Solar Energy Comes To Suburbia

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Like it or not, the "solar revolution" won't really be underway in this country until [1] solar heating and/or cooling systems are routinely built into new houses, and [2] Joe Suburb can be convinced (along with his banker) to invest money in such a home. Happily, though, these two conditions are already being met in one southern California community . . . as Nick Cominos reports.

When you drive by the first time, you might think the Blue Skies development near Hemet, California is "just another housing tract". As you approach the ten-foot-wide sign at the development's entrance, however—the one that says "NOW OPEN . . . BLUE SKIES RADIANT HOMES"—you're suddenly stopped by something unusual: namely, the words "solar heating" and "designed for total energy conservation" at the bottom of the sign, underneath a portrait of Ole Sol himself.

What the mini-billboard is saying, of course, is that the stucco haciendas in this development are solar-heated, and thus represent some of the very first solar-equipped tract homes in California . . . if not the country.

THE MAN WITH THE PLAN

The man behind the Blue Skies development is Warren Buckmaster, a former diamond salesman who—at age 46—decided to give up precious stones and go into the home-building business with Whittier, California contractor Marvin Lauren.

Being new to housing construction, Buckmaster did a little studying up before getting started . . and he found (among other things) that [1] because of the area's benign climate, southern California contractors generally insulate their new homes poorly or not at all, and [2] as a result, homeowners here pay higher utility bills than you might have thought. The average electrically heated home in the Hemet area, Buckmaster found, was using $1,000 worth of energy per year . . . the average gas-heated household, $300 per annum. And it looks as though those costs could go up to $3,000 and $1,000, respectively, by 1986.

In light of the above information, two things seemed obvious to Warren Buckmaster. First: Given the choice, home buyers—even home buyers in southern California—would probably choose an energy-efficient house over an energy-wasteful one of equal price. Second: The smart thing for a housing developer to do would be to build a tract of reasonably priced solar-heated homes . . . homes that'd be too energy efficient for buyers to turn down.

And so Warren Buckmaster went ahead and built seventeen such houses . . . and buyers—sure enough—snapped them up. Buckmaster, in fact, managed to sell twelve of his seventeen Blue Skies dwellings months before they were even built!

INSULATION . . . AND MORE INSULATION

What does the buyer of a Blue Skies home get when he purchases the advertised energy-efficient construction? First and foremost, insulation: more than three times as much as can be found in comparably sized tract homes just a few blocks away. Consider:

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