The solar panel electrical cable was roughed in last week and is wired in through the attic (4 gauge wiring). This wire carries all the energy collected from the solar panels to a central system. From there, the solar power is routed back to each unit as needed.

zHome generates solar power to offset the units’ energy use, so this is an exciting step for zHome!

Nick holding the solar panel cable

Started sheetrocking over the weekend – the units look terrific!

These are photos of the Stewardship Center. 

This is from mid December – we’re coming along! zHome has the green roofs (of course) on the right side of the photo.

Here’s some photos of zHome as the siding goes on – it is a great looking project!

Site produced art! FSC certified wood!

Here is some video of our roofs – the PV’s will cover them!

Roofs go up – photovoltaic panels go here. from zHome on Vimeo.

One of our homes will be used as a Stewardship Center for educating the public and professionals about sustainable building.  Here is some video of Nick Nied discussing the Stewardship Center shell and the high performance heating system running into it.

Stewardship Center construction update from zHome on Vimeo.

Nick Nied, Ichijo USA, talks about panel installation on zHome from zHome on Vimeo.

This is some video I neglected to add in November – Nick talking about panel installation.

Here is a photo of our purple rainwater pipe.  We are collecting our roof runoff into 1,700 gallon cisterns in each unit.  In addition to the normal blue and red pex tubing for cold and hot water, we have purple pipe which denotes it is non-potable water.  We are plumbing this into the homes, where it will be used for clothes washing and toilet flushing.  Why waste perfectly good water?