Real Arizona Blog

Summer Monsoons here in Arizona are to be enjoyed by all... well almost all. The summer monsoons that affect specific areas of the globe can be quite devastating and if you live or travel in flood prone areas, watch out. Here in Southern Arizona we have major advantages of an educated public and Storm Alerts that help us all plan for possible flooding. In India & Bangladesh millions of people are affected this year by monsoon floods. This Reuters news video of the effects on flooding in India show just how fortunate we are in this region.

Pima County has a Flood Alert website that I use to check for rainfall over the last 24 hours to see if I need to take care about river and stream crossings. Since I drive through the Santa Cruz River in Tumacacori it is best to check to see the likelyhood of having to drive south and cross the bridge in Rio Rico. For this I use the USGS Real-Time Water Data site for seeing the actual flow and this will give me a measure of the cubic feet per second running where I want to cross the Santa Cruz. If it looks higher than normal, I don't even get off the Highway in Tubac and go straight to Rio Rico. Most locals here in Southern Arizona pay attention to the river & stream crossings but if you are visiting, you may not know to be careful.

Tubac is in the area called the "upper Santa Cruz valley" and we who live here are in the "upper reaches" of the Santa Cruz river drainage. A little known fact is that the Santa Cruz River has its headwaters in the San Rafael valley in Arizona but flows southward into Mexico before turning north and flowing back into Arizona. This Santa Cruz River Map from the Friends of the Santa Cruz River shows the river's upper reaches. What it doesn't show is the many tributary streams that feed into the river and add water to the basin. I have one such tributary stream crossing my property on Salero Ranch that feeds into Bond Canyon Creek which in turn flows into the Josephine Creek. Josephine is the main drainage from the south side of the Santa Rita mountains and is a primary tributary for the upper Santa Cruz.

Map courtesy of the Sonoran Institute

Blog Post 7-7-07

It was just yesterday that our region experienced an early invasion of moisture from the summer "Mexican" monsoon. This is one of the best seasons we have in the Desert Southwest around Tucson and Tubac Arizona. Moisture... what a welcome after months of dry & hot sunny weather. I hiked up the hill behind my home on Salero Ranch this morning and the grass I walked through was notably softer than the crunchy grasses I've been hiking through this last month. Moisture has a distinct feel that is somewhat uncommon here in Southeastern Arizona and it is not until the monsoon season that we get to experience any humidity at all.

The first monsoon rain coincided with my visit to a development in Tucson done by John Wesley Miller called Armory Park Del Sol. He is a noted and award winning pioneer in the creation of "net zero" energy homes in the US and concentrates his development projects in the Tucson metro area. He has still a few homes remaining for sale in this development and if you are interested check out the website www.armoryparkdelsol.com and give me a call about it. I am happy to promote sustainable developments that I feel have distinction and merit. They are unfortunately all too rare in this region.

Anyway, what I went to focus on was Rain Water Harvesting as currently being done by a developer of single family homes. I have an idea to harvest some of my roof rain water runoff to use for irrigation of some plants and trees around my home on Salero Ranch so I wanted to see how John Wesley Miller company set it up. It should come as no surprise that as much as 40% of home water is used for this type of irrigation. It is of great benefit that the Tubac AZ community seems to be interested in harvesting rainwater and even some local developers and home builders are getting interested.

Here depicted is a diagram of a Rain Water Harvesting system which shows the basics. It is truly a simple system and one that can be designed into a new home or easily added to an existing home as long as the water coming off the roof can be diverted to a scupper or gutter downspout. Santa Cruz county is promoting this methodology as well on their website under flood control as Water Harvesting and Rain Gardens. It turns out that there are other advantages to partial collection of rain water that comes off our roof. It slows down the water so that it can infiltrate the ground and decrease erosion.

The clouds are building this afternoon and there is a 40% chance of rain.... time to get to working on the system.

Where we live, work and play is essential to our happiness according to studies done on commuting. So how do the experts interpret our happiness quotient with regard to commuting to and from our daily jobs. Well according to Nick Paumgarten in an article in the New Yorker Magazine titled There and Back Again there is apparently a correlation between how much time we spend commuting and how happy we are. Studies quoted by Paumgarten done in Texas show that of the activities rated by 900 Texas working women, commuting came in as the least enjoyable (sex came in first).

Apparently it is the "time" we give up and is lost that gives us so little satisfaction while commuting. Commuting deprives us of the opportunity to interact with our family, friends and colleagues in any type of social setting and thus isolates us from others. Some of us resort to bridging this vacancy by using our cell phones to talk to the friends and family we won't have the time to interact with once at home or at work. I make use of my cell phone to call my parents who welcome my calls and hear how things are going and I can find out how they are doing almost daily since they live on the east coast and I live in the desert southwest, worlds apart.

Frustration with the traffic has us also checking in with the radio to get updates on traffic reports in hopes not to get trapped in any snarls that we might be able to avoid. Frustration aligns with just trying to get there. I often think of how quickly we can get to places that 100 years ago would have been "a journey" verses a trip... we are indeed more "efficient", but maybe not any happier.

Planning for growth

Paumgarten goes into the concept planners use to work with communities, the "triangle" that planners imagine where points are 1. where you sleep 2. where you work and 3. where you shop. It is like a larger "kitchen triangle" with a cooking point, a sink and a refrigerator point and the goal is to have short sides to traverse for easy and efficient activity. Of course it is a lot easier when designing a kitchen with a small number of family members than to design an ideal community with many participants including working people, mothers with children, visitors and service traffic.

If you have ever attended a meeting hosted by a developer in the beginning stages of the "community outreach" segment of the project, you might have noticed a significant lack of what civil planners would refer to as the "big picture". This is due to the focused nature of development around metro areas. It is only when the community chimes in on how the development plan will affect the community and their lifestyle that the development planners start to see the project from another point of view.

Each development project once approved and built adds to the complexity of the community dynamic and of course to commuting traffic woes (or not). Development for residential housing is not bad, it does require a "big picture" view however, to assure that the new commuters added to the existing traffic flow won't ruin it for everyone.

For those of us living in outlying communities like the Arts Village of Tubac Arizona, we are not looking for a change back to what we escaped from. I think we are all hoping the wonderful picture won't change too soon.

Opportunity brought many people to Arizona as this desert land was colonized by peoples from Spain, Mexico and then eastern North America. They came for mining, ranching and agricultural enterprise and what they brought with each of them were methodologies to build their shelter.

Today we are fortunate to have a history and be able to witness the different ways people before us built their homes. We have such an advantage to learn from and maybe even work with "masters" who have become specialized in Desert Architecture.

An early contemporary who favored the desert environment for living and created living structures was Frank Lloyd Wright. I have been a member of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for a few years and have the goal of someday visiting all of the restored homes that are open to the public. So far, I have visited and love his monumental work at Taliesin West in Scottsdale. The integration of indoor and outdoor space creates an "environmental experience" of living within the desert in Arizona. Vernon Swaback is interviewed for a show on Arizona PBS and gives a short but insightful look at the making of Wright's Taliesin West.

 You can take a tour literally by clicking on this link to Great Buildings.com and get a preview of this wonderful campus of structures. It is a nice site but seems only to have very well know structures and architects represented, so you won't find Will Bruder or Rick Joy.

Looking toward another great month of mixed indoor and outdoor living in the Upper Sonoran desert has me reading about outdoor spaces, landscape design and outdoor rooms. This concept of integration of indoor and outdoor space has been in my thoughts lately as I start working toward designing such space at my home on the Salero Ranch.

Tucson Home integration of backyard oasis with porches off home and casita where French doors bring "outside in"

Actually since we built our home and moved in 2000 we have "dragged our feet" in getting the "landscaping done", and now I am so glad we waited. Once you have "lived with a place" for a while, you come to see it in a different light, quite literally. I have watched the seasons change, felt the warmth of the sunny south exposure and watched as the ocotillos flourish on that side of the home and noted the cool to cold north side of the house where the soil stays damp and shade predominates. This living with your home for a time before finishing (in the traditional sense) it doesn't fit the typical model for construction scheduling and timing move-in for new homes because there are both design/build packages and packaged expectations on the part of the owners. If your plans will allow for it, you will save 2 things by waiting to finish your home until later. First you will save money because you will have time to get designs and bids done in a more leisurely manner. Second, you will save time in what it might take to re-do or customise the already executed landscape plan that once lived with, is not actually what you would have wanted.

So as I have been reading I came across Steve Martino & Associates whose Landscape Architecture firm received the ASLA Professional Design award in 2006 for RESIDENTIAL DESIGN AWARD OF EXCELLENCE. This remodel of a home in Paradise Valley Arizona was clearly what the type of example I had been looking for to provide me with some inspiration for my own project.

Here is a link to an article that will be in my May Newsletter on Outdoor Rooms. It gives some perspective on how popular the trend is becoming as we spend more time around home as a nation. What is not mentioned that I feel is an additional reward, is that the assessor typically looks at "heated & cooled" areas to assess a homes square footage (covered porches are assessed but not at the same rate as heated living space). This is a way to not only enjoy the outdoors, but possibly save on real estate taxes as well since you would be adding "outdoor living space" vs "indoor living space".

Here is one vendor with packaged models for outdoor rooms. Fire Stone Outdoor Great Rooms.

Breezes vs Windy. It is an age old concern of many of us. I called a neighbor at the Salero Ranch who had been down from Phoenix for our annual Property Owners Association meeting on Saturday last and she told me she had left early for her return drive because of the windy conditions. If I had ever thought of that as being a factor for a drive I was going to make, I must have forgotten it. But she was right, Sunday was very windy at the ranch and she had a good point, why fight it?

When it comes to home design, there are ways to work with the indoor & outdoor space and professional designers & architects know how to gain the advantage when designing a project. It's not only wind but here in Arizona, it's the sun and solar orientation and sun angle through out the day that complicates a design. True to Arizona, as much time is spent in the outdoor spaces as indoors and this calls for some creative thinking.

An article in Sunset Magazine is linked here The meeting of indoors and out and it goes into the thoughts of a well respected Tucson Architect Paul Weiner. He has been working the outdoors in for many years with architecture around Tucson and runs his Design Build Collaborative company specializing in sustainable materials and architecture. His designs look to me both aged and ageless. There are few homes that blend in so well as Paul's designs do here in Southern Arizona.

I guess we can't "control" the weather, at least not to our liking, but we can design for its inevitability in the desert environment. Much of what is built today is not well thought out but it certainly becomes a Living Home if it is and is thought out creatively.

Let me know what your thoughts and experiences are with "natural architecture".