique opportunity to learn about new advances that can help you live better by fitting in with your natural environment. It also turns out to cost a lot less in the long run.

On the tour, you can see highly acclaimed, award-winning and nationally recognized homes, including
  Winners of local, state and national awards,
  New homes by top award-winning architects and builders,
  Award-winning eco-communities,
  Many new building systems and materials, including straw bale, rammed earth, adobe, Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs), Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs), steel frame and more,
  The great desert-adapted homes featured in the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Citizen and Tucson Weekly tour articles.

  Exceptional examples of virtually every kind of solar application you might like to have, including passive solar design, solar photovoltaic electric power systems, solar water heaters, solar pool heaters, solar space heating and cooling, solar water distillation, solar lighting, solar tube skylights, solar cooking and lots more
  Some great do-it-yourself solar installations that are among the finest quality systems you'll find in the state,
  Tucson's first large-scale use of solar photovoltaic modules integrated in a shading system for parking
  Lots of other interesting new technology, including high efficiency heating and cooling systems, radiant floor heating systems, water conservation, rainwater harvesting, graywater and lots more.

  Practical and cost-effective examples of landscaping, xeriscape, and permaculture.
  Rainwater harvesting, graywater, swales and collection basins and other ways to use on-site water resources.
  A special wetlands system that treats and recycles all wastewater.
  Oasis patios, vegetated basins and organic gardens.
  Alternatives to paving with concrete and asphalt.
  and lots more.

The best advances in building science and applied sustainability
You will have a unique opportunity to speak with owners, designers, builders, and others to learn what's new, what works and what doesn't, how to do it right and discover many new ways to make your own home better, including ...
   Four new building systems that are new to Tucson,
   A wide range of other building systems including rammed earth, straw bale, adobe, masonry, concrete, Insulated Concrete Forms (ICPs), Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPs), and steel frame,
   Long lasting, no maintenance roofs that have warranties up to fifty years,
   Stronger foundations that minimize cracks,
   A wide range of passive solar and environmental design and solar technology,
   A variety of advances in heating and cooling and other ways to be more comfortable,
   Many kinds of insulation, thermal mass and other advances in building materials,
   Many healthy home, non-toxic materials, low-VOC and indoor environmental measures,
   Lifetime design, accessibility and visitability measures,
   Many ways to save energy, water and other resources, and cut utility bills,
   Passive solar design and a wide variety of other ways to put solar energy to good use,
   Xeriscape, native plants, low-water use, rainwater retention and harvesting, fruit and vegetable gardens, permaculture and lots of other yard and landscape ideas (even chickens and ducks!),
   Many homes still under construction, so you can see how they are built.

Homes and special highlights are carefully selected for exceptional features that offer ways to live better in the desert by fitting in with the processes of nature, with a focus on practicality and cost-effectiveness.

Whether you have a professional interest in these fields or are thinking of improving your home, planning and building a new home, or buying one, you won't want to miss it.

The best in alternative building materials and innovations
You can see exceptional examples of
  straw bale
  rammed earth
  adobe and pressed adobe
  a variety of insulated concrete form (ICF) systems
  structurally insulated panels (SIPs)
  A variety of other masonry systems
  steel frame

  Among the many new and interesting innovations are
  a variety of highly cost effective water harvesting and storage systems
  an independent subsurface wetlands wastewater treatment system - first in Tucson
  Building Science measures to improve indoor air quality, health and safety
  Smart House measures that extend electronic flexibility and control

Key features for a better home and better living
Home features that offer important new and greater value to homeowners may include
  passive solar and environmental design
  solar photovoltaic electric power systems, including exceptionally low-cost owner installed systems
  solar water heating
  solar water distillation system, direct to the tap
  solar hot water instant demand systems
  hydronic radiant floor heating
  energy efficient appliances, lighting and other energy efficiency measures
  high performance windows and doors
  high efficiency heating and cooling equipment systems and strategies
  water efficiency and conservation
  rainwater harvesting
  graywater systems
  composting toilets and waterless urinals
  long lasting no-maintenance metal roofs
  radiant barriers
  superinsulated ceilings
  blown cellulose insulation
  superinsulated walls
  internal mass walls
  colored concrete, brick paver, adobe and hand hewn stone paver floors
  reused and recycled materials
  small is beautiful - and more cost-effective
  universal and lifetime design, aging in place
  accessibility, visitability and wheelchair friendly measures
  high tech electronic and communications systems
  healthy home, low allergen, clean air strategies
  non-toxic, low VOC materials
  low water use oasis garden
  solar pool heating (a BIG money saver)
  solar cooking

Next Generation Home Seminar - learn how you can do this too
After you have collected lots of good ideas and information on the tour, why not learn how to put them together and put them to work for you? Learn how from experts.

For homeowners as well as professionals, the Next Generation Home Seminar features local experts with unbiased, non-commercial information, ideas and advise on planning, building, buying and remodeling for a well-adapted, more self-sustaining, desert home. You too can learn how to have a much better home and greatly reduce your costs of home ownership at the same time.

On the Saturday following the tour, the seminar will provide lots of useful information and materials, plus a whole slate of new guest speakers. You will leave with lots of good ideas to make your house better and cost you a lot less – plus the knowledge to put them to work.

You won't want to miss this unique community sharing experience. For more information go to ...
   Next Generation Home Seminar - learn how from the experts.

Community Values inspire and guide these events
This annual community sharing event is special because ...
   It is of, by and for home owners. It is the only event of its kind in Tucson dedicated to homeowners helping each other learn about new ways to make homes a lot better and cost a lot less.
   It's one on one. You can talk directly with the owners, as well as the architects, builders, suppliers and others who contributed to designing and building these homes.
   It lets you get to the heart of the matter from people who know. You can ask questions of those who used these processes and materials and learn what works, what doesn't and how to avoid pitfalls.
   It's very selective. It features the highest quality and most interesting examples we can find.
   You see the best there is. It has more award-winners than any other tour in the state, by far.
   You see them first, before most others even hear about them. Many of the award-winners on the Tucson Innovative Home Tour win their awards after being on the tour.
   It is a genuine community event. Dozens of non-profit community partners, including well-known professional, health and community organizations, and government and educational institutions at the local, state and national levels, contribute to making this possible.
   It is open to the community. Each year, we talk with the top architects, the most progressive builders and the most innovative in related fields, we send invitations to professional organizations, we consult with university faculty, explore building sites and invite nominations - a process involving hundreds of people over an entire year - to identify the most exceptional examples we can find of the best, most practical and most cost-effective advances you might most useful and satisfying in your quest for a better home with lower costs.

   It is non-commercial. No corporate business interests are involved. Selection of homes is for things that can be most useful, practical, cost-effective and interesting to you, not about selling anything or "steering" you to selected companies.
   It is unbiased. No one who has a personal financial interest in or association with anything that appears on the tour participates in or has any influence in the selection process, our Board of Directors, or in anything having to do with our organization, for that matter.
   It is educational. The focus is on homeowners sharing information and experience. No marketers are involved in organizing the tour. There is no advertising of business interests. No salesmen will call.
   It is voluntary. This is a nonprofit community event that is organized completely by volunteers - no one is paid. Hundreds of people and dozens of organizations have contributed to the great success of this tour.
   It is organized by a well-known, established local organization, the Solar Institute, which is officially recognized by the U.S. government as a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational and research institution, supporting community action and individual choice in creating home and community environments to better sustain us and our world.
   We do other good things. The Tucson Innovative Home Tour benefits from the other community programs and projects of the Solar Institute and its nonprofit community partners in these and related fields. The Solar Institute has a strong record of community service.
   It is Tucson's largest community-wide home tour, its popularity based on giving people a chance to find out about practical, cost-effective new ideas for making their homes much better and cost much less.
   It has also been recognized as the largest community event of its kind in the nation.
   It has attracted such widespread interest that people come here from all over Arizona and the U.S. specially for it.
   It's a bargain. Over the years, we have simplified things, reduced the size of the guidebook and publishing costs, and found other ways to reduce the cost of organizing the tour so that we could reduce the cost of the tickets. Where else can you learn so much for so little?
   It's fun. Tour goers have told us for years how much they enjoy the tour and the opportunity to speak directly with homeowners and others who aren't trying to sell them something.
   It's for a good cause. First and foremost, its purpose is to help you find good ways to have a better home with lower costs. It's also about getting together to help build a better community and improve our local economy by lowering costs and keeping money in Tucson. Finally, any money left over from the tour goes to benefit community low income housing and information and referral services.

Previous years' events
For information on events from a previous year, see these:
   Home Tour 2005 - Review of Homes - descriptions of homes on this year's tour

   "Innovation the theme of October home tour" - Click here to read the Arizona Daily Star's Sunday feature article on the Tucson Innovative Home Tour 2004.

   October is "Solar and Sustainability Month" in Arizona. In recognition of the importance of solar energy and related sustainable measures to the people of Arizona, and in support of the contribution made by the Tucson Innovative Home Tour and Tucson Solar Tour and associated events in Arizona to progress in these fields, the Governor recently issued a proclamation declaring October to be “Solar and Sustainability Month” in Arizona. You can see the text and news release by clicking above. The Solar Institute is your source for help in putting sustainability to work in sustaining your life in better ways.

Home Tour Special Feature
We are honored by the sponsorship of the Tucson Commission on Disability Issues (CODI) . You can learn more about the fine work that CODI is doing for our community on ...
   Universal design, accessibility and visitability

Other Solar Tours in Arizona and the Nation         
The Tucson Innovative Home Tour and Tucson Solar Tour has been the local affiliate of the National Tour of Solar Homes, sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society and the U.S. Department of Energy, since the inception of the national tour in 1996. During the month of October, there are other solar tours around Arizona and in other states. For more information look here:
   Arizona and National tours

What You Can Do
Participants and supporters of this community initiative include many individuals, organizations, businesses, educational institutions and government.

We invite you to become a part of this community sharing too. If you have ideas and suggestions, know of a good home you would like to nominate, or would like to help or contribute to the home tour in some way, please get in touch with us.

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Credits: We would like to thank the City of Tucson, Pima County, the Tucson Commission on Disability Issues, Tucson-Pima County Metropolitan Energy Commission and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for support and funding, as well as the many organizations and individuals who have contributed to making these community initiatives such a success.

© Copyright 2012 Solar Institute, Inc. ® Solar Alliance, Tucson Solar Alliance, Solar Alliance of Greater Tucson, Tucson Innovative Home Tour, Next Generation Home, Next Generation Home Alliance, Next Generation Building Institute, Tucson Homeowners Alliance, Natural Living Alliance and Tucson Community Solar Program are registered trade names of the Solar Institute. All rights reserved.