Our Solar SunHawk

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

We were fortunate to find an architect, Craig Henritzy, who shared our vision of sustainable living. From our initial conversations and his visits to the Solar Living Center, Craig drafted a preliminary design for our house, dubbed SunHawk: a round house oriented exactly to the cardinal directions and patterned after a red-tailed hawk ready to take flight.

After countless design revisions we discovered that the original 4,500-square foot house plan was too costly; with our three children grown and away at college, it seemed wasteful and too big for our needs, too. We shrunk our plan to 2,900 square feet with three bedrooms and one-and-a-half bathrooms.

Construction Begins

Before we started the house, we built a storage barn complete with 15 kilowatts of used photovoltaic modules. The barn also houses our energy storage and con version system, which is connected to the house through underground wires. In the rainy winter season, we tap into the flow of our seasonal creek with a 1.5-kilowatt hydroelectric system.

After we selected a contractor, Steve Gresham, who is a master homebuilder and solar installer, we finally broke ground in late 2001, but winter rains delayed construction until spring 2002.

It soon became clear that house building, even when you have a competent contractor, is a full-time endeavor, so in May 2002, we moved into our renovated barn to better manage the process.

SunHawk's foundation is awesome — 120 yards of concrete and 8-foot footings — but Steve convinced us that we would be glad we overbuilt it after the next major earthquake!

We built the house with Rastra, a material made from 85 percent recycled plastic foam, such as Styrofoam, and 15 percent cement. With an approximate R-value of 35 (the range is from 20 to 50), it has the ideal insulating properties for our climate and makes our home highly energy efficient.

Rastra also is relatively inexpensive and perfect for molding into all kinds of shapes. The Rastra walls went up in 10-foot-long panels, which were lined with rebar, and concrete was poured in as grout to provide stability and insulation.

STRIVING FOR SUSTAINABILITY

We set out to exclusively use recycled and sustainable materials and to meet all our power needs with renewable energy. From the building of the Solar Living Center, we knew it was unlikely we would attain this lofty goal, but we wanted to move up the environmental curve as far as we could.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print