Living With the Sun - Arizona Style: A Sustainable Energy Overview

1. Solar Energy Overview Arizona Solar Center Revised: 2015

2. Arizona is a land of physical and climatic diversity.

3. From the San Francisco Peaks to the Sonoran desert, Arizonans past and present have adapted to this land of diversity and often to conditions of climatic intensity. The heat of the desert summer sun and the cold of a mountain winter have had direct impact on the form and shape of our buildings, and the patterns of our behavior.

4. Living with the sun is the characteristic of a truly Arizona architecture, not rooted in national stylistic trends but in environmental conditions, local resources and climatic appropriateness. Living with the Sun - Arizona Style recognizes and uses on-site environmental conditions to meet human needs and comfort. Energy and resource efficient strategies are used to optimize comfort while minimizing environmental resource depletion, and economic waste.

5. Through time there are examples of Arizonans Living With the Sun.  The early cliff dwelling of Montezuma’s Castle, although clearly not designed as a solar building, is often romanticized as Arizona’s first solar building, because it reflects solar design principles.

6. Through time, Arizonans have evolved solar strategies in their buildings and their equipment. Passive solar water heaters were used on residential and commercial buildings.

7. Both public and private desert buildings responded to the need for shade and cross ventilation. The Yuma Hotel had floorlength windows so beds could be pushed out on the balcony for a cool night sleep environment. Phoenix hotels had summer sleeping porches where rolls of burlap were unfurled and wet down to gain an evaporative cooling effect.

8. Houses were constructed with proper orientations - broad side with windows to capture the winter sun’s warmth. Overhangs that controlled direct impact from the high summer sun.

9. The narrow sides of buildings were oriented to minimize exposure to the intense summer east and west sun. Cooking porches and ramadas were often provided to “keep the kitchen heat out of the house in the summer”. Materials such as masonry and adobe both thermal mass in conditions where heat retention was a benefit, and a thermal barrier where heat was desired to be excluded.

10. Arizona history is replete with solar applications. During the Indian Wars, the heliograph was used as a communication device.

11. The Aeneas solar pump was installed to irrigate the agricultural lands where Tempe now stands. Houses in northern part of the State incorporated large porches, open and screened, as cool places for evening use as well as sleeping.

12. Living With the Sun – Arizona Style continues today.

13. In every corner of Arizona there are solar and green buildings. The Civano subdivision in Tucson, incorporate a variety of solar strategies. 

14. Today, Living With the Sun - Arizona Style can be seen in numerous solar buildings throughout the State.

15. The following is a compilation of solar, renewable energy, and green buildings that demonstrate Arizona’s rich and varied use of the sun - Living With the Sun - Arizona Style.

16. TAYLOR/SNOWFLAKE AREA The high desert area of Taylor provides its residents with clear, cold winters, sunny summers, and flat areas where the winds blow. Low vegetation mixed with Arizona independence have resulted in a number of Living With the Sun variations, within the community’s mix of historic and contemporary buildings.

17. # 1 Residence - Taylor Arizona A passive solar heated building utilizing south face direct solar gain, south side living spaces, thermal mass walls and floor and a solar hot water heater.

18. Cooling is by virtue of the thick thermal walls, effective cross ventilation and a centrally located, operable oculus window at the top of the building. Solar equipment includes energy efficient lighting and resource conserving fixtures and a ground mounted batch water heater.

19. Interior utilizes direct gain and thermal mass floors.

20. # 2 Earthship Residence - Taylor Arizona This Earthship building, utilizing interlaced recycled tires packed with earth for both structure as well as thermal mass, is heavily integrated with the earth on its north side and has thermal mass walls and floors.

21. Full glazing on the south allows for passive direct solar gain for heating and the thermal mass structure retains gained heat and releases it back to the spaces to maintain a comfortable setting. Renewable energy equipment include solar water heating system, wind generator, and photovoltaic panels.

22. South facade solar windows.

23. South side - circulation with direct gain solar windows and thermal mass floor.

24. Thermal mass partition wall/floor.

25. Access to built in solar oven in South facing wall.

26. Direct gain south glazing wall with wind generator in background.

27. # 3 Residence - Taylor Arizona Backed into a south facing slope, this building opens itself to the south sun for passive system direct gain heating using south facing solar windows and thermal mass tile floors and thermal mass walls.

28. # 3 Residence - Taylor Arizona The building has an air lock entry zone reducing the negative condition of heat loss whenever people come and go. Equipment includes energy and resource efficient fixtures and a batch solar water heater.

29. # 3 Residence - Taylor Arizona South court, south window wall for direct gain, clerestorey solar windows, solar water heater.

30. Solar window and floor tile thermal mass.

31. South facing solar windows for direct gain. Batch water heater.

32. # 4 Kerr Residence - Taylor Arizona A simple thermal mass structure with south facing windows for direct solar gain and the inclusion of a solar green space for both plant production as well as for heat.

33. And built-in solar ovens on the south face of the kitchen.

34. Numerous houses in this part of the state incorporate solar greenhouses to existing building for both heating as well as vegetation. These attached greenhouses are a combination of the Direct and Indirect Gain methods of heating.

35. # 4 Greenhouses - Snowflake/Taylor Arizona The sunspace is heated directly and the gathered heat can be allowed to transfer into other parts of the building by the operation of existing doors and windows in the building’s primary south wall.

36. # 4 Greenhouses - Snowflake/Taylor Arizona These can be opened or closed to control and moderate the heat from the greenhouse to the living spaces.

37. SEDONA/VERDE VALLEY AREA

38. # 1 - Charles & Mary’s Place \ This home features a passive heating system of thermal mass with direct solar gain windows on the south side, and penetrated interior walls to allow for deep penetration of the sun’s rays and circulation of captured south side heat.

39. The south side sunspace, a narrow space backed with Kalwall thermal water tubes define the direct sun catching area from the rest of the house and add color as a decorative element. Nestled into the terrain on the north, the north side of the building is earth integrated with earth up to the window sills.

40. Clerestorey windows and cross ventilation coupled with the thermal mass of the building provide for the cooling in Sedona summers.

41. Exterior of east facade showing the house backed into slope, pitched roof line for maximum solar penetration through the building and low profile from northerly storms.

42. North side: Nestled into the terrain on the north, the north side of the building is earth integrated with earth up to the window sills.

43. North window - with earth integration, thermal shades and drapes.

44. Clerestory windows for interior direct gain.

45. Direct gain sunspace with south facing windows and thermal mass floor.

46. Thermal mass thermal tubes between sunspace and dining area.

47. Tandem batch water heaters.

48. # 2 Searle Residence - Sedona, Arizona A passive solar heated house utilizing thermal mass, direct gain and indirect gain, and a isolated gain green space. South facing windows coupled with clerestory windows to allow for deeper penetration of the sun’s rays, as well as the illumination benefits of sunlight.

49. # 2 Searle Residence - Sedona, Arizona Solar penetration impacts thermal mass in the floors and walls and the building structure absorbs warmth and reradiates it at a later time as the spaces cool in the nights. Eaves are calculated for best protection from summer conditions and optimum access to the low winter sun. One section of the building eave has designed-in retractable eaves to allow more access of the winter sun radiation.

50. Space planning places living spaces on the south side and secondary spaces on the north. additional north side buffering comes from a raised planter against the north side. Cooling is attained by the natural attributes of the structure’s thermal mass, effective cross ventilation design, and the operable clerestorey windows.