A Greener Gallup
Guest home built to be environmentally friendly

Robert Chavez and Chris Chavez hand a section of metal roofing up to Jayson Tom on Wednesday as they work on an energy-efficient house near the University of New Mexico-Gallup. The 872-square-foot home will feature energy-saving items such as radiant heat sub-floors, south-facing windows for passive solar heating and a gray water and rain water storage system for irrigating plants. [Photo by Jeffery Jones/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — There's nothing especially unusual looking about the guest house going up behind 1825 Milda Ave., nothing except maybe the sharp slant of the split metal roof. Tucked away at the end of a winding road less than a mile southeast of the University of New Mexico's Gallup campus, it should fit right in with the rest of the neighborhood once stuccoed to meet local zoning standards.

But a look inside, even with a month's worth of work to do, reveals a house that's anything but typical for Gallup. When finished, it might just end up being the "greenest" house in town.

When the Burgess' set out to build a guest house behind their home, they knew they wanted something a little different. As the owners of a wellness business, helping to bring "healthy water, air and nutritionals" into people's homes, they were concerned with more than just the economic costs of the project.

"We're very committed to not impacting the Earth any more than we have to," said Pam Burgess, "so going green worked well with those goals."

But finding the right people for the job wasn't easy. Burgess figures she must have approached just about every builder in town until a UNM-Gallup student finally referred her to Chris Chavez, an instructor at the branch. Chavez and wife Keegan Mackenzie opened a design firm here, Shelter + Design, three years ago.

Mackenzie, a certified architect, designed the guest house. Chavez, a private contractor, is building it. They started laying the foundation in early November.

"What we're trying to do is 'low impact,' " Chavez said, "low impact to the environment, low impact to the site, low impact on materials."

To best appreciate what he's talking about, it actually helps that Chavez and his crew aren't finished yet. It's a chance to see the "green" guts of the house before it's lost beneath a conventional skin.

When The Independent showed up on site one cold morning, Chavez was busy hammering a long plastic tube into a coiling recess in the floor panels. While most homes rely on forced air for heating, he explained, the "radiant floor" will use hot water pumped through the tubes in a series of four loops. Because the heat comes from the floor, it will warm the house as it rises.

"Nobody's really doing this in town," he said.

And that's just the floor. They're using "structural insulated panels" for the walls.

From the side, each panel looks like a Styrofoam sandwich: two plywood boards with a piece of foam about five inches thick in the middle. Because the foam runs throughout the length and width of each panel, there's no wood to transmit cold from the outer board to the inside, Chavez said, as in a typical studded frame house.

The argon gas sealed in between the panels of the ample windows also helps keep the cold out. A "gray water system," meanwhile, collects bath, laundry and rain water for irrigation. They've also put the roof to work, using material that reflects 20 percent less sunlight back into the atmosphere than most. They've even built the roof in an ideal position for a photo-voltaic cell, if the Burgess' ever chose to add one.

Yet for all its novelties, this guest house has actually proven easier to build than most.

"If it was the three of us, it would probably take us a week, a week-and-a-half, to frame," Chavez said.

Working with the foam-filled panels, they had the walls and roof up in four days. Ordered to exact specifications from the manufacturer, the panels fit together like giant pieces in a house-size puzzle.

All that innovation will cost you, however.

"It runs about 10 percent more on materials, but my labor costs get cut down one third to two thirds," Chavez said, depending on the size of the project.

The Burgess' also expect to come out on top eventually thanks to what they'll save on utilities. If they can get the house Energy Star certified by the federal government, it will be at least 50 percent more energy efficient than normal.

"Over the long run it's definitely going to save money," Burgess said.

But because it's all so new combining the various "green" and "low impact" components into a complimentary whole no one knows exactly how much.

"This is sort of an experiment," Chavez said. "It's new stuff for all of us."

In any case, it's about more than saving money, he added: "It's the fact that you feel you're doing something good for the environment."