April Banks and Richard Asbury's passive solar adobe home.

April and Richard bought this house and ten acres about one and a half years ago near Tularosa. It was built around 1980 and has 2200 square feet of space. After a severe hail storm did damage to the clerestory windows, they did some extensive work and are quite happy in their home. While the exterior is covered with stucco there are large areas with exposed adobe in the interior. As you tour please note the huge master bath, the gardens, high seer rated small heat pumps.

Rentschler Electric

Robert Rentschler has both wind and solar installations at his place of business. These pictures were taken on a stormy evening and the wind generator was putting out near max, while the solar panels were doing nothing. This is a Southwest Windpower unit rated at 2.5 KW.









The software on the wind generator is a nice touch as it gives near instantaneous readings as well as cumulative.













He also has 2.5KW of Sharp photovoltaic panels on tall poles in front of the shop. They are on fixed mounts and only the tilt is adjustable. He is considering the possibility of two axis trackers in the future.

Forest Service Green Office Building

This "green" office space has been occupied since September 2008. It consists of a 19,900 square foot building housing 85 employees of four agencies.

It was built with insulated concrete foam forms, thereby conserving energy.

Special attention was given to water conservation with low flow fixtures and no flow urinals.





The roof has 110 solar panels producing, at peak, 21,000 watts of electricity. This shows just half of the panels.

John Kloepper's P V Array

John installed this array about four years ago. It is 1.9 KW on a tracking mount that is operated solely by expansion and contraction of freon in tanks on either side of the platform. Originally he had it on a fixed mount producing about 3000 KW. Now, with tracking he's getting over 4000 KW.









This larger 2.25 Kw system has been online for six months. It is operated electrically using tv dish actuators and a small computer system. He has some problems with shading early and late in the day, but is still getting considerable output. The output figures will be very interesting after a years operation.







This is his inverter setup with the 1.9 array on the right at 110V and the 2.25 on the left with 220V output. The house is all electric yet he additonally gets paid more than $100/month by PNM.

The McMorris House

Don and Karen McMorris have built a straw bale/adobe hybrid house with earth plaster inside and outside with paint thinner and linseed oil sealer. The south wall is adobe with passive solar glass, while the other three walls are timber framed with straw bale infill. They have most of the work themselves in fits and spurts over several years.


The roof was done in ferro cement pitched at 5" in 20'.

Ron Offley's House

Ron has been concerned primarily with energy conservation, however you can see here that he has cut back the porch roof to allow passive gain on these south facing windows.





These hot water panels were bought used. The left two are glycol heat exchangers used to heat domestic hot water. The right two are drainback types used to heat hot tub water to 110 degrees in the winter.