Susie and Kent Vincent's 700-square-foot "green" guesthouse.

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Green is a way of life for Kent and Susie Vincent.

The couple drive a Prius and fill about four recycling bins a week. Kent, 50, a pediatric orthopedist, often bikes to work. Family vacations, like this year's trip to the North Cascades National Park in Washington state, often double as opportunities to teach the Vincent children — ages 8, 11 and 13 — about the importance of environmental conservation.

"It's a small world, and there are only so many fossil fuels out there. We're trying to teach our kids that," said Susie, one of the founders of the International School for Peace, a local preschool that offers Spanish- language-immersion and multicultural programs.

So when the Vincents decided to build a guesthouse to accommodate Kent's parents' annual visits from Iowa, they wanted to create something as energy efficient as possible.

Easier said than done.

The project was filled with challenges. There was the design, the construction, the securing of county building permits and — not the least of their worries — getting the go-ahead from their homeowners association.

The Vincents began drafting plans for their home-improvement project in 2006, but it took three proposals to get approval from the HOA's architectural review committee, which must OK all new construction projects in the Shadow Hills neighborhood, near North First Avenue and East Orange Grove Road, said Susie Vincent, 47.

The couple's plan, which included a guesthouse, covered patio and single-car garage, along with the installation of four large rainwater cisterns on the property, was initially shot down because the guesthouse had a flat roof topped with solar panels. The HOA determined the roof of the structure had to match the roofline of the main house, so the Vincents worked with their architect to revise the plan to include a pitched tile roof. The plan was rejected a second time because the rainwater cisterns on the property needed to be hidden from neighbors' view by walls.

Undaunted, the Vincents revised the plan again to include walls. The plan was approved, and the approximately $180,000 project, which broke ground in November 2007, was completed this summer.

"I think we found a balance between fighting for our rights and being diplomatic," said Formworks Architecture's Rosemary Latshaw, architect for the project.

The Vincents' approximately 700-square-foot guesthouse doubles as a home office and rec room when the queen-size Murphy bed is folded into the wall. Its large north-facing windows and smaller south-facing windows, shaded with honeycomb blinds, were designed to provide natural lighting while minimizing direct midday summer rays. Built on the south end of the property, it also shades the main house from the intense summer heat.

The Vincents, who moved to Tucson from Oregon seven years ago, also harness the sun's benefits through 24 solar panels — 12 atop the garage and another 12 on the roof of the back patio. While the solar panels were an integral part of the Vincents' home-improvement project, homeowners associations are prohibited by state law from interfering with the installation of solar-energy devices, so they were not an issue , Susie said. Still, the Vincents were discreet with the panels' placement, and they are, for the most part, hidden from neighbors' views. The panels produce between half and two-thirds of the home's electricity, Susie said.

Water conservation was another key element in the Vincents' project. Rainwater collected in the outdoor cisterns is used to water the yard, including Kent's organic vegetable garden and orchard. The same goes for leftover water indoors, which the Vincents collect in buckets from the sink, shower or bathtub.

While the couple ended up scrapping a gray-water system, the Vincents' backyard requires no water whatsoever. The realistic-looking artificial grass stays a lush green year-round.