Jun 30 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Staci Matlock The Santa Fe New Mexican

A luxury home under construction south of the Santa Fe Opera will serve as a showcase for zero-energy, low-water-use design.

More than that, the planned 4,100-square-foot Emerald Home in the Monte Sereno subdivision will become a tutorial for other builders, architects and owners interested in green building, according to designer/builder Faren Dancer of Sundancer Creations.

And a subsequent 1,000-square-foot, off-grid, zero-energy house he'll build for Santa Fe County Commissioner-elect Kathy Holian will demonstrate how similar systems can be used in smaller designs. "People can take bits and chunks of these systems and apply to their own designs," he said.

Dancer, along with Santa Fe Community College and the city of Santa Fe, will videotape the Emerald Home's construction, detailing the materials used and the water and energy systems installed. The city will use the video to help other builders and owners understand building techniques that will meet the city's proposed new green building standards. The video also will explain federal and state solar tax incentives and the New Mexico State Sustainable Building Tax Credits. "It will serve as an education model not only for builders and the public but also city staff and inspectors," Dancer said.

Santa Fe Community College and Dancer received a $20,000 U.S. Green Building Council educational grant to document the Emerald Home's construction and create an accredited, online course in zero-energy building.

Zero energy is not the same thing as a zero carbon emissions home, Dancer said. The Emerald Home will use passive solar to heat the home and water and photovoltaics to provide electricity, but it will have backup natural gas. A zero energy building is one that can produce all its own power, plus extra to feed into the electric grid.

Dancer has been building green since the 1970s, first in Northern California and then Santa Fe. "That was long before there was national LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards," said Dancer, chairman of the Santa Fe Green Building Council and first vice president of the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association.

Dancer teamed with the city and financial partner Maxine Swisa of SunMax to design and build the Pueblo-style, $2.2 million Emerald Home. The home will be put up for sale, and Dancer hopes the eventual owner will allow it to be used for educational purposes.

Among its features, the home's exterior walls will be double two-by-four frames set a foot apart and filled with cellulose insulation. The studs between the frames will be made of scrap wood from the project and form a tight seal to prevent "thermal bridging" -- where outside air mixes with inside air.

The interior walls will be made of pressed-earth blocks made from fill dirt left over on site after excavating and leveling the foundation. The pressed-earth blocks -- basically thick adobes -- will provide mass that collects, stores and slowly releases heat in the winter and cold in the summer.

The windows will feature super-insulated glass and fiberglass frames. The frames are the toughest to find, Dancer said. The best insulated frames are made in Germany, he said, but he's working with U.S. manufacturers to build ones more locally.

The house also will feature low-flow water fixtures and a heat-recovery ventilation system to bring fresh air into the home without losing heat or cold.

The vigas, portals, cabinets and some of the flooring will be built of salvaged wood from old barns and other structures. "I'm not going to cut down any big trees to build this house," Dancer said.

The Emerald Home will model the top level of local and state green building standards. Dancer's team also will be trying for a platinum rating, the highest possible, under the LEED for Homes program.

The city has been working to revise its building code and require all new construction to require no fossil fuels for power within the next two decades. The goal is one set forth by Santa Fe architect Ed Mazria in Architecture 2030 -- guidelines to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that have been adopted nationally -- as a way to reduce the contribution of buildings to climate change.

Kim Shanahan, the current Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association president, has been working to show affordable housing can also be energy efficient and "green built," constructing homes that cost less than $200,000 and achieve a HERS 55 rating.

Dancer and Shanahan worked with the Santa Fe home builders board to become the first home builders association in the country to adopt the Architecture 2030 challenge, Dancer said.

Now the city's green building committee is looking at revamping codes to require more sustainable building practices. Dancer hopes the proposed code will be ready for a council vote this fall.

The city's proposed green building standards are tougher than the state's new green building codes, which go into effect Tuesday, Dancer said.

Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.