I got into house design because of a failure. We tried to take five large houses at a golf course in Hurricane, Utah off the grid and couldn't fit enough solar and battery to do it. The houses were designed wrong for it, and no amount of equipment fixes that. Since then the house, the HVAC and the power system get designed together.
What we've built
- Solar and battery systems for 40-some homes.
- Nine off-grid houses designed and built, from a cabin on Kolob Mountain to family homes with their own wells. A tenth, a house with a pool on a mountain in San Diego, is under construction and was cheaper off-grid than bringing the power line in.
- Five off-grid water systems, from single-house wells to a 300 gpm system with two municipal-grade wells sized for a town of 200 houses.
- Solar-only pumping systems that run 40 HP wells at 230 to 250 gpm with no batteries, and a 3,000 sq ft rec center with 24 tons of HVAC on the same site.
- A 300 kW grid-tied farm system, and the design of a 150-home off-grid subdivision: power, water and filtration for the whole site.
- Some things that went badly, including a ten-unit tiny-home rental on solar. Those get written up too.
Where
We build in Utah, Southern Nevada and Northern Arizona. I consult on houses anywhere in the US by video call.
Elsewhere
Battery Builds on YouTube · Substack · alan@sunhomes.io