Photo by SRP

These now graying homes made us feel more at home with being green.

They helped us cozy up to concepts such as smart design, sustainability and the “three Rs” of environmental responsibility: reduce, recycle, reuse.

In many ways, they opened doors to the future.

Sponsored by the state’s two largest utility companies, Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project, two project homes built during the last quarter of the 20th century demonstrated energy-saving procedures and technologies that are saving 21st-century consumers money – and helping save our environment. During the 1990s, in particular, these designs appeared not only here in the Valley but throughout the United States and Canada.

The House of the Future, built in 1980 by SRP in Ahwatukee, and the Environmental Showcase Home, built in 1994 by APS in northeast Phoenix, helped paint “green” into the general consciousness of Valley homebuyers, builders and architects.

“The purpose of the Environmental Showcase Home was to prove what was possible,” says Ed Fox, vice president and chief sustainability officer for APS, the state’s largest and longest-serving electric utility. “The home was part of the awakening consciousness that environmentalism was part of the future.”

Similarly, the House of the Future helped foster green awareness in the Valley, says Lori Singleton, manager for sustainability initiatives and technology at SRP, the largest provider of power and water to the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

“More than in the past, homebuyers have been much more aware of the kinds of technologies demonstrated in the home,” she adds.

The Environmental Showcase Home was built by Homes & Sons and designed by Eddie Jones, a principal of Phoenix-based Jones Studio. The project was both an idealistic and economic experiment among APS, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the Arizona Department of Commerce’s Energy Office, Arizona State University and the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona.

The four-bedroom, three-bath home abundantly showcased energy-smart design procedures and products: passive and active energy systems; water conservation; environmentally sensitive building materials and resource efficiency; energy-efficient windows; and improved indoor air quality. It was “a one-stop shopping mall for consumers and homebuilders,” says Brent Gifford, APS’s project manager at the time.

Materials in the 2,640-square-foot ranch-style home included carpeting made from recycled soft-drink bottles, kitchen tiles made from Tennessee marble chips and bathroom tiles made from recycled windshields. Similarly, the design team designated engineered lumber such as finger-jointed wood studs and Parallam, a composite wood product, for some of the wood-framing needs. To further minimize wood use, the home also used Integra block, an insulated masonry product.

Flyash, a residue from burning coal, replaced about 25 percent of the home’s concrete. Since concrete requires a lot of energy to produce, the flyash reduced the home’s impact on the community’s power demands.

Technologies included solar roof panels and a high-efficiency heat pump with a then-high SEER rating of 14. The Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio measures the efficiency of consumer central air-conditioning systems.

In addition, products such as low-flow toilets and faucets reduced water use, as did the gray-water irrigation system and rainwater collection cisterns. Argon gas-filled, dual-pane windows minimized winter heat loss and summer heat gain.

Even the orientation of the home, with the long sides facing north and south, showed that design savvy could influence energy efficiency. Along the north side, for example, clerestory windows suffused the home with light. The Jones Studio ensured that light was everywhere – even in closets – to maximize daylight and reduce energy drains.

In October 2000, APS donated the home to Arizona State University and the College of Architecture and Environmental Design. Before the home was sold to a private owner, more than 30,000 architects, designers, students and other consumers visited the house to learn about the options available for sustainable building design.

The SRP home was less aggressive but equally successful. Designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation at Taliesin West in Scottsdale and built by Presley Homes, the approximately 2,500-square-foot House of the Future was a partnership between SRP and Motorola. The home is now privately owned.

Prism shaped and earth-integrated, the solar-heated and -cooled house incorporated computer-aided environmental and security systems to monitor the energy use of its efficient appliances.

In addition, the home used lightweight insulating concrete walls as well as translucent panels that brought daylight into the home while protecting it from the sun’s intensity.

So if these project homes were so successful on the ground floor of environmental awareness, why aren’t more going up today?

“In short, because their possibility has become a reality,” Fox says. “There is simply no longer a need to show the available and practical application of these technologies. The ESH [Environmental Showcase Home] served the purpose for which it was designed.”

As a community, we’ve moved from demonstration to commercialization: Most of the products in the APS home are now standard in houses or at least available as home buying options.

While both project homes were considerably more expensive than similarly sized conventional houses of the time, they helped pioneer concepts readily available to today’s consumer.

“The APS House was great – a huge success,” says Valley architect Eddie Jones. “The APS home’s messages of sustainability, green [values] and environmental sensitivity are a part of the mainstream consciousness.”