Sat, Jul 04, 2009
 UA architecture students Jarrod Powell, left, and Lenard Burns are doing the manual labor as well as some design work for energy-efficient homes near Downtown. Jill Torrance / Arizona Daily Star
Sierra Tucson Eating Disorders Program Coordinator General A1 Communications Cable Techs Trades/Construction RANCHO RESORT MAINTANANCE POSITION Tucson RegionAffordable 'green' homesUA students out to prove that energy-efficient dwellings needn't be costly — to moderate-income families' benefit
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.22.2007
It's an odd job site, with far too many carpenters swarming over the shell of a single home and not a nail gun within earshot — just the timpani of nails being pounded with framing hammers.
The outcome will be equally unusual. These builders — 24 student architects of the Drachman Design-Build Collaborative — are designing and building five energy-efficient homes.
Each home employs a different conservation strategy, and each will be offered for sale to a family making less than 80 percent of the median income — the folks who usually are precluded from the housing market and, in any case, can't afford one of those high-tech models that might save them money on gas and electric bills.
Going "green" has not been a choice for people who make 80 percent of median income and for a lot of people who make more than that.
They can't afford well-built and well-insulated homes, nor the most efficient heating and cooling, new appliances and solar panels.
That's the point of this demonstration project.
The cost of conservation strategies needn't be the bane of the green-building movement, said Mary Hardin, project manager for the Civano Demonstration Project in Barrio San Antonio, just east of Downtown.
She's one of two faculty advisers to the fifth-year students with the University of Arizona's College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture who are drawing plans and pounding nails as part of their graduation requirement.
Siting a home properly and designing it for the climate will take care of much of its energy costs, she said.
These are not high-tech homes, and you won't see any solar panels atop their roofs — unless somebody decides to donate some, said Corky Poster, director of the Drachman Institute, the public-service arm of the architecture college.
"What we're doing," Poster said, "is all the good design things, the things you can do out of your brain rather than with gadgets and widgets."
The wood-frame home under construction, for instance, uses a ventilated wall system, a 3-inch airspace between the insulated interior walls and the outer shell that will employ a rising airflow to cool the walls.
The next home built will be steel-frame and more heavily insulated. It is being built on a north-south axis, so its east and west walls will be windowless, with natural light provided by open, deeply shaded north and south faces.
The Design-Build Collaborative also plans a thermal mass home with thick rammed-earth or block walls, a hybrid using several energy-savings techniques, and a courtyard house that shields its doors and windows by wrapping them within its own walls.
The plans for these homes, complete with architect's and engineer's seals, will ultimately be made available to anyone who wants them.
The energy performance of the five homes will be monitored for a full year to determine whether they meet their goals of reducing the energy cost of operating them.
The Drachman group proposed the project in answer to the city of Tucson's call for applying the energy-saving lessons of the far East Side subdivision at Civano to an inner-city site — a slice of industrially zoned land alongside the Barraza-Aviation Parkway, east of Park Avenue.
The city donated the land; the Drachman Institute created the site plan and moved the project through rezoning. Pima County, through its Neighborhood Reinvestment bonds, pledged money for sewer and water lines, curbs, sidewalks and street-side landscaping.
Those subsidies, coupled with additional assistance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the free labor of the students, will make the homes available to those who meet federal poverty guidelines. At the request of the neighborhood, the collaborative will first try to qualify current rental residents of Barrio San Antonio.
Michael McDonald, executive director of Habitat for Humanity Tucson, said the barrier to applying green technologies to affordable housing has always been the upfront cost.
His group is not involved in the Civano Demonstration Project, but it will watch closely to see if its techniques can be adapted elsewhere. "I think that should be our future," he said.
"If we can really lower the energy costs over the life of a home, the owners can use that savings in health care or educational opportunities," McDonald said. "It would definitely be a wealth generator. The occupants would benefit; the town would benefit.
"We have dabbled in some green technologies," he added, "but have not designed and built a completely sustainable, affordable house."
It's a social-justice issue, said Richard Elias, chairman of the Pima County Board of Supervisor. Governments such as his should be working to bring energy-cost savings to the people who need it most. "This is a good start," Elias said at the Civano project's groundbreaking earlier this month.
City Councilman Steve Leal said he hopes the project will "dismantle the myth that says these kinds of things are environmental chic for the rich."
Hardin, who along with colleague John Folan supervises the project, said the value of the students' labor allows the project to save about $27,000 on each home.
The homes will save water as well as energy, she said. Roof runoff will be collected in cisterns for irrigation of the site's trees and plants.
The students also will develop an owner's manual for each home, she said, to acquaint the new owners with the operation of the systems that passively heat and cool the home.
The first home that she and Folan designed and built with student labor has won a state design award and was recently chosen by the Southern Arizona chapter of the American Institute of Architects as one of its three "homes of the year."
● Contact reporter Tom Beal at 573-4158 or tbeal@azstarnet.com.
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