Solar Homes Community In So California

Villages at Heritage Springs to Be Nations Biggest Solar Community

Listen to AEHQ’s interview with Bob Comstock CEO of Comstock Homes as he tells us all about this energy efficient housing development – Bob Comstock Interview

On May 28, Comstock Homes announced groundbreaking for a new solar community whose center and 511 homes will all sport solar panels on their roofs.

Comstock, which bills the project as the nation’s largest solar community, will begin work in June on the Villages at Heritage Springs, located near Santa Fe Springs, California, on land contiguous to an active oil field, 26 submersible wells of which will remain in operation.

It’s an odd but interesting juxtaposition of old and new power, with the homes featuring high-efficiency solar roof tiles and a wealth of other energy saving features, which will potentially reduce a homeowner’s utility costs by more than half. These include dual-pane, low-energy windows; high-efficiency heating and air conditioning; tankless, or on-demand, water heaters; energy-efficient lighting; and special cool-roof tiles.

The solar roof tiles will take up to a third, and as much as a half, of each unit’s roof, according to Bob Comstock, owner of Comstock Homes. The cost per unit is about $20,000, but Comstock says the prices will remain competitive, with smaller homes beginning at about $500,000 and going up to $750,000. The Villages is also offering various configurations: traditional, free-standing units with garages, free-standing units with garages off an alley, and cluster homes of two and three stories with a central courtyard.

The Villages at Heritage will also include traditional townhomes from 1,300 square feet to 1,800 square feet (and about $350,000 per unit), as well as a private recreation area and community center with a pool, spa, barbecue pits, picnic area, playground and basketball court. The development is expected to be completed in 2010, and the solar roof tiles will provide at least one-third of the energy needed to run the center.

Comstock has partnered with San Jose, California-based SunPower, which will install its patented SunTile solar roof tiles on each of the single-family homes and the community center. SunTiles form a roof-integrated solar electric system via what SunPower calls ‘the world’s most efficient solar cell’. The SunTiles not only replace traditional roofing materials, but lower installation time compared to standard solar panels and provide an integrated solar roof system that is aesthetically pleasing. SunPower’s high-efficiency solar cells and panels reportedly deliver up to 50 percent more power per unit area than conventional solar technologies, and do so via an attractive, all-black façade.

Though Comstock is calling its Villages the nation’s largest solar community, that prize may already have been won by Lennar Corp., whose 650-home Roseville, California development also features SunTile roofs through SunPower’s subsidiary, PowerLight Corp.

As for environmentally friendly development, the Villages is competing against Clayton Homes, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based manufactured and modular home builder whose newest model, the eco-friendly “i-house” is Energy Star-rated and offers at least 30 percent more energy efficiency than a traditional, “stick-built” home, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.

These homes, which represent a paradigm in manufactured housing, feature solar panels, a rainwater collection system, high-end “low-e” windows, an on-demand water heater, low-flow faucets, renewable-resource bamboo flooring, and a host of other “green” features.

Forty years ago, who would have dreamed that mobile homes would have solar roofs? But today’s mobiles, or manufactured units, are keeping up with the times, which – in the face of rising energy costs, dependence on foreign oil, and rapidly increasing global warming – will need to increasingly depend on renewable energy platforms like solar if the planet is to survive as a habitable location.