About Our Classes
We teach our classes with online conferencing programs like Skype or Google Hangouts using a rich Power Point Presentation. The students are provided with a printable pdf of the slide show that they can take notes on as we teach.

These classes were created by a Santa Fe, NM network of architects, designers, builders and subcontractors. The classes were created to help people get ready to build excellent projects from small and simple to large and complex construction projects. The building techniques we teach apply to many climate zones around the world.

Teaching Fees – We charge $50 an hour for private teaching and our Power Point Presentation shows you diverse and progressive projects built over the last 20 years by various contractors in Santa Fe / Northern New Mexico. We’re happy to teach groups of people and can offer our classes at lower individual rates when teaching more than one person. Teaching a family about building a home or a barn, for example, makes our classes quite affordable for larger groups. It’s neat to use a smart blend of thermal mass with natural insulating materials when creating good structures for animals.

We offer coaching on your options of how to contract with design and building professionals – We often coach people on different ways they can contract with architects, designers and builders for their project so they know their options and are more empowered to have a successful design and building experience. We highly recommend the “design – build process” over the “design – bid process”. The “design-build process” has a good builder involved from the first stages of design pricing your project to help you and your designer stay within budget and often offering smart construction ideas that can save you money while realizing a good design. This is the classic triangle of a client, designer and builder working well together – the best way to get a good building.

Construction Benefits that reduce your cost of living and save you money during construction. Our goal is that whether someone is building something simple like a garage or complex like a full house or commercial building, we want that person to know how to build smart and get many benefits from their project for decades to come. Benefits can include reducing your ongoing energy consumption costs by 90% through smart construction techniques, capturing water through simple gravity fed, water harvesting systems to knowing enough about the design and construction process so you can save significant money on your construction project.

Class Structure – These classes were originally three hours long and taught at Santa Fe Community College starting in 1997. Our classes were created for people who want to build and know little about smart building techniques because 97% of our population – rich or poor – have never had a need to custom build. Over eighteen years of teaching the general public many contractors, architects and designers have also taken our classes to learn progressive building techniques / science.

You can pick and choose specific topics / sections from our classes for a custom blend of knowledge suited to your needs. Sometimes a three-hour class becomes one hour due to the student’s specific interests; e.g., our Water Harvesting, Recycling & Management class covers many topics and some students just want to learn about gravity fed water-harvesting systems. Even when people take a full three-hour class for relatively little money they learn important information that can save them tremendous amounts of money in the building and / or the ongoing operation of the building.