Green Boulder Real Estate From Solar Village

solar village buildingI had another opportunity to visit with Alex Platt, the architect and owner of Solar Village, and this time I got to get a tour of his Built Green project at Prospect New Town in Longmont.

energy storageOne of the things I was really impressed with is the tremendous time and energy Alex and his team spent on engineering the different systems so that everything worked well to assure both energy savings, cost savings to homeowners, and comfort to the homeowners and occupants at the project at Prospect’s Solar Village community.

back up water heatingsolar village exteriorStarting with active solar energy collection panels moving water through a large storage tank to supply both domestic and heating water, to the instant delivery hot water heaters for back up (code required them to have two of these but it seems that only one of them ever kicks in and rarely at that since the system works so efficiently) the systems are alternative energy engineering at its finest it seems.

The balancing act the crew pulled off seems really exceptional and as it turns out incredibly reliable and efficient.

solar village windowssolar villageAs well, the Solar Village property is well thought out architecturally on a number of fronts. The way the entry to each home is set up to give the homeowner a sense of personal space is quite nicely done.

The attention to details on the placement of windows and the interplay of light in the living spaces work quite well with the management of heat gain on south facing walls and surfaces.

solar village exteriorAn interesting feature that may not be obvious in the photo at left is the planter with the tree. This is a second story deck. The planter is connected to the earth all the way through the vertical shaft. There’s tree to earth connection. The structure of the shaft of the planter is even an integral part of the stabilization strategy of the building.

As usual, Alex was delightfully pleasant and truly informative. I even asked about the old building that’s been sitting to the south of the project for a long, long time. He had an interesting story to tell involving some historic and even perhaps folkloric info…and I’ll look at covering that in another post.

For a look at the floor plans at Solar Village you can follow the link.

February 2, 2008 | Filed Under Longmont, CO 

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