Carrizo Springs Girl Scouts Headquarters

A community demonstration utilizing on-site and regionally available resources such as caliche and sawdust bricks, bamboo reinforcing, dew collection, and passive radiant heating and cooling

Located in the Winter Garden region of South Texas, The Center was engaged by the Community Services Agency of Dimmit, LaSalle and Maverick Counties to establish a caliche block production operation, with a passive solar Girl Scouts Headquarters becoming a community demonstration opportunity for these low embodied carbon, locally manufactured blocks offering local employment and energy efficient affordable housing opportunities.

Caliche, a readily available calcium carbonate material that does not conflict with agricultural production (such as with sandy loam typically used for adobe), was complemented with bamboo, another abundant regional resource used to replace steel reinforcement in the building’s foundation, roof trusses and door and window lintels.

The building was designed and engineered with a nighttime roof re-radiation system for summer cooling, and an attached solar greenhouse for winter heating to offset reliance on fossil fuels for heating and cooling and, most important, exterior insulating block made from sawdust recycled from a sawmill.