Desert Rain House

Desert Rain House has been designed and built to meet the most comprehensive green building standard in the world--the Living Building Challenge (www.ilbi.org/lbc). The home features as passive solar design as well as solar panels that will feed all of its energy needs. A 35,000 gallon cistern will store precipitation for all of the home's water needs, making Desert Rain a net-zero water home. To meet Living Building Challenge standards, the construction of Desert Rain used products that are replenishable and have no negative impact on human and ecosystem health. The home and additional buildings did not include Red List materials (list available at https://ilbi.org/lbc/LBC%20Documents/LBC2-0.pdf); and we must account for the total footprint of embodied carbon from the structure's construction and projected replacement parts through a one-time carbon offset tied to the project boundary. We used wood that was either Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, reclaimed from salvaged sources, or harvested from timber onsite that was cleared for construction; and must source materials and products from within a specified radius of the project.