Henderson-based eco home builder hopes to expand practice to the nation

It’s easy to spend your whole life working toward owning a home, but now it’s possible to have your home work for you.

Owner and designer Aeron Tozier is set to complete the valley’s first G Home, 328 N. Lisbon St., this summer through his company, Global Living Systems.

Dubbed as a “charging station,” the two-story structure serves as an eco-friendly home that is scheduled to leave a zero-carbon footprint by using materials and resources that reduce energy consumption.

The house contains about 3,170 square feet of living space, including four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two studio spaces, a kitchen, a living room and a laundry room.

“This is more of a luxury version, and it costs about $100 per square foot as a do-it-yourself project,” Tozier said. “The 1,200-square-foot garage and its 600-square-foot storage space is not included in the living space or cost, so it’s like you’re getting all that for free.

“An average, single-level G Home may be 1,600 to 2,000 square feet, but it would cost about 40 percent less.”

The home is set to be “super insulated” with radiant heat barriers and rigid, spray and batt insulation. Tozier also plans to include thermal and photovoltaic solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and charging stations.

“We’re expecting to produce as much energy as we consume. In fact, we’d like to sell the energy back to the grid,” Tozier said. “It’s a home that will work for a family and their bills.”

By combining prefabricated components with standard construction, the home is designed as a do-it-yourself project.

“A single-level home can very easily be constructed by people who have never built a house, and it would probably take less time than this two-level home,” Tozier said. “They’d probably need the supervision of a general contractor, but yes, it’s very easy.”

Tozier’s first G Home was set to be built in Riverside, Calif., in 2007; however, the economy’s downturn put the project on hold.

“Although the prototype was never built, we did full engineering and testing on the design, and it achieved 56.3 percent over-compliance to the national energy efficiency standards,” Tozier said. “California’s codes are even stricter than the national average, and we were still 44.7 percent over-compliance with their standards.”

In addition to his degree in architecture, Tozier also studied ecological design and construction process innovation for three years as a research scholar at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

“I became interested in this because I saw the general inefficiency of building,” he said. “I thought it was a very challenging thing to see where there could be innovations and improvement, especially in the ecological side of things.

“Through my research, I developed a set of 21 principles or guidelines and designed the (G Home) based on them.”

Tozier’s guidelines include “precision engineering, structural and material superiority for disaster resistance,” “ease of manufacturing and construction with modular prefabricated components” and “efficiency in renewable energy and natural resource conservation, collection, storage and use.”

“All these principles equal what I call justifiable aesthetics,” Tozier said. “What that means is that the form of the building is the result of its function. The function is to be efficient, save money and work for us. That’s what makes it beautiful.”

Henderson-based Scott Sanders Construction serves as Tozier’s consulting general contractor for the home. General Manager Matthew Byron said the company hopes to continue partnering with Tozier to create low-income housing using a similar design.

“The environmental benefits are not just for the resident but also for the city, state and country as a whole,” Byron said. “If everyone could lean toward this eco-friendly and energy-efficient building, it would create a ground swirl of positive movement.”

Once completed, Tozier plans to host eco-friendly educational and awareness events in the home.

“A lot of the residents have asked if this was a green or ecological home,” he said. “They already had this understanding that if it looks a little different, it probably has a good purpose. We’ve received a lot of good feedback from the community.

“The industry has been slow coming, but the trend for green building is growing.”

For more information, visit ghomelv.com.

To reach Henderson View reporter Caitlyn Belcher, email cbelcher@viewnews.com or call 702-383-0403. Find her on twitter: @caitlynbelcher.