| | about SolarSense Designs | & RonKZ | | I'm Ron Klotz-Zellhoefer. SolarSense Designs is, or now was, my deliberately small one-man business - it's more a labor of love than a business. I have not bothered with the usual formalities of business setup, and these days I'm "officially retired" with one more home to build, but still helping some folks with their solar questions. My entire life has been home design/building, real estate & computing; now all evolved into passive solar home design. I'm also finishing the huge work of my genealogy, and building/refurbishishing computers, and of course trying to maintain this website when I have time. |  | | My birth-name is Klotz; born in Wisconsin on the summer solstice of 1938, so maybe I was thereby destined to do solar?? My g.g.grandma Anna died in childbirth of twins. Her husband John Michael Zellhoefer remarried and then died in the Civil War a few years after. The twins George & Sophie were "adopted" by Klotz, and I plan to legally change to my "proper" surname, but meanwhile using Klotz-Zellhoefer. | | I grew up on a dairy farm near Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, graduating from PdS high in 1956); and | | US Army >1959, Fort Leonard Wood MO, Fort Benning GA, Ascom City Korea and Granite City IL and GLAD to be OUTTA that outfit! and | | Madison, Wisconsin >1964, Shamrock Dairy, then becoming "Ron Klotz, Builder"; and | | Prescott, Arizona >1976, my "Creative Homes" design/build company along with "Kitchen World". There I designed and built over 50 homes, mostly modest wood-frame family homes. With the energy crisis of the early 70's came an awareness that we must move toward I was always interested in In the beginning of my building days, there was minimal consideration of the solar characteristics, although I learned and later focused a great deal on solar orientation. Also attended Yavapai College fulltime for a year; and | | Grove, Oklahoma >1978, studied real estate at NEO College in Miami OK and also studied a little solar at Crowder College in Neosho, Missouri; and | | Tucson, Arizona >2001 into the real estate business, made "Sierrita Realty" out west of Tucson 1984-1995, and continuing some building and devlopment. I bought an old patented mining claim in the Sierrita Mountains called Black Dike #20, lived in an RV and later the Gazebo House, all that development shown here on SolarSense. | | Overgaard, Arizona >2005, rejoining my former mate. There I enlarged & completely rebuilt her property from a roofed-over MH to a conventional frame house, building full foundation, adding on, and replacing everything the existing roof. Black Dike was sold about 2003 to help pay for all this. The last part of the project was cutting out the MH section by section, leaving only the floor, and finally it became a new custom home Well, folks, this was a total electric frame home in the cold pine-tree country, definitely all that had nothing to do with solar housing! Then the mate usurped the remainder of my Black Dike proceeds, AND kept her Overgaard house and moved away. So, darn near broke, I moved to... | | Deming, New Mexico, a really decent town on Interstate 10, with about 15,000 people plus another 10,000 in the surrounding countryside. Elevation is about 4350', has the best water situation in all of New Mexico, some mountains around, lots of farming. The land is still cheap, but it's becoming a little boom-town because of these features. I bought a used 5th-wheel as "home", figuring it would also be useful if I could manage to buy some land and start my last solar project. The RV "living room" about 7' square is my little office for whatever business remains, mainly solar designing, webpages, building/refurbishing computers and and refurbishing computers. | | My interests are My 4 kids, now grownups living in Austin, Tucson and Phoenix; and passive solar homes (of course); and computers and bitching about Micro$oft (moving now to Linux!) the internet & webpages, with their incredible potential; and genealogy, after the www made it so much more productive; and the great outdoors, especially the countryside, mountains, lakes and streams. I'm fascinated with the Rocky Mountains and can't seem to live without them; and libertarian philosophy and principles, which I try to apply to my own life. As a libertarian, I believe that property rights must be absolute, which runs against the grain with people who somehow believe they have rights to take and control what belongs to others. | | My disinterests are cities & crowds, traffic & smog, socialists and religious zealots, mostly in keeping with my introverted and relusive nature. There's plenty you might read between the lines, but I feel fairly settled in here in Deming now. Life is good, and I'm "carrying on". |
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