The fanciest thing about Mark Bergman’s home is the backdrop:
Practically on his doorstep, the Santa Catalina Mountains soar
magnificently toward the sky, their peaks shimmering in a midmorning
haze.

Few of man’s creations can compete with that. But what the Bergman
home has achieved is a simple elegance that belies one of the
region’s most remarkably advanced dwellings.

This warm and lovely house runs terrifically on a shoestring, and
it’s built with a low-maintenance bent that would make most of us green
with envy.

It doesn’t hurt that Bergman is an architectural designer, or that
he wanted to prove a few things when he started building this home for
his family a few years ago. Judge his effort for yourself on the annual
Tucson Innovative Home Tour/Tucson Solar Tour. Each year, this
well-organized excursion highlights the best and brightest in energy
efficiency, featuring 20 beautifully clever dwellings, along with a
bevy of experts and the “Next Generation Home Seminar.”

Of course, sometimes innovation involves getting right down into the
gristle of what makes our lives better—sans the excessive gadgets
and technical wizardry. For instance, consider how the Bergman home was
designed to maximize a sense of openness within its 2,200 square feet.
“The house is basically one big room, with some small bedrooms,” says
Mark Bergman. “We have very small kids’ bedrooms, and it’s all open
through my office. My idea was just to keep the family together,
instead of everybody hiding out in their rooms.”

Nor will you find this dad spending all of his family time keeping
up on repairs. The house is as close to maintenance-free as you can
get. Except for the trim, there’s no wood to dry and warp in the desert
heat. The heating and cooling system relies on water piped under the
gorgeous, acid-stained concrete floor. That same water is then used for
all household functions, from washing dishes to watering the fruit
trees out back.

Bergman didn’t just stumble onto these clever ideas, either. The
longtime builder and designer has actually spent years honing concepts
of what works and what does not. The result is a home that includes
high thermal mass, super insulation, geothermal cooling and solar
heating. The framing is steel, while the walls are constructed from
“tridipanels.” This state-of-the-art product features insulation
sandwiched between rebar, which is then sealed with concrete once the
walls are in place.

None of this is rocket science. But it doesn’t need to be. “I was
driven (by wanting) a long-term home that would cost less to operate,”
Bergman says. “I kind of drew from old-school technology—the old
thermal-mass adobe houses from before people had air conditioning, and
the cooling courtyard effect that’s used so much in Mexico.”

Its efficiency is perfectly coupled with aesthetics. The home is
sunny and cheerful, with 15-foot-high ceilings in the living room and
kitchen. Rustic doors of knotty, rough-cut alder open onto the
courtyard, which is recessed in cool shadow. The interior walls are
painted in burnt-orange-tinted roof coating. “That’s why I’ll never
have to paint the house again,” Bergman says.

Paul Huddy, who heads the Solar Institute, calls this “one of the
most advanced and well-thought-out homes of its kind in Southern
Arizona. It makes good, practical, cost-effective use of many of the
best new advances in design and construction.”

In fact, Huddy expects to see many more of these high-concept homes
during what he considers a golden period for advanced, energy-efficient
designs. Why the optimism? Because mainstream builders are now
embracing many of the concepts pioneered by Bergman and other
cutting-edge designers—a breakthrough popularized by the U.S.
Green Building Council’s certification program called Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. Considered the gold standard
for sustainable building, the system provides intensive design guidance
and helps promote green building.

“It’s a way to motivate builders,” Huddy says. “They get gold stars
and silver stars and platinum stars. Being a national program, it gives
them some claim to accomplishment” and can be a marketing tool.

Huddy also notes Pima County’s “pioneering work” in promoting
sustainable design. “They are one of the first local jurisdictions in
the country to create their own local building energy-rating system,”
he says. “And it’s the first local jurisdiction in the entire country
to be accredited by the U.S. Green Building Council to perform LEED
building ratings.”

According to Huddy, more than 700 residences registered with the
county program within the last year alone.

Locally, it’s easy to understand why people are turning toward green
homes: Each year, metro Tucson uses more than $1 billion in energy,
equal to about 10 percent of our gross local product. But energy costs
for green homes are often 75 percent below their traditional
counterparts.

You’ll see various green approaches on the tour, which, along with
the Bergman home, will feature an “Earthship” design made famous by the
late actor Dennis Weaver; a home constructed from aerated concrete that
uses a sophisticated rainwater-harvesting system to fill its swimming
pool; a top-notch, straw-bale bed and breakfast that garnered “Best
Eco-Friendly Accommodation” honors from Arizona Highways magazine; and a new rammed-earth home where visitors will also be able
to see walls under construction.

Back at the Bergman home, Mark is standing out in his cool, recessed
courtyard. We’ve seen the system that sends water coursing beneath the
floor to heat and cool the rooms, the deep-brown concrete floor that
requires almost zero maintenance, and the charming side room, warmed by
the sun, that’s become a nursery for the family’s new baby.

Now we’re just enjoying this quiet hideaway. Bergman glances around
what he calls his “summer porch.” That would make the porch on the
south his “winter porch,” and today, it comes complete with a friendly,
100-pound Rottweiler and the remarkable view. Just down the hill are
fruit trees that relish all the water that’s already coursed through
the floor of his house.

This is integration at its best. Bergman grins and glances over his
shoulder. “Every bit of water I use,” he says, “is actually cooling my
house as we speak.”

Cool indeed.

This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2009.