River Sol

Resilient water systems help a transformational project become one of the world’s most sustainable homes.

With its design guided by biophilia, River Sol is more than a home. It is a structure that honors and stewards its place along the Deschutes River. In envisioning River Sol, the property owners, who shared a passion for creating better futures and deepening connections between nature and the built environment, sought to create a place that would meet the stringent criteria of the Living Building Challenge (LBC).

As part of an integrated design team led by Tozer Design, Biohabitats helped design and permit an innovative greywater reuse system in a very challenging site with space constraints, poor soils, and legacy fill material, all in close proximity to surface water. Biohabitats crafted a design to meet local and state regulations as well as the requirements of the LBC, the world’s most rigorous and advanced green building standard.

River Sol’s greywater system uses passive filters and an irrigation pump system to quickly move collected greywater into the landscape to support native vegetation and the house’s orchard. Permitting the system was complex and included multiple conversations with both local and state regulators to satisfy all parties.

TAGS

• Design
• Resilient Water Systems