Renewed Interest Could Spark More Solar Building

The Sooner we move towards solar energy and smart building designs, the better.

ENERGY
Solar: Advocates seek governmental support

Don and Nancy Dayton aren't worried about the rapidly rising cost of heating fuels this winter.
They've paid less then $50 a month for the last two years to heat and cool, plus run all the electric appliances in their almost 2,000- square-foot, split-level home in Eldorado.
They estimate 90 percent of the heat is free -- from the sun -- with no expensive photovoltaics involved. Their almost two-decade- old house is simply designed to take advantage of solar rays and natural ventilation.

The house uses no propane or natural gas. Only occasionally does the couple use the wood stove or electric baseboard heaters. "In 18 years, we've never turned on our downstairs electric heat," Nancy Dayton said.

The Daytons think it's unfortunate that many people in a state known for sunshine will be paying high heating bills in their homes this winter when there's a better, cheaper way. "We're sold on solar," Don Dayton, a retired National Park Service administrator, said. "It's sad to see so many designers and builders get away from it. You drive around Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, and you see so few solar-designed houses."

Passive solar building gained support following the last energy crisis in the 1970s. Federal and state tax incentives for solar helped spur construction. When fuel prices dropped in the late 1980s, the tax incentives died and so did the government support and broad interest in passive solar design. Now, as fuel prices are expected to soar over the winter, the Daytons and other solar advocates think governments and developers should pay attention again to solar-powered homes by offering tax rebates and credits.

Good design is essential to balancing winter heat with summer cool inside a passive solar home like the Daytons'. The south side of their house sports large, double-pane glass windows. Properly sized overhangs provide shade in the summer, while windows and doors on the east and west provide circulation to keep the house cool. It has no air conditioning and no windows on the north side of the house. The home's bottom level is bermed into the side of the hill, providing more insulation. The home is well insulated -- better than standards called for at the time it was built.

Short, concrete-block walls about a foot wide, known as trombe walls, are covered with dark stucco and glass windows on the outside of the home's southside lower level. The walls collect heat during winter days and slowly release it at night, much as adobe does, into the bedrooms. The house can go two days in cloudy weather before it starts to turn cold inside.

During the heyday of passive solar design in the 1970s and 1980s, Eldorado touted itself as a solar capital of the nation and it still ranked No. 1 for its number of solar homes, with more than 300, in the 2000 Census. Life magazine featured four pages of Santa Fe solar homes in 1980, highlighting the often-studied Balcomb house off Old Santa Fe Trail in the First Village subdivison.

Dayton said a large roadside billboard used to proclaim Eldorado as a solar community. "The sign came down sometime in the 1990s and builders stopped doing solar houses," Dayton recalled.

Susan Nichols, who helped design some of the original Santa Fe solar homes, said solar enjoyed strong government and industry support three decades ago. "It was just injected with potential and excitement under the Carter administration," she said. "The minute Reagan came into office and gas prices fell, that all dried up."

Nichols said solar design education also died. She and business partners, including architect and one of the early solar gurus Ed Mazria, traveled the country giving workshops to architects, designers and builders on solar. Now, few people know how to correctly design or build a good solar home, Nichols said.

Nichols said, in spite of all the warnings about oil's finite supply, the nation didn't plan ahead for the day the supply would drop and prices would rise. "We, as Americans, are not particularly far-sighted," she said from her Communico company office in Santa Fe.

Solar design isn't rocket science, say Nichols and Mazria, who wrote one of the definitive solar design books in 1979 and is currently rewriting it. "We know it can be done and we know how to do it," said Mazria, who served on Gov. Bill Richardson' Green Building Task Force.

Mazria proposed two years ago in an article titled "It's the Architecture, Stupid" in Solar Today that new buildings be required to cut energy usage by half the average usage for an area. Mazria also wrote that architecture schools needed to focus on training students in energy-efficient design. It's a proposal he's promoting today at every opportunity before architects and governments. This week he presented his proposal to Santa Fe County for trimming energy costs in residential and commercial buildings.

Technology and materials for both active and passive solar homes has improved immensely. Trial and error in the field has given solar designers loads of practical information on what works and what fails for a given building site. Computer programs allow designers and architects to create energy-efficient, passive-solar homes based on the unique challenges of each site.
What's needed now, advocates say, is renewed support from government and consumers for passive solar construction and eduction. New Mexico, with a governor who supports renewable energy and energy-efficient buildings, is positioned to lead the way.

And with many in the oil industry observers predicting a time soon when oil supplies will peak and head on a downward slide, Dayton, Mazria and others believe solar, energy-efficient buildings need renewed interest fast.

Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Check out the following Web sites for the latest in solar research and information:
* New Mexico Solar Energy Association:
www.nmsea.org
* U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory:
www.nrel.gov/solar/
* Consumer Energy Design, www.consumerenergydesign.org, a good simple description of basic passive and active solar principles from the California Energy Commission.
Books and articles
* "It's the Architecture, Stupid," by Ed Mazria, download from www.mazria.com/publications.html
* The Passive Solar Energy Book, by Ed Mazria, 1979, Rodale Press. Considered the early bible for solar design.
Businesses
Santa Fe is blessed with a wealth of solar innovators, contractors and businesses with decades of experience. Check out the membership list in the New Mexico Solar Energy Assocation or the Yellow Pages.
What's it mean?
Passive solar: Refers to gaining heat and light from the sun through proper building design and natural movement of heat and air without use of mechanical systems.
Active solar: Moving air and heat from the sun by means of fans and pumps; also collection and conversion of solar rays into electricity by means of a photovoltaic system of panels, converters and batteries.
Source: The Santa Fe New Mexican