First-time homebuyers with low or moderate incomes have an opportunity now to buy homes that generate nearly all their own electricity. Applications are being taken until May 1 for a lottery that will choose owners for 10 newly built homes in the Wisdom Way Solar Village in Greenfield. Priced at $110,000 to $240,000 depending on size, the houses all have solar-powered electricity and hot water (with a backup on-demand water heater for long cloudy spells) and a no-furnace heating system that circulates air from a first-floor heater through the rest of the house.
To keep the heat in, the homes have 12-inch-deep walls filled with dense-packed fireproof cellulose insulation, made by a Belchertown company from recycled newspapers (the hardwood flooring is also locally produced; it comes from Massachusetts Woodlands Cooperative in South Deerfield). Each house has a southerly exposure and high-performance windows to maximize solar heat in its interior. These houses use only 7 to 17 percent of the energy consumed by a conventional house built to code.
The Village, which consists of 20 homes in 10 duplexes, is located just over a mile from the center of Greenfield. It has been created on a cluster development model, so there is an acre of open land for play space, community gardens or whatever use the homeowners' association decides on. Two of the houses are completely handicapped-accessible; Rural Development, Inc., the builder of the Village, will continue to own them and rent them to people with disabilities. All the houses are accessible for visits by people in wheelchairs.
The Wisdom Way Solar Village finds its place in a growing trend to build, not just individual homes with solar and/or geothermal options, but whole subdivisions using alternative power sources. From the highly publicized Drake Landing Solar Community in Alberta (Canada) to No Name Key in Florida, from California to Maine, subdivisions built with solar power and varying degrees of energy self-sufficiency have become more numerous since 2000.
For more information about the lottery for houses in the Solar Village, check www.ruraldevelopmentinc.org/lottery or email gforbes@fcrhra.org. Tours of the houses are offered each Thursday from 5 to 6 p.m.; to preregister, email gforbes@fcrhra.org or call 413-863-9781, ext. 141.
