Embracing the Outdoors at Puerto Rico's CASH House: Solar Decathlon

• solar
• solar power
• home building

The Universidad de Puerto Rico's CASH House—the acronym stands for Caribbean Affordable Solar House—has an architectural style that assistant construction manager Ernesto Mohler calls "representative" of the vernacular on the island. In that mild climate, walls are often treated as optional. Puerto Rico's house engineers that element into an open veranda that brings the home's indoors into a lush exterior garden.

The transitional space, clad in reclaimed lumber, provides the sense of continuity that Puerto Rico feels is the essence of their design. It connects the two legs of the L-shape house, opening the garden up to the interior, a space heated and cooled by radiant tubing, a strategy we first saw in the floors and ceilings of California's house. In this iteration, a heat pump condenser acts as a traditional air-conditioning unit to remove ambient humidity—one of the biggest challenges in maintaining a stable indoor space in the muggy Caribbean climate.

Maximum photovoltaic output per hour: 10.4 kilowatts.

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