Green Designation Course – Santa Fe – March 25-26, 2010

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) Green Designation core course will be presented March 25^th and 26^th, 2010 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Santa Fe Association of Realtors (SFAR) will sponsor the course and the instructor will be Robert “Bob” Taylor of GreenRoads Realty, Santa Fe.

The two-day course includes:

• The Core Principles of Green
• Green Communities
• Green Homes and Buildings
• Green Buyers, Sellers and Tenants
• Greening Your Real Estate Practice

Guest speakers will make presentations on local examples of green homes and buildings, HERS ratings, solar electricity and hot water heating systems, and sustainable communities.  A field trip to the Sustainable Technologies Center, under construction at the Santa Fe Community College, and a tour of several low-cost highly energy efficient homes will be included.

Realtors will receive 10 CEU’s for attending the two-day course.  They then have the option of taking one of three elective courses to earn their Green designation from the NAR:  Residential, Commercial or Property Management.  Realtors should contact Aggie Chavez at the Santa Fe Association of Realtors (www.SFAR.com) to register for the class at (505) 982-8385.

For more information on Green Real Estate, contact Bob Taylor at (505) 690-5012 or email BobTaylor@GreenRoadsRealty.com

Santa Fe’s New Green Building Codes

By Bob Taylor

On July 1, 2009 Santa Fe, New Mexico became one of the first cities in the U.S.A. to implement a Green Building Code for new residential construction.

It was the first of a family of codes that will include codes for remodeling and commercial construction.

The new Santa Fe Green Building Code is based on the Build Green New Mexico program with revisions to reflect the northern New Mexico climate and tradition of passive solar adobe and other vernacular and regional construction methods.  The code includes a menu of options in six categories:

• Project implementation plan and lot development
• Resource efficiency
• Energy efficiency
• Water efficiency
• Indoor air quality
• Operation, maintenance and sustainable practices

Benefits to homes constructed under the new code will be:

• Lower Operating Costs
• Increased comfort
• Improved indoor air quality
• Enhanced durability and less maintenance
• Third-party verification of expected building performance

To get answers to your questions about this code and ways to “green” existing homes, contact Bob Taylor by phone (505) 690-5012 or email: bobtaylor@GreenRoadsRealty.com

Bob Taylor is a Green-designated Realtor® and EcoBroker with GreenRoads™ Realty, in Santa Fe, NM.

Santa Fe Energy Ordinance

Energy ordinance would help residents go green

Staci Matlock | The New Mexican

6/4/2009 – 6/3/09

Santa Fe County could be the first county in New Mexico to create an ordinance that will help homeowners purchase solar, wind or geothermal energy systems with almost no up-front cash.

Santa Fe County staff hope to have a draft ordinance for county commissioners by July. Commissioner Kathy Holian said she plans to introduce it.

The Legislature passed two bills in the 2009 session that allow counties to voluntarily establish special renewable energy tax assessment districts. The bills were modeled on similar loan programs in Berkeley and Palm Desert, Calif.

Counties who approve the special tax districts would offer low-interest loans to property owners who want to install solar photovoltaic panels, solar water heaters, wind turbines or ground-source heat pumps. Participating in the program would be voluntary for homeowners.

The renewable energy loan payments would be paid back through property taxes.

Coupled with existing state and federal tax credits, the loans would allow a homeowner to more easily cover the price of a renewable energy system that can cost thousands of dollars. In addition, Public Service Company of New Mexico pays customers for each kilowatt hour of electricity produced by a solar photovoltaic system.

The New Mexico Association of Counties, state agencies and the New Mexico Renewable Energy Industries are working with Santa Fe County to create a model renewable energy loan ordinance that other counties can use.

The bills were sponsored by Santa Fe legislators Rep. Brian Egolf and Sen. Peter Wirth. Cities from Los Alamos to Las Cruces are calling to find out more about the renewable energy loans, Wirth said.

Creating the ordinance, though, is no easy task. “We’re knee-deep in the process of getting an ordinance put together,” said Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe.

The ordinance crafters have to first figure out the funding sources for the renewable energy loans.

Wirth’s bill authorizes counties to sell bonds, with the revenue paying for the loans and administrative costs.

Egolf’s bill focuses on solar energy loans and would allow homeowners to obtain the loans from any qualified bank, credit union or other lender. Egolf said the state Regulation and Licensing Department will determine which entities can make the loans available.

“It would be outstanding if this program could be up and running in August,” Egolf said. He’s worried a long delay will actually hurt solar installers, whose customers may wait to order systems until the loans are available.

Egolf and Duncan Sil, Santa Fe County’s economic development director, said the renewable energy ordinance must be flexible, allowing loans from both private and public funds. “We have to look at all the options available that would make renewable energy (systems) more accessible and more affordable,” Sil said.

Sil said the federal government is making available a new tax-credit bond through the economic stimulus package, which could be used for the renewable energy loans. Instead of investors earning a guaranteed interest like on typical bonds, the tax-credit bonds would provide investors with a federal tax credit.

Randy Sadewic of the Santa Fe-based solar company Positive Energy, said his worst fear is “that this is a great program and there’s a stampede and there’s not enough (loan) money. This has happened before.”

Holian said she’s excited about the renewable energy loans. “When we actually implement this we’ll hold town halls to really explain this to people.”

Santa Fe Architecture – The Outback Era

My name is Bob Taylor and I am a realtor and builder and have lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 1976. I’ll admit it took me awhile to warm up to the “mud hut” architecture of the area when I first got here. I realize now that the simplicity of the architectural style is the basis of its elegance. And, really, the historical styles include more than the “mud hut”, better known as “Pueblo Revival”. But contemporary adaptations of Pueblo Revival architecture are the hottest selling houses in the current real estate market. There are some incredible homes here in Santa Fe, homes that reflect the artistic legacy of the area, homes that capture the exceptional quality of our light on the local mountains and high desert.

The “Outback” Era

Santa Fe’s unique “Pueblo” architecture hearkens back to the days when Northern New Mexico was truly the “Outback” of the Spanish Colonial Empire based in Mexico City. The original Europeans who inhabited Santa Fe were rugged pioneers and explorers who were thousands of miles away from their “New World” headquarters. They had to make do with what they had and the houses they built for themselves were made of purely indigenous materials. The dirt in the area around Santa Fe is perfect for making sun-dried mud bricks called “adobes”. The early pioneers could literally dig up their “back yards” and build their houses out of the dirt. They may have had to add a little more clay to get their back yard dirt to bind just right and they definitely added a little straw for the same purpose. But they just added water and mixed up a batch of mud and made adobe bricks from it. They stacked the bricks up to make walls, went out to the nearby forests and cut some trees down, trimmed them to make logs, drug ‘em back to their home site, hoisted them up on top of the walls and called them “vigas”, or roof beams. Then they went down to the “arroyos” or dried creek beds and cut a bunch of reeds and placed them on top of the vigas. They then threw a foot or so of dirt on top of the reeds and sloped the dirt so the roof would drain and Voila’! they had a house! Certifiably Green Buildings! It doesn’t get any greener than that.

Because glass was an unknown commodity in those early days, the houses had only a few small window and door openings that would be covered with blankets or wood shutters and doors. The corner or “kiva” fireplace that charms so many Santa Fe visitors was the main heat source in most of these primitive abodes. The floors were made of the same adobe mud that the bricks were made from and legend has it that ox blood was used as a floor sealer! Adobe dirt was also used as a plaster mix for both interior and exterior walls. Planting beds were not allowed around the base of the walls because rain and snow would melt the mud plaster which would run to the bottom of the exterior walls. When the adobe bricks were exposed through the mud plaster it was time to re-plaster the walls. The women of the community were traditionally the plasterers, so they would take melted mud at the bottom of the walls, mix it with a little water to get that perfect plaster consistency, and just smear it back on the walls again. You can see how the old Santa Fe adobe houses became so sculptural with age. Adobe is very forgiving material; you can just add water and it becomes malleable. Of course, that’s the downside to adobe as well: it melts when it rains or snows. The climate of the Northern New Mexico, and for most of the desert Southwest for that matter, allowed for adobe houses because of low rainfall amounts. A little plaster touch-up every year or so would keep the underlying adobe bricks in good shape.

In modern times asphalt emulsion is added to the adobe bricks to add a certain amount of water resistance to them. It helps to preserve the integrity of the adobe bricks during the construction process, before they are plastered, and to resist moisture if the exterior plaster ever cracks, allowing moisture to penetrate the walls.

Green Stimulus package, February 18, 2009

AN $80 BILLION START

New York Times editorial
February 18, 2009

Wrapped inside the economic stimulus package is about $80 billion in spending, loan guarantees and tax incentives aimed at promoting energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, higher-mileage cars and coal that is truly clean. As a stand-alone measure, these investments would amount to the biggest energy bill in history.

As ambitious as this measure is, it should not be confused with a global warming bill. Dealing with climate change will require a much broader strategy, even larger federal investments in clean-energy technologies and an effort to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions to unlock private investment on an enormous scale. But this is a useful down payment, which could also help reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil.

Eighty-billion dollars is still a lot of money. And the federal agencies overseeing its disbursement must provide strong regulation and firm guidance to ensure that it is spent wisely. Money invested in a modern electricity grid, for instance, will have been badly spent if it is used merely to build transmission towers to move energy from old coal-fired power plants. It will be well spent if it helps move clean energy, such as wind and solar power, from, say, Texas, to distant cities that need it.

That is just one of many provisions that will bear close watching as the money flows to states, cities and businesses. Here are some of the most important ones.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY Homes and buildings soak up 40 percent of the energy generated in this country — more than vehicles. Of the $25 billion provided for energy efficiency, more than half is aimed at helping low-income families weatherize one million homes and helping governments at all levels retrofit public buildings.

RENEWABLE ENERGY In addition to new money for research into alternative fuels, the measure provides roughly $20 billion in tax incentives for wind, solar, hydroelectric and other renewable power sources. These incentives, which are crucial for future development, were the subject of endless Congressional bickering last year, and it is heartening to see them enshrined in law.

SMART GRID The measure invests $11 billion in grants and $6 billion in loans to modernize the electric grid and increase its capacity to deliver power generated by renewable sources. These programs will need especially careful oversight.

MASS TRANSIT Federal transportation spending has long favored highways over mass transit by a 4-to-1 margin, even though mass transit is far more effective in reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The package improves this ratio while providing $17.7 billion for mass transit, Amtrak and high-speed rail, nearly a 70 percent increase over present spending levels.

The package includes other potentially useful energy-related provisions: $2 billion in grants and loans for research into advanced car batteries, a tenfold increase over the existing program; and $3.4 billion to develop coal-fired power plants that can capture and store greenhouse gases, also a tenfold increase.

Much more will be required to fully address climate change and oil dependency. And President Obama promised much more in his campaign. But the stimulus package is a good beginning.