And what's the impact of that passion for Fuller's principles and designs?

"Well," Chalom said, "I'm not afraid of technology."

DiJanni has used trombe walls for more than 20 years. "You tried to use patio-door glass, the standard size, so in my home we had a couple of trombe walls that were about three feet wide and seven or eight feet tall. I used 12-inch, concrete-filled concrete block behind those panels and those worked incredibly well."

DiJanni has been in business for more than three decades in the Santa Fe area. "My company [Custom Homes by John DiJanni] has always gone for south-side solar gain and we've always built very tight homes with extra insulation, but the Bechtol house has just taken the whole concept to the nth degree," he said.

Asked if building "green" or sustainably has long been a priority, he said, "When we first got into it, building solar homes in the late 1970s, it wasn't labeled green. I do hope this trend continues. It seems like with the new administration coming in, there will be a big emphasis on green building."

The builder lamented that the incentives for owners to do passive-solar design waned after the 1970s. "At the time, there were very favorable state and federal tax credits and once those expired and energy was cheap, the public moved toward bigger homes and more amenities."

In written materials about the Bechtold project, Chalom notes that the desire was for a house that relied primarily on the sun to provide lighting and the majority of the heating load. The orientation was chosen to maximize passive-solar heating in winter and to take advantage of the natural prevailing wind direction to provide cooling and ventilation.

"We bought the lot in 1997, but we had talked to Mark before that," Bechtold said. They looked at the advantages of walls made from insulating concrete forms such as Rastra, as well as adobe and adobe/frame. They decided on the latter, using adobe to provide thermal mass inside the house and wood-frame exterior walls insulated both with continuous rigid foam and blown-in icynene.

Electricity and gas are saved through the use of solar panels to heat water for the house. Small photovoltaic panels drive the pump for the heat-transfer solution in the solar hot-water panels.

Water conservation was another imperative for Bechtold, Chalom, and DiJanni. All rainwater from the roof is directed to a buried, 10,000-gallon cistern; this is primarily used to flush the toilets. Landscaping plants are watered with household wastewater treated with aerobic-digester technology.

The use of local adobes and locally built cabinets and doors aided the Santa Fe economy and cut material-transportation costs.