The easy answer is rarely the best answer

Sustainability is a dialogue between each of us and the rest of the world – a compromise between over consumption and subsistence survival. Most domestic construction design comes out of the fifties with slight modifications for insulation, electric, plumbing and the like. Recent technologies, developments and innovations are basically ignored. For typical contractors, all design questions have easy, well established answers – answers that are rarely questioned, answers that rarely produce the best design for each specific site. Time and energy spent in analyzing the interplay of nature and structure will pay for itself in the enhanced quality of living space, reduced maintenance and utility costs, minimized environmental impact. The best answer comes through negotiation and synthesis. "Neat" ideas should never be rejected out of hand, but neither should they be allowed to take over a structure if they compromise performance.

Over the years we have designed and handcrafted a sustainable living space that heats and cools itself with little effort on our part. Our house stays in the 60's and 70's year round, relying on the sun in the winter, cool night air in the summer. Spring, with the steeper angle of the sun and cloudy weather, is typically our coolest time, yet the house still stays in the mid 60's for lows, 70's for highs. The coldest our house has been since we've moved in six years ago? After six days of no sun, temperature in the teens, (January, cold, snowy, windy) it dropped to 58 on the final night. Sun on the seventh day immediately drove inside temperatures into the seventies. The hottest our house has been? During a rare summer heat wave, outside temperatures around 103 , the house stayed in the upper 70's daytime, lower 70's at night. Some finish work and minor tweaks have since taken place that should enhance performance even further. Our synthesis of technology with tradition has produced many surprises, and we are always ready to rethink, redesign, rebuild.

Passive Solar Heating

Solar heating a structure can be broken down into three basic categories: amount of sunshine, insulation, and mass. The interrelationship of these three concepts is widely misunderstood. Typical passive solar designs from the 70's limited the amount of sunshine entering a structure to prevent overheating by carefully calculating the size and placement of windows. This typically results in a self fulfilling prophecy: you can't rely on the sun alone to heat your house, so why spend money trying? We have taken the opposite view: you can rely on the sun alone to heat your house.

Sunshine

New Mexico is blessed with sunshine. The average amount of sunshine in any given month varies from around 70 to 80 percent in the general area surrounding Albuquerque and Santa Fe. I have seen few sites that would not benefit from passive solar heating, and many that could probably rely on it exclusively. Still, the specific location on the specific piece of land play a major role in a building's performance. A building that can perform well almost has to be grown in place – form follows function, but then there are the considerations of appearance, personality, desire. Take a quick look around and you will see that most builders give little regard to the sun. Some that do, do so haphazardly or employ inefficient designs that can never deliver peak performance.

Insulation

Insulation can be tricky, because the way windows and doors are installed affect the building's performance drastically: a drafty house with a certain R factor is not the same as a non-drafty one. Important considerations include fixed windows instead of moveable ones, Low E glass, double thermapane, blinds, insulated curtains, insulated shutters. The use of straw as insulation and wall provides an excellent solution. Straw is cheap, readily available, and often burned in the field as a waste product. It can be stuccoed with no additional preparation to produce a handsome, rustic look like the old adobe buildings of northern New Mexico. The finished structure will have an R factor of 55+. Standard insulating materials generally require toxic processes to manufacture. Walls must be constructed from other materials and the insulation added to them. A building with an R factor of 55 could have walls half as thick as a straw bale structure, yet with manufactured insulation the R factor always hinges on cost. Modern buildings are considered "super-insulated" if they have an R factor in the mid 20's.

Careful attention must also be paid to airflow. A positive out flow of interior air should be maintained at all times. If the structure is in a cold climate it is important to control this by design rather than rely on shoddy construction techniques. This could be as simple as a small fan on the stack of a composting toilet, the chimney of a correctly installed wood stove or propane heater, a well placed vent.

Mass

Mass is a concept not well understood by most. The trick is to have the sun heat a large mass inside of a well insulated structure in the winter, and not heat it in the summer. The best natural materials for storing heat (or cool) are water (the absolute best), then concrete, and then stone. Adobe actually acts sometimes like mass and sometimes like insulation: it's not the best choice for either, but these attributes can be exploited nicely with careful planning. Correctly configured, mass will stabilize the temperature swings between night and day, sun and no sun. Our house has around a 10-15 temperature swing, year round.
Mass sounds, well, ugly. It does not have to be so. Our house combines a concrete slab floor, topped with dark red flagstone, and several large aquariums: the fish and plants do very well without additional heat, though certain fish will require more exacting conditions. Other possibilities for spaces needing more mass: half high Trombe walls made of dark stone, a waterfall and pool. For mass exposed to direct sun, the most functional surface will be dark and non-reflective, i.e. matte black (dark colors function almost as well). Such a surface actually transforms visible light, which passes through glass easily, into infrared, or radiant heat, which passes through glass less easily.

Utilities

Off grid sites like ours have no choice but to take responsibility for all utilities. Those who have access to the "civilized" solution of grid power, water, sewer, telephone frequently hook up with no further thought. Still, each and every category deserves a careful look.

Electricity

Conservation is a major part of living sustainably, but it does not mean sacrifice or doing without in most cases. Even if hooking up to the grid is cheap and easy, everything that uses electricity requires scrutiny – even light bulbs. Some appliances, like televisions, are always on even when they're off. Plug in cube power supplies also draw power if left plugged in. Fortunately, there are simple solutions: switched outlets, efficient appliances that may cost more initially, but will save energy and money in the long run.

Many advances have been made that allow remote home sites to generate and store electricity in a sustainable fashion without resorting to gas or propane generators. Solar, wind, and hydro power are all reliable ways of making all or part of your electrical needs. Depending on the distance from the nearest pole, it can be cheaper to make your own power than to hook up to the grid. Once installed, renewable power generation requires little maintenance and provides purer, more reliable electricity than any public utility – without air pollution, nuclear waste, or monthly bills. You can not, however, just move in any old, sometimes even brand new, appliance without a thought. The refrigerator in most people's homes, and for sale in typical stores, would probably require $10,000 worth of equipment to run it off grid. Super efficient electric or sun powered non-electric alternatives are more expensive to purchase (or make), but far cheaper in the long run.

Telephone

Like electricity, the choice hinges on distance from telephone access. Alternatives to hardwired lines include cellular and radio telephone. Again, recent advances in technology have provided new and better choices, along with cheaper prices for service. Even Internet access has become attainable without a land line in many places via digital cell phone or a cell phone/satellite combination. We now connect via two way satellite dish that's very fast and reliable. Wireless choices are extremely site specific and will require on site evaluation to determine the best service at the best price. We have both a radiotelephone and a digital cellular phone. The radiotelephone beams 26 miles to a house in Santa Fe where we have a local Santa Fe number. The operation is completely transparent in use. After the initial installation cost, there are only the usual monthly fees a regular phone customer would have – no by the minute charges. Our digital cellular phone serves as backup in case the radiotelephone goes down.

Hot Water

We heat almost all of our water with the sun, and for most of the year have hot water temperatures of about 180 . After six years, I have begun to redesign the system and hope to achieve close to 100% hot water availability. Presently , we have water hot enough for showers over 90% of the time. If hot water must be available at all times, an on demand propane backup would be the best solution – something you would only light up on the rare days you needed to.

Water

Nearly everyone without public water service thinks you must then have a well. Wells are typically expensive, sometimes of questionable quality, and the water needs to be pumped into a storage tank on the surface. With enough surface area and storage, catchment can provide a significant amount of pure water, even in our low rainfall environment. Like electricity, conservation means effective use of this resource, not doing without. Start out by planning on using catchment, then either drill well a well if necessary or plan on using it for backup rather than the primary supply. One inch of rain on a 1600 square foot surface will produce almost 1,000 gallons of water. The rain water in New Mexico is quite pure and has a pH of 7.4 – slightly acid. Careful storage can preserve this purity at a level that makes filtration for domestic use inexpensive and easy. It can be used directly on gardens and trees.

Sewage and Gray Water

Perhaps the most ignored aspect of sustainability by Americans. The hard answer: human excrement is a valuable, safe substance when composted, expensive problem when mixed with water and flushed into the sewer system or septic tank. Outhouses are inconvenient and a waste of resources. Composting toilet systems can, when installed, designed, or built correctly, render waste into the best thing your garden ever saw – completely disease free. There is no "automatic" solution to this problem. Some systems come close, however, and there are many options to make composting our waste quite painless.

Gray water refers to water used for doing dishes, laundry, showering. This should always be kept separate from black water (water mixed with sewage) and used on flower beds, trees, and under the right circumstances gardens.

Conclusion

"Why reinvent the wheel?" is a phrase often used to avoid thinking about how something can be done better. Even if the wheel doesn't need reinventing, our approach to living on this earth most certainly does. The principles and ideas that we have developed over the last six years, a hands on negotiation with the elements backed by the belief that we can succeed, can be adapted and applied to almost any situation, especially the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area. Even if 100% sustainability is unobtainable, closeness still counts.

I hope you have found this useful. I know of no one who has attained our level of self sustained living with modern technology and comforts. I also know that the answers we have discovered by synthesizing the old and the new are not the quick and easy solution usually used.

© 2000 Robert Hayes

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