KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Resilient and Affordable Zero Energy Homes with Joaquin Karcher

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Summary:This episode features architect Joaquin Karcher of Zero E Design, who shares his expertise on Passive House and Zero Energy (ZE) home design. The discussion focuses on the dual benefits of these homes: they are affordable, resilient, and super-efficient, reducing energy consumption by up to 90%. Karcher explains the technical secret—shifting costs from expensive mechanical systems to the quality of the building shell (super-insulation and triple-glazed windows)—which makes ZE homes comparable in cost to conventional builds. This is a must-listen for agents who want to understand the growing sustainable housing market and how to sell clients on the long-term value of comfort, health, and no net utility bills.

The secret is cost shifting. That's the secret. So we shift the cost from expensive mechanical systems into the quality of the building shell, of the building envelope. We have a super, what we call a super insulated building envelope. We have triple glazed windows. They have insulated frames. They get installed in a certain fashion.

and we basically take, we beef up the building envelope and it's super insulated. That means insulation is cheap. Insulation is the cheapest building material on the planet. It's much less expensive than mass. That's really the issue. Hello everyone, my name is Izumi Tanaka with Home Green Homes podcast. Today I have a German architect from New Mexico. Sanofi, New Mexico.

He is the owner, founder of ZeroE Design. And I am so interested in finding out his story and what he's doing these days. And Horkin, thank you so much for your time today to join me on this podcast. I am just so curious how a German architect like yourself has ended up in Towers, New Mexico. And I think, I think I said Santa Fe, but you're in a new Santa Fe, but you're in Taoist, New Mexico. And very, very curious how you ended up being in Taos. And what brought you to New Mexico?

So start with that. Okay. Well, thanks for having me. Thanks for being interested in my work and my story. Yeah, I do actually live in Taos, but I also work in Santa Fe and the entire New Mexico area, really, mainly northern New Mexico. mainly northern New Mexico, because I'm a cold climate specialist, and that's where we are. And, yeah, I mean, when I was a student in Germany back in the 80s, my generation of fellow students

were the first generation that was interested in what was called eco-architecture. that was before the term green building was even coined way before. And we actually initiated that our professors became interested in that topic as well. But what was happening in the United States, particularly in the southwest of the United States, was at the time the most interesting work that was done worldwide. in that field. And that was, it was called the passive solar Adobe movement. And it was very strong in the Sunderfay and Taos area.

And we were just fascinated with the kind of work and the kind of, how would I say, like just trying out things, you know, how they work. And not super scientific, but just. trial and error and what what they came up with is just one of the most remarkable works in the history of sustainable design you can you can say and at the time it was a fringe market in Germany you know it was very much not mainstream but it was mainstream here and I wanted to come to the United States and be part of it that's how I ended up in Taoise I see But I'm just curious, what was it that when you were a student that was interested in this, what's called eco-architecture?

Were you always interested in something ecological or architecture? What was the impetus for you to find something called equal architecture? Yeah, well, you know, in the 80s, it was actually mostly about material. And it was mostly about natural building materials and, you know, more a way of life that was closer to nature than, you know, building with concrete and processed and, you know, highly industrialized materials. And that's what was really interesting. But the conversation has changed. You know, it was it was all about really mainly using. Adobe earthen architecture type,

earthen technologies. And later the focus has shifted into energy. Then it was all about energy. And that's where we are right now. It's now all about decarbonizing and fossil fuel-free buildings, you know, because the big number is that 40% of our nation's energy consumption is attributed to buildings. So if you realize 40%, that is a huge number,

and that also drives home the potential that we have through buildings to make a difference and to, you know, be to take CO2, or avoid CO2 being released into the atmosphere. So, yeah, it's a, Ed Masary, the legend architect who is now founder of Architecture 2030, wrote an article a long time ago, who really holds the key to the thermal, the key to the thermostat, the global thermostat. And he says, it's the architecture. It's the architect's stupid, he called it. Architects stupid. That's a great term.

So what did you find in New Mexico? What was your trajectory once you got to New Mexico? Well, once I got to New Mexico, I worked with Mike Reynolds for a little while. And, you know, found... Mike Reynolds from the Earthship. From the Earth ships, yes, exactly. And we were building off-grid homes. Actually, I was working on Dennis Weaver's house.

And then later I actually was very interested and had come to the Navajo Reservation before, like earlier. And then I was working with the tribe, with the Navajo tribe in Chinle, Kennedy Shea area, on the use of local building materials and local labor because they have very high unemployment rates, incredibly high unemployment rates and very substandard high unemployment rates. and very substandard housing. So we wanted to teach people how to use local materials and better housing. And yeah, so I was going back and forth from Tauz to the reservation for a number of years. And what happened then?

Well, those were the passive solar days, right? Those were my passive solar days. And I thought we were doing really great in terms of, you know, worldwide sustainability. Yeah. And that was only until I got to Germany and I was visiting my sister. One morning having coffee at her dining table, reading the Berliner Tagespiegel. And there was an article that said Germany is doing 90% efficiencies in buildings.

And I thought, what? What? Wait, they don't even have the sun. So how is this possible, right? So I got to the bottom of it and turned out there, it turns out there was an institute in Darmstadt, Germany. It's called the Passive House Institute. And they have figured out a way, they have really researched how buildings work. And it doesn't matter what kind of a building it is.

It could be built out of straw bale, out of Adobe, out of concrete, out of whatever, peanut butter and jelly, whatever you want it. It always works the same way. You have losses and you have gains. And they looked at the losses and they realized when we can curb the losses, then we rule the game. Because the cheapest gallon of fuel is the one you don't need. Right. So not needing energy was what they were after. So they developed this new science, this new building science, right, that consists of a very complicated or complex system.

But in effect, it reduces energy consumption by up to 90%. And for me, that resulted in a career change. basically from that point on. I then worked with an architect from Cologne, Germany. It was a pioneer in that movement. And when I came back to the United States, we shut the office down. We basically took one project and worked it all through for our climate, for our materials, for the products that we needed that were available, which was, which was,

Very few, but it has changed now, you know, because this has taken off and there's a lot more, there are a lot more products on the market now than when we started like 15, 18 years ago. So while you were at Navajo Reservations, working with the native tribes and building earthen structures, your all native country was developing this whole new building science of passion. passive house and isn't that great that now you have hands on both of those what you know amazing building techniques right yeah and is that how you came out with your your own zero zero e design tell me about your genesis of zero in design you mean yeah so well zero e means zero energy He stands for energy and emissions, right? So this is the goal.

The goal is the goal is needing very little, extremely little energy and not emitting anything. Right. Yeah. So that was, you know, that's what it is about. Basically building carbon-free buildings that do not need energy, fossil fuel energy to operate. anymore. And really the goal is 2030 that we would be, that the buildings would be carbon neutral by 2030. And well, we're what, 2025? Five years. I know. It's coming pretty rapidly. It's five more years. Yeah. Yeah. We can build these buildings today. So that's the, that's the, that's what

metals. So let's talk about the benefits and values of zeroe design. And it's, I mean, I would imagine that you have your own proprietary techniques or design secrets, but passive design has become very much well known in the building industry. In California, there is a movement to make the passive design standard to be an alternative to the California Building Code these days. So I know that there is definitely more available. So what is it that you do that makes your work unique? Really, I'm trying to design buildings that are beautiful and that work that work

incorporating all these passive house principles. coming up with good design is what really is exciting to me. I do a lot. I do mainly custom residential design, but I also am very interested in cost-effective design. That this is not, this is something for, this has to be something for everybody. Everybody is supposed to be able to afford a building like that.

You know, and I have long, for a long time, I've always heard that people say, oh, I would love to have a passive house, but I can't afford it. And that led me to becoming interested in low-cost passive houses. Because I've done this for wealthy clients for many, many years, and I knew how to achieve the same results without cutting any corners on a shoestring budget, basically.

And so I built our house or my house. house that way. It's fairly small. It's a thousand square feet, has two bedrooms, an open design, and it has all the passive house features. It has a small solar system and everything is electric. And all the appliances are electric, hot water's electric. Heating is a heat pump, electric heat pump. One single head heat pump for the entire house that does heating and cooling and and and the fan function. And we also charge our electric car. And our average utility bill is $54 a month.

Wow. Of which $25 is the meter fee. Wow. Wow. So it can be done. Yeah. I wanted to show that this can be done on a modest, on a modest budget. So tell me how you achieve that.

Like what are the things that? you were able to accomplish that would reduce the cost of I'm sure designing is part of it but designing and constructing and operating probably as well right so how how is it that you were able to achieve that affordability or lower cost compared to you know some of the custom beautiful I saw the pictures on your website they're all beautiful the work that you've done are so beautiful. But just by looking at them, I'm going, they look very expensive.

Yeah. So the secret is cost shifting. That's the secret. So we shift the cost from expensive mechanical systems into the quality of the building shell, of the building envelope. We have a super, what we call, super insulated building envelope. We have triple-clased windows.

They have insulated frames. They get installed in a certain fashion. And we basically take, we beef up the building envelope. And it's super-insulated. That means insulation is cheap. Insulation is the cheapest building material on the planet. It's much less expensive than mass.

And that, And that's really the issue. What we save, I mean, you know, around here, what's very popular is radiant heated floors. Then you need a boiler. You need zone valves. You need a distribution system. You need zoning. And all of that, we don't need anymore.

We don't even have a floor loops in the radiant floor loops in our floors anymore. We don't need it. So we shift the expense from expensive mechanical systems, you know, into the quality of the building show. And there are no moving parts. The building envelope is always there for you to perform. Right. So when there is a power outage or like we had a few years ago that our area was taken off the natural gas rate, a lot of the, the, built the houses or homes who are dropping into the 40s indoor air temperature in the in the middle of the winter these passage houses house they don't even noticed anything they just coasted right through

wow so you know this is it's all up it's also about resilience you know yes yes so so basically you're minimizing the cost of systems like you said mechanical systems that you have to buy and install and maintain and maintain, but your house is already energy efficient enough that you don't have to have those mechanical systems running.

That's exactly right. They're all very small and very simple. I mean, basically you can heat a house like that with a hair dryer. Wow. 2,000 watts in the coldest night of the year. Of course, we don't use a hair dryer. We use something a little more

refined and involved. Yeah. In essence, that's exactly. Yeah. You know, and then there's other things too, you know. There's cost-saving features in like the finishes, you know. We use concrete floors, you know, that are beautiful and and they, there doesn't need to be any tile or any carpet or anything like that. It's just very, very simple, very straightforward.

and beautiful. And for countertops, we use tile, zero groutline Italian floor tiles, much less expensive than marble or granite countertops. So there's a lot of tricks, how you can basically build a beautiful home without spending larger months. And without compromising the aesthetics of it, right? Yeah. Yeah. And performance. And when you're talking about insulation, is there any particular material that you tend to use? Like, do you use the earth materials like hemp creed or any kind of sip that gives you the insulation or about you? Well, when it comes to affordable. Yeah, that's why I'm asking.

Then you need to really, you know, you need to really look at what's environmentally clean and what is very inexpensive. And I'm a nut for cellulose. Okay. Cellulose is recycled newspaper. Right. Yes. And there's masses around. And it's a beautiful insulator.

It packs around plumbing and electrical. and it's really nice and dense and doesn't settle if you do it, right? And so I put this in our roof cavities, in our walls, loads and masses of it. I just love that stuff. But of course, you can use, there is rock rule, for example, you know, there is hemp, you know, but the industry is not yet developed so that this is actually a mainstream product.

We're on the way to this. Yeah, yeah. We'll have it at some point. Yeah. When you are talking about cost effectiveness, you need to, you need to, you need to use what's available. Yeah. I think salios is pretty, I'm going to say standard, maybe almost standard. Like, I think people.

It's very standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people already use in cellos, right? I think I put silos in my attic as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So your clientele is mostly you set wealthy homeowners.

Or do you have any kind of projects that are atypical for your clientele? Or is there any projects that you are proud other than your home that you're talking about? Yeah. Well, I do both. I do custom residential design and I also do cost-effective projects. And so we are just now in the process of building a four unit development here in Towers on Dolan Street. And they are small and super efficient two bedroom, two bathroom homes. And they are separated by a carport. Every carport has a charging station for an electric car. they are basically passive houses and they are built in the way that I just described.

And they are not any more expensive than a typical house in the same size would be. Now, is that a spec project or is that a commission? It's a developer. Oh, I see. So the developer specifically wanted that type of. of design. That is correct. So what is your experience in terms of the receptivity of the type of designs that you provide? I would say that New Mexico is probably more receptive to, you know, this type of ideas, but what is your experience of people, you know, do they seek you out?

Do you think that passive house or, you know, energy, zero energy zeroe design, are there? Do you think getting hold of people's interests these days? Yes, I would say so. And for various reasons, actually. I think one of the main reasons is that it's becoming known that those buildings, are really comfortable, very comfortable. As a matter of fact, I went back to Germany at some point, and my father's friend is a realtor,

and I told him, you know, what I'm doing. And he's, oh, I would love to live in a passive house. They are so comfortable. And, you know, that is becoming known, because, you know, there are features in a passive house that are just amazing. I mean, you have a whole house ventilation system between recovery, right? That means nine times a day your entire indoor air is being renewed and filtered.

And in the same, at the same time, you're recovering up to 95% of the energy that would be lost through ventilation that is uncontrolled through opening windows or crack. and pin holes and things like that. You know, so we build super tight, but then we have a whole house ventilation system and with heat recovery. And when you leave and go on a vacation, you come back two weeks later, the air is just pristine.

Every morning, the air is just pristine. It's really quite amazing, the level of comfort. And you can filter them. So if there's a forest fire outside or something, You can filter them down, you know, and that is just an amazing feature. So comfort is one, you know, air quality is part of that. And durability. Yeah.

You know, a super-insulated house is a house of high quality, very high quality. You know, we were used in the United States to houses that were built out of two by fours and hardly any insulation. Hollow, hollow walls. Very typical, especially in California. Energy was cheap. Yeah. Energy was cheap.

So why insulate? Right. So that has changed. It's now volatile, actually. Yeah. It's up and down. So, yeah. So durability and then resilience.

Resilience is also something that people are, increasingly interested in. I mean, you guys just went through the Palisades fire. Yes. So you gave me a great segue to this next question about the fire. I don't know if you saw it on the news, but there was one home that stood in Palisades. There was actually two homes that survived the Palisades fire. And there are other houses that survive, you know, but there were two in particular that got. a lot of media attention and because they were designed to withstand the fire wildfires and such but one of them was a passive house right so how would your design may apply like I don't know if your your design may be deferred any way but can you talk

about how you know this type of design can apply for you know now that a lot of people are going to be building, rebuilding in its fire zones, how would it apply and how would it benefit the homes? Yes. First of all, a passive house is not per se fire resistant. What makes it, a passive house can be fire resistant, but it's not per se a fire resistant home. Right, I see. What you can, what, fire resistance, the way I would approach something like that is that you, you think about a fire smart building envelope. And what I mean is that there are no places for amber to collect and burn.

So for example, recess windows on the windowsills, I would. think about avoiding those. I would also not do large roof overhangs. I would probably do very minimal roof overhangs. I would also make sure that no amber can enter the roof cavity because roofs can be vented. A lot of roofs are vented. I would probably do an unvented roof design so that no ember can even. get under the roof.

Then you would use non-combustible building materials. You know, you can use rock wool is a good material that is readily available for insulation. I would definitely use a metal roof or a tile roof or something that cannot burn. And, you know, fiber cement on the outside is also a good building material. a brick is a good building material. And yeah, you know, those are those are the things that I would apply, that I would apply. And then you have to think, okay, those are the things that we need. How can that be beautiful?

You know, it's probably going to be more boxy, boxy but beautiful. Right. Like an Alfa Romeo, Julietta. Okay. It's a box, it's kind of a boxy carpet. is gorgeous. Yeah, yeah. I get it, yeah.

And then of course, and then of course you would do all the typical things. Like make sure that there's nothing in the, that your fences are fireproof, that you don't have anything that can combust around your house and to clear it out, basically of what they call a defensible site. Sure, right, right.

Yeah. So your area, New Mexico, and even Colorado, you have experience on wild fires coming through. So have you had any case where you help redesign homes that have been affected by any fires or any type of natural disasters?

No, not yet. I see. Luckily, I mean, there have been fires, but they were not really in towers and not really inside of India. I see. in Mora, New Mexico, and of course, Colorado. I mean, Colorado had the Marshall Fire.

I don't know if you were about that. Yes, I remember. Like Boulder, they had a lot of. Yeah, that was also devastating. So thank you so much for this great insight. I'm really excited to talk to you. What is your vision and what is your dream or, you know, how do you see what's going to be coming?

in this very tumultuous world today. Yeah. In the world of building and home buildings. Right. So for the future, I would like to see more affordable, zero energy buildings, resilient buildings, and particularly in off-site construction. So basically pre-manufactured. And I'm thinking, I really don't think.

that considering housing prices and construction prices right now that are so expensive, we need to find ways to bring the cost down. And I think that pre-manufacturing or panelized building systems, passive house quality, wall and roof assemblies that are constructed in the factory and then brought to the site and put together within a day or or a couple of days. That's kind of the future to me. And so you think less in terms of a custom design, but rather a design that is customizable

that has a pot, like a Nike shoe. Right. Like, you know, there's the same shoe. It can have a yellow sole and blue strings or it can have a purple, purple strings and black soles. or whatever, right? I mean, you have these customizable things, but it's always the same shoe,

or it's always the same house, right? Yeah. And if you mass produce this and you have options, you can bring the price down. And that's what I'm seeing more and more happening. As a matter of fact, there are more and more companies doing this now. And I think it's a very positive development.

And do you have any positive development? have any plan for taking on anything like that? Well, the Dolan Street projects that I mentioned, they are passive house panelized construction. Oh, okay, okay. All of them. So they're not modular in terms of modular prefabs, but they're panelized. They're panelized, yeah. Basically, the contractor provides the slab. the house level or the floor brings in all the utilities. And then the flatbed truck arrives with the walls and with panels stacked.

And the contractor with the crane and his crew put this together very quickly. And then from there on, it's, you know, have a weatherized building shell all of a sudden. Wow. And from there, it's just, you know, your typical plumbing, electrical, dry wall finishes, kitchen, bathrooms, done. So that obviously shortens the construction time, right? Timeline. Yeah. It shortens construction time.

You don't need to pay your mortgage. It's the length of the time. And the precision is just amazing. You know, it's built in a controlled environment. I mean, you can't match that in the field. Right. Is this developer going to be building more of things like that in your area, you think? Possibly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see more developers to have the foresight for these type of houses because I think they're they're going to be needed this I definitely do hear a lot of people talking about prefabs and you know man penalized construction for the fire zone you know there there are definitely conversation passive house and and prefab and such you know for because they they want to rebuild those areas as quickly as possible so I think you might find some clients out

here. That would be great. Yeah. I want to call me. Yes. So speaking of that, how can people find you, Hogan? They can go on my website, zero e-design.com. Zero-E-design.com.

Zero-E-D-R-O, so spelled out. Z-E-R-O and then E-like energy and then design.com. And that's where people can find you. My contact information is on there. Okay. Well, thank you so much. This was such a great conversation. I want to have more conversations with you and you know, but for this time, for this one, it's out of time, but I really appreciate your time, Horkin, and thank you so much. And I wish you the best. I love what you're doing. And I love what you're doing. Thank you. Spread the news.

Yes, indeed. Thank you so much, Wakin. Okay, thank you too. Bye-bye. This was Izumi Tanaka with Home Green Homs, the podcast. Thank you so much until the next episode.