Las Manos - A Very "Green" House

From the very beginning of our planning for Las Manos, we knew we wanted to create a Green home and business. By utilizing as many environmentally friendly products and sustainable building techniques as possible, we have achieved so much toward that goal. It is our pleasure to offer Las Manos Bed and Breakfast as an exciting and unique alternative to conventional hotel accommodations.

SUPER-INSULATION
We researched many styles of green building and chose strawbale because of its high insulation value, (R50), its low cost and the fact that straw is a local renewable resource. Our ceilings are insulated with R50 recycled blown-in cellulose from old newspapers.

PASSIVE SOLAR
Our architect, Pamm McFadden of Boulder Colorado, designed our home to a very effective passive solar building, with large south facing windows, and few north and west facing ones.

RESOURCE-REUSE
During the pre-building phase, we found a source of used windows and obtained them for all of our openable windows. We resourced some very unique architectural items such as headboards, a chandelier and our living room furniture, saving them from the landfill and not only saving money, but considerable resources.

SOLAR AND WIND GENERATED ELECTRICITY
Just prior to building, we setup a 1400 watt solar panel array and a solar shed with 16 L16 batteries and a Trace inverter. As a supplement to our solar array, we also have a 1000 watt Whisper wind generator which supplies up to 50% of our electrical needs. We generate all of our own electricity.

LOCALLY OBTAINED MATERIALS
Our interior walls and two of our floors are adobe, made from over 45 tons of earth dug up from our front yard.

SUSTAINABLY HARVESTED TIMBER
The logs for porch/ramada were locally harvested from standing-dead blue-stain/beetle-kill pine as was all of the wood for our wooden floors, doors and cabinets.

ACTIVE SOLAR WATER HEATING
Our hot water is preheated by an active solar collector, and piped to a 50 gallon storage tank prior to being heated by a Takagi on-demand hot water heater.

RECYCLING
Chaffee County Recycles, Buena Vista's local organization, provides facilities where we recycle glass, plastic, cardboard, tin and aluminum cans, news and office paper and magazines.

ENERGY SAVING
We dry all of our laundry outside on clothes-lines….also known as “solar/wind clothes dryers”. All of our light bulbs are mini fluorescents which save up to 80% on our demand.

"What a wonderful home to be in, and you two are great to be with. You've built such an interesting and comfortable place." Randy and Jacquie Feb 07