Home Sweet Home

Before coming to New Mexico, Peter had been deeply involved in the prewar Decentralist movement and wrote extensively on a variety of related subjects, including the small-scale biotechnic theory, which advocates the redistribution of population into smaller, more humane, and more efficient communities.

He dropped out of architectural school because he felt that what was being taught was not relevant to the urgent problems of the near future. (He doesn’t think the situation has changed much in the last forty-seven years.) He lived for several years aboard his ketch, and then during his first homesteading venture on the borders of the Everglades in southern Florida he fabricated and erected solar water heaters.

When he and Florence migrated to New Mexico, their philosophy began to solidify. In north-central New Mexico the van Dressers have evolved a life-style that has enabled them to integrate their lives with the environment. Their adopted home is the quiet community of El Rito. Here they have tried to work constructively with the local people and with government agencies, but, more importantly, they have set an example of how people can become self-reliant within the constraints placed on them by the community and the environment. A small village restaurant (which was recently sold), an energy-conserving house, and a small cooperative farm outside El Rito have all demonstrated the message.

To the van Dressers, solar application is but one approach to redesigning our lives on a more human scale. They feel that we must also develop local and regional autonomy so we can create communities with logistical patterns that enable people to live well while using much less energy. Social changes must occur, but in an evolutionary, nontraumatic way. If this type of transformation is to be realized, it must begin at the periphery and then blend into the mainstream of society.

According to most records, the van Dressers own the second- oldest continuously-heated solar house in the United States (George Lof of Denver has the oldest). Peter retrofitted an adobe building in the old section of Santa Fe into a respectable solar home. The building’s long axis ran north and south—the wrong way for the most efficient sun gathering. It is rather difficult to reorient a building, so Peter adapted the building to the situation. Two air- type collector panels, totaling 21 square meters (230 square feet), were installed on the south-facing roof sections at 45-degree angles. Actually, solar panels can be inclined on an existing flat adobe roof simply by cementing more brick at the desired angle. The collectors are glazed with a single layer of glass that rests 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) above a black painted sheet of heat-absorbing steel. The two sets of collectors each heat a different part of the 58-square-meter (630-square-foot) single-story dwelling. The larger collector to the north serves the living area by two 13-centimeter (5-inch) ducts that run from the collector to a sand pit under the brick floor. Through this 30-centimeter (12-inch) thick layer of sand, 7.5-centimeter (3-inch) horizontal pipes on 40-centimeter (16-inch) centers have been laid. These pipes infuse their heat into the sand, ¹from which the heat is reradiated back into the house. The 80-watt blowers direct the air from the collectors to the pipes in the sand. The south end of the pipes discharges warm air directly into the room.

The smaller collector to the south works the same way to heat the kitchen and bathroom. The hot air is blown into a pit of stones 2 centimeters (3.12 inches) in diameter. The stone pit is insulated with pumice blocks. An air-to-water heat exchanger in this duct also heats water for domestic use. The blowers run only when the differential thermostat notes about a 7° C. (12° F.) difference between the collector and the storage temperatures. In seventeen years of operation about 65 percent of all heating has been solar.

At present, Peter is drawing on his years of experience with solar energy to construct a larger house for himself and his wife in El Rito. This house is described in Homegrown Sundwellings, a book in which Peter sums up the results of two years of research and experimentation by the Sundwellings team, of which he was director-coordinator. The team was established to systematize the successful techniques for indigenous solar construction evolved in New Mexico and similar semiarid regions.

The Potrero de Abajo is a 20-hectare (50-acre) valley owned by the van Dressers and located 6.5 kilometers (3.5 miles) north of El Rito. Many of their early years in New Mexico were spent here. The Potrero has attracted a gathering of people seeking a community-scale, self-reliant life. Peter has long felt that the present generation of ecology-motivated counter-culturalists tends to overemphasize gadgetry (in which category he includes dome habitats, most wind and methane generators, a variety of solar-powered widgets, and the like). He hopes in Potrero the emphasis will be on the gradual development of the valley as an organic, ecologically managed productive whole characterized by careful management of land, water, and vegetation, microclimate modification, and efficient living quarters.

Individual reasons for advocating people-scale technology vary from a savior self-image to just plain self-fulfillment. Throughout this country there is a new zeal for finding a way of life more in harmony with nature.

Briefly, the Potrero (still in the embryonic stage, considering its long-term objectives) has extensive garden plots that are refurbished by compost, animal manure, and crop rotation. The community also has a solar crop-dryer to preserve the produce for later consumption. A large greenhouse of adobe and local wood has extended the growing season and may help in heating the house. A windmill pumps the valley’s irrigation, drinking, and bathing water. An outdoor solar shower, suitable for this particular situation, is used in the summertime, and a solar-warmed composting toilet is near completion. In the future wind-electric or other appropriate units of technology will no doubt contribute to the advancement of this community.

The Potrero de Abajo community is really attempting to reestablish a relationship with nature we had thought lost forever. The old villages of the Southwest were constructed around the acequia madre—the mother ditch. Water was the lifeblood of the village, and the ditch was the artery of conveyance. Given the technology of the day, no one could move far from the acequia madre, so each community was a close-knit group of people working to make the locality supply all their needs.

Super technology has all but destroyed the small community, and we are reaching the point of diminishing returns in mass living. Peter van Dresser has studied the modern laws and institutions that are expediting the destruction of traditional communities rather than helping them innovate for the future.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Solar Pioneers

• Outdoor bathing
• Heating the Pool
• The cool home
• The energy-efficient home continue...
• Put into Action: Home Solar systems
• Home Fuel and Power, Get rid of oil crisis
• Home Energy Conservation continue...
• Natural living spaces
• Home Energy Conservation
• Interior Lighting Design, bring Lights into Your House