Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — One nail at a time pounded by a simple hammer and three months of knowledge.
These are the tools building not only environmentally sound homes, but a bright future for 15 YouthBuild participants whose prospects previously were dim.
"I'm here every day," YouthBuild participant Ferdinand Benally said. "I think I've only missed once. I like meeting the contractors and learning the green way — it's what's new."
Benally and his classmates were learning to read blueprints one week and studying green building techniques and materials.
To see the application of those techniques, instructor Ken Myers is planning field trips to several green buildings and construction sites.
YouthBuilder Casandra Santillan, 19, said the hands-on application of her classroom knowledge as well as seeing the techniques used by other builders is the type of learning that works best for her.
"I'm learning a lot better this way. It's really step-by-step and Ken's straight forward about exactly what to do."
Santillan, who is also preparing to test for her GED in May, said she spent two years selling and addicted to drugs prior to YouthBuild.
"I wasn't doing anything with my life. Now, I feel really good about what I'm doing and what we're doing here," she said. "I go to my friend's house on the weekend and we study together. She has a child and misses (class) more, so I bring her homework to her and help her do all her problems."
Benally, who has a lengthy criminal background, said many friends from his past tempt him to return to a life of "trouble." But he is confident that through the YouthBuild program, he will have endless prospects.
"I'm doing something with a future. I'm looking forward to building a house, getting tools and getting a job."
Upon completion in December, each student will earn an Alternative Energy Technical Certificate — the first of its kind at Coconino Community College. Depending upon their educational plan, some will receive a GED, others will apply their community college credit to further schooling and some will enter the work force.
"I'm planning on getting my degree in construction management," Santillan said. "This program really changed my life."
Myers, the Coconino Community College instructor leading the students through Construction Methods I and II, said they're starting with the basics.
"They've done it all by hand. I want them to get used to the old ways first. Then when we start building the house in August, we'll use power tools."
The yearlong YouthBuild project started Jan. 28 with academic course work at Coconino and a "Wi$e Up" financial literacy workshop. The construction phase of their course commenced earlier this month.
Myers said the first projects began in the classroom, where students built wooden toolboxes and then storage sheds.
Beneath the hand-built sheds are concrete slabs also poured by the YouthBuild students.
In the first few weeks at a designated site, students learned how to raise a house when Myers found the masonry blocks for one of the building's foundations had been installed sideways. The class corrected the former owner's mistake by installing new footers and pier columns.
"I'm guessing the others are all the same way," he said of the other two homes.
The class also discovered the sewer lines on the property were outdated Orangeberg piping — a combination of newspaper, tarp and tape. The students then successfully rebuilt the sewer lines to their first home.
Next, the class ripped out the carpeting in one of the homes, installed new baseboards, hung new doors, installed a new exhaust fan in the bathroom and installed a new dishwasher and stove in the kitchen.
Outside, the students built decks of recycled plastic boards called Trex on two of the homes and laid a path of footstones leading to the doors.
"I think it's exciting to see where they were and where they are now — to see that growth and them come to work every day excited about what they learned yesterday," Myers said.
Myers said the students are especially motivated by the green-build techniques that will be used throughout the two town homes the students will construct on the site later this summer.
