LEADING BUILDERS Recognizing leadership in home building KEY FEATURES
> Tucson Electric Power five-year heating and cooling guarantee for a $1.26 average heating and cooling cost per day
> 1.6 kW BP solar photovoltaic system > Copperheart solar hot water collector > Seisco tankless water heater > 2” rigid R-13 insulation on roof
> 1½” rigid polyisocyanuratewall insulation (R-9.7)
> Argon-filled Milgard dual-pane windows with 0.31 U-value and Suncoat low-e2 glass
> New Trane XL 19/17.6-SEER high-efficiency heat pump
> Programmable thermostat > Ceiling fan with CFL lights
The remodeled home retained the historic landscaping with plants and ground cover that require minimum irrigation.
BUILDER PROFILE Sign of the Times
Tuscon builder goes from leading builder to leading remodeler. By Stacy Hunt
John Wesley Miller Companies, a Building America partner and renowned Tucson-area builder, has earned Tucson Electric Power’s first heating and cooling guarantee for a home remodel. Miller overhauled a 47-year-old, 2,000-square-foot adobe home, dramatically improving its energy performance and slashing heating and cooling costs by 75%. Under Tucson Electric Power’s utility guarantee program, this home is guaranteed to
have heating or cooling bills for five years that do not exceed $1.26 a day (on average), which demonstrates significant efficiency in a climate where the average summer temperature is 100 F.
“We modeled all of our remodeling [at this home] after what we have done at our Armory Park Del Sol development in Tucson,” says Miller. At Armory Park, Miller teamed with the U.S. Department of Energy and its Building America teams to design a development of highly efficient solar homes, including one of the first true zero-energy homes in the country. The remodeled burnt adobe home at 3002 East Hawthorne Street is located near the
University of Arizona in the Sam Hughes area, which is a neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places. When remodeled, the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home kept the original home footprint with the exception of a new two-car garage. Miller said that the remodeled home reaches energy savings of 66% to 75% compared with the original. Miller had two personal motivations for purchasing and remodeling the house.
“House building is dead, and I want to keep my guys busy,” he says. “We have a very specialized crew of subcontractors and our own people. I have another bias: It is only a block and a half from where I live. The home has been rented to university students for
> Builder: John Wesley Miller Companies > Location: Tucson > Founded: 1956 > Featured project: Retrofit of one adobe home in historic Sam Hughes neighborhood
> Number of units: One home: three bedroom, two bath, one office
> Square footage: 1,990 square feet on 0.206 acres
> Rehab cost: $100,000
10–15 years. It was a real eye sore. In all respects—environmentally, property values, historical character—it was an opportunity to turn this house around completely.”
Conservation First Miller believes that by beginning with improvements to the building envelope, that you reduce the need for energy significantly. “We started with an old adobe house
that was very energy inefficient. The biggest thing we did was to put the insulation on the outside of the adobe so that the masonry structure becomes a storage system for the warmth and the cold,” says Miller. The home’s thick adobe walls had
July > August 2010 GreenBuilder 49
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