Sustainable Luxury Living - 181 Back Basin Road

Heavenly Retreat is a unique, celestially-aligned, passive and active solar, green design/built home, located at 9,000’ elevation in the northern New Mexico Rockies.

The home is a tribute to its environment being embedded into the forest floor, and rising with four-terraced stories to a great room with a pyramid skylight apex and a geodesic dome garage. It currently has 6,784 square feet of luxury living space, with an additional 1,290 square feet that is ready to be finished out. It is designed to produce its own electricity (8kW) and active solar thermal heating for 11 zones of hydronic radiant floor heating. It includes three interior year-round producing greenhouses, and an organic outdoor summer garden.

The home’s renewable energy system includes 11 solar thermal panels and 2 PV trackers …along with one very energetic Husky.

One of two Solar PV panel trackers in the garden; the two trackers together make about 5kW and power about 40% of the house. These “solid black” panels are almost new and manufactured by Solaria Corporation, the solar manufacturer that Joel and Leslie founded in California in 2000. They are one of the most efficient solar panels on the market today.

There are 18 of these innovative “built-In solar PV glass” panels which are embedded as a skylight in the solar chef’s kitchen and greenhouse on the second floor. This system is designed to make 4kW and power half the house.

Precise installation of one of the built-in solar PV glass greenhouse ceiling panels.

Interior view of the built-in Solar PV (BIPV) ceiling above the chef’s kitchen. Perfectly aligned to the Sun’s path all year, these 18 solar skylights shade the kitchen from the summer sun, insulate from the winter cold and provide 4 kW of solar electricity.

Kitchen counter view of the BIPV solar ceiling. The large kitchen has all-new granite countertops, and state-of-the-art chef’s appliances that can handle large groups and a maple wood island that seats six. The chef’s kitchen is designed for easy access to the solar greenhouse where you can pick fresh flowers, harvest herbs and vegetables, and cook under the continually-changing solar light.

Fresh, fragrant Plumeria flowers from Hawaii bloom in the kitchen greenhouse under the solar panels all summer long and provide an amazing, natural floral scent throughout the whole house.

View from the fourth floor loft above the great room. These 11 large solar thermal panels convert the Sun’s heat into hot water which continually circulates under all the radiant floors of the home and keep one of the two boilers from burning propane all winter long.

We designed the footprint of Heavenly Retreat to preserve all possible site vegetation and trees, while being situated to maximize solar exposure throughout the year.

Solar

Active Electric, Passive and Solar Thermal

Before the first ground was turned, we conducted a year-round study of where in the forest the site was most level, where the best views and sightlines were, where to place the footprint of the home to cut down the least number of trees, and where the Sun, Moon and stars provided the most solar exposure, moonlight and access to the dark night sky. This is where Heavenly Retreat now sits in its home in the forest.

The home is oriented exactly to the path of the Sun (pointing Solar South), which provides the most solar gain possible and takes advantage of the solar alignments throughout every room on the upper floors. Three active solar PV systems provide most of the home’s electricity year-round with two active solar trackers in the garden, and a fixed solar skylight running above the entire chef’s kitchen and attached greenhouse on the second floor. This provides huge amounts of ambient sunlight by day, and moonlight at night, while making enough electricity to power more than half the entire home.

There are 11 solar thermal heating panels on the roof above the atrium greenhouse that provide enough heat year-round to keep one of the two gas boilers from burning propane on all but the coldest winter nights. Under every floor surface and embedded in every soil bed throughout the home are 11 thermally-heated zones.

These zones heat all of the living space in the entire structure – providing 180,000 BTU’s/hour for all three floor levels, three interior greenhouses, heated storage areas, the exterior studio flagstone patio, and the geodesic dome garage.

Magic Solar Alignments

Many of the rooms on the second and third floors have precisely aligned windows, corridors and hallways that are specifically designed to align the rays of the sun – at certain times of the day, and times of the year – to cast “sun shadows” onto the walls and floors, and aligning rays of sunlight with corresponding marker points on the walls.

We call these features “magic solar alignments,” because when you see them in the house and understand what they reveal, they seem magical in many ways – they tell time throughout the day and mark the special cross-seasonal times of Spring and Fall Equinox, and Winter and Summer Solstice. Besides being special design features, the practical function is they maximize the amount of sunlight coming into the rooms, and maximize the solar collection on all the panels. This photo gallery shows sun ray alignments designed within the house. Click to see more.

“Solar Noon Alignment” in the third floor great room. Solar Noon is the daily time when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky, called the mid-point which always falls midway between sunrise and sunset. The space is designed so the noon sunrays lineup with the south redwood markers in the wall and windows.

The third floor pyramid skylight at Solar Noon, when the sunrays lineup with the skylight’s steel struts, casting a symmetrical “X” shadow.

Solar Noon on Spring and Fall Equinox casts sunrays through the clerestory window as two shapes that line up with the kiva fireplace and double doors in the great room. This is a view of the equinox solar event from the fourth floor loft.

A close-up view of Equinox Solar Noon sunrays on the great room floor.

Three aligned redwood wall markers designate the precise sunset point on Spring and Fall Equinox in the great room.

A crystal calendar sculpture situated in the third floor great room captures the clerestory sunrays at Solar Noon.

A sun meditation in the loft overlooking the third floor great room and outside, over the home’s bank of solar thermal panels.

The solar thermal panels are angled to produce the most thermal heat at the time of Winter Solstice, which radiate warmth throughout all of the home’s floors and inside greenhouse growing soil beds.

The built-in, PV solar glass ceiling panels above the chef’s kitchen and adjacent greenhouse, generate power, as well let natural light stream into the space. Every day, when the Sun is at its highest point, the ceiling solar cell pattern cast beautiful shadows on the floor that indicate it’s “Solar Noon.”

Green Design/Build

I had studied both adobe and green architecture, astronomy and physics – and used all these disciplines to design this passive and active solar home, using high-performing, durable, traditional and eco-engineered building materials. The home is built to sustain all weather and last for at least a century. We used adobe, heavy beam, and recyclable product construction and insulation. Click the image to learn more.

The Vision begins! Joel laying the foundation in 1988.

Traditionally-made adobe bricks by local artisans, stacked on site to begin the first floor masonry walls.

Our first window to the west, framed with adobe bricks.

Laying the first sub-floor, adobe brick walls and foundation.

The home’s first winter, with the three western floors’ construction roughed-in.

Building the first floor atrium greenhouse, first winter.

Setting the second floor heavy beam kitchen ceiling with Eco Block walls.

A detail of the building of the second floor, north Eco Block wall.

Progress on the north wall Eco Block construction.

The living room really began to take shape when the western views clerestory windows were framed in.

As project designer and lead perfectionist, Joel worked alongside the many craftsmen, carpenters and masons to ensure every beam and block were set with precision. Here’s a shot of them seating the third floor heavy beam over the living room.

Radiant floor hydronic heating tubes are under all rooms and growing beds in 11 zones throughout the home.

The building design and celestial alignments culminate with the third floor pyramid skylight.

The craftsmen were excited to apply their skills to such an unusual and beautiful glass pyramid feature.

Laying the radiant heat foundation for the geodesic dome garage/apartment.

Then, pouring the cement foundation for the 30’ diameter geodesic dome.

The dome is built with seven-inch thick, rigid, expanded bead, polystyrene insulation modular panels.

The modular panels incorporate reinforced steel concrete in all seams. The 7 inch polystyrene insulation (EPS) provides an R-28 thermal value, as compared to 11” fiberglass batting.

Seating the tongue and groove, drop-ceiling timber beams, which serve as the second floor foundation for the garage/apartment.

We designed Heavenly Retreat to be both a luxury showcase of what’s possible with state-of-the-art green building materials and solar technology, but also to sustain all weather and last for at least a century.

The realtors’ listing shows the home as having 6,784 square feet. There are seven additional rooms/areas that are heated, plumbed, and functioning interior spaces totaling 1,290 square feet, which are not “officially counted” in the realtor’s assessment.

View Heavenly Retreat Floor Plans

Our Floor Plans PDF includes all four levels of the entire structure, which according to the detailed Matterport scan (+/- 1% accuracy) totals the Gross Internal Area (“heated, plumbed and enclosed interior space”) of 8,074 square feet.

Although the realtors’ website listing shows the home as having 6,784 square feet, in reality there are seven additional rooms/areas that are not “officially counted” because they are not totally finished yet. We have chosen to highlight these spaces on the floor plans, as 1,290 square feet Potential Space for the new owner to finish for their own purposes, style and function.

Ranking of Heavenly Retreat as a Green Home

With extensive professional career experience in solar and wind design, the homeowner completed both the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system’s checklist for the home, attaining “66” points and Gold Level. Also, the 259-page National Green Building Standard Rating Workbook was completed, scoring “789”, which far exceeds the highest minimum score of 611, therefore ranking Heavenly Retreat as attaining the Emerald standard.

Year-Round Greenhouses and Summer Gardens

Outside, to the south of the main entry, there are six terraced, organic growing beds in a 2,500 square foot completely walled garden – a 4-foot high, stuccoed wall and hand-forged gate follow the landscape and solar trackers, around to the lower casita entrance.

Inside, there are three greenhouses – an atrium greenhouse with a large hot tub, that opens to a year-round sunspace with a tiled sitting patio and growing area. The larger, second floor, food-growing greenhouse sits conveniently adjacent to the large chef’s solar kitchen. All three greenhouse spaces are heated with their own climate-controlled, radiant floor heating zones. Click image to see more.