The 2011 Haciendas — A Parade of Homes tour continues Thursday through Sunday. It's not huge, number-wise, but neither is it dinky. Back in 2008, there were 40 houses on the tour. Last year, in response to the depressed building market, it had declined to 16. This year, there are 19 homes featured.

Among the missing this year are two tour regulars: the Michigan-based builder of entry-level homes, Pulte Centex; and the higher-end Tierra Concepts, Santa Fe, which has won dozens of accolades in the competition segment of Haciendas over the past 15 years, among them four Grand Hacienda awards and two Peoples' Choice awards.

The least expensive entry in the 2011 Parade is a Tierra Contenta house by Homewise Inc., listed for $289,000. Another in the below-median realm — the median home price for the second quarter of 2011 in Santa Fe city/county was $365,000 — is a La Pradera Subdivision house by Joe Boyden offered for $325,000.

Dee Bangert, administrative director of the sponsoring Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association, said one of the interesting houses is by Palo Santo Designs. "It's at 16 Lime Kiln Road in Lamy and it's very natural, with pumice-crete walls, and dirt floors sealed with linseed oil," she said. "It's earthy green instead of technology green."

Another unusual one is the contemporary house design by builder Danny Buck and architect Jonah Stanford. On Shoofly Street in the Baca Area of the Santa Fe Railyard, the house is an intriguing combination of box-like forms and it's a very energy-efficient design.

"I've done a lot of alternative things over the years [including straw-bale homes] and I've always worked for greater energy efficiency," Buck said. "I built the first house in the state that was Energy Star-qualified back in the 1990s. I built several homes with no heating systems because they were so efficient, but this is the tightest, most sophisticated house I've ever built. It was a wonderful job."

Stanford said the building at 928 Shoofly is the first certified Passive House in the Southwest. "These houses have to meet rigorous energy-use standards from the Passive House Institute in Germany. This house is 10 to 15 times tighter than a normal house and has energy recovery ventilation systems. The triple-pane windows are handmade in a small town on the Rhine and are among the most energy-efficient in the world."

Stanford has ASD Architects with his partner, Vahid Mojarrab. Stanford is also a founding board member of The Passive House Institute U.S. The Passive House concept "represents today's highest energy standard with the promise of slashing the heating energy consumption of buildings by an amazing 90 percent," according to PHIUS. The walls of the Shoofly residence are 2 x 6 framing plus a Larsen-truss "nonstructural cavity" on the exterior to accommodate a continuous wrap of cellulose insulation. This is designed to minimize heat loss through studs.

"The walls are about R-50 and the roof is R-98 to 105," Stanford said. "It's really pretty phenomenal just with the envelope. In our internal heat gain, body heat and cooking and lights provide 30 percent of heating in the winter."

Another unique aspect in the external appearance, besides the geometries, is the taupe-colored cladding. Buck said they custom-cut the panels of cementboard to 9 feet long by 24 inches wide. That 24-inch size accentuates the horizontal pattern.

The Buck-Stanford unit is a live-work building. The white unit at the south end holds studios for ASD Architects and for SmallFires, the graphic design company owned by Stanford's wife, Edie Dillman.

"It's a single unit," Buck said. "You have the studio unit and house unit and then there's a bedroom: one-third of it sits inside the house cube, one-third sits on top of the studio cube, and one-third forms a breezeway in between the two."

The Passive House should be a strong contender in the green categories of the Parade of Homes competition element. Bangert said she believed nine of the builders would be in the running for the green awards.

Haciendas includes two remodels this year, by Woods Design Builders Inc. (winner of last year's Grand Hacienda Award) and WoodStone Custom Homes. "We require these be pretty much whole-house remodels so they can be judged alongside the other homes," Bangert said.

Friday through Sunday, the tour is 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Thursday, the tour is 4 to 9 p.m., and many of the homes will be open for a free Twilight Tour.

A ticket, good for all days of the tour, is $15. Tickets and Parade of Homes magazines are available at each Parade house. In advance, you can buy tickets at the Lensic box office, 988-1234, www.ticketssantafe.org, and at the offices of Haciendas sponsors around Santa Fe. For a list of ticket and magazine locations, see www.sfahba.com/index.php/site/haciendasparade.