OUR BLOG

REAL Net Metering

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:16:14 -0400

After almost a year of fees and reduced price for our power generation, Duke Energy and the SC Utilities Commission have seen the light. We got a letter in the mail this week (see below) , giving us TRUE net metering. No monthly fees for standby power, one-for-one swapping of power instead of paying a higher rate for what we use than what we receive for what we generate, and the elimination of time of use metering, which while effective for us, made for an extremely complex power bill that even the customer service people at Duke couldn’t explain without having a manager call back. So while our power bill has stayed under $100 a month for most of the year, through 95 degree weather and large gatherings of people, this will help even more. If the earth can move in SC, we are making progress on Clean Energy.

duke.pdf

We’ve got LEED

Thu, 8 Oct 2009 08:19:17 -0400

Yes, it took a very long time, and some extra payments we weren’t counting on to the LEED provider, but as of Tuesday we now have been certified LEED Platinum. As noted in the last entry, there were some serious misunderstandings about who was doing what when for who, but the package finally went for approval by the US Green Building Council a couple of weeks ago. Then we hit another snag-the incentive points for the landscaping were not approved, and points were taken away. Apparently, you need to have water sensors to get points for low water use landscaping; and having only drip irrigation that ran off a rainwater cistern was not sufficient (in other words, using city water to water a landscape got points if it was low flow with a meter, but using no city water at all was not-the USGBC is aware of the irony and they are looking into how to deal with it).

That dropped us below Platinum, BUT we had extra incentive points in reserve we hadn’t used, plus we could recalculate our energy use a different way and redo paperwork and come back to Platinum, and that’s what we did. If you are thinking this is all way too complex we agree! LEED is not yet residential user friendly-it’s certainly not something a homeowner can do without a LEED provider, and we strongly recommend you choose your LEED provider carefully.

While waiting for this, we continue to install the landscaping (as fall comes around, it’s planting time again in SC), and do finishing touches on the house. Keeping in the spirit of LEED, Harry replaced the workshop door on the building across from the garage with one that looks more like the carriage doors on the garage. This was a true recycling/salvage find-a stable door from the barn Julie had her horses in when she was growing up, that got to that barn by being recycled from an even earlier turn-of-the century barn. (Pictures will go up in a day or two).

One of the joys of custom building is that we can continue to add on. Harry used the same batch of wood he used to build the living room mantle piece frame to add to a recycled picture frame (another barn rescue). This matching frame holds my grandparents wedding picture which now hangs over the mantle and looks like it was built in (again, pictures to follow).

In the News & Solar Rebates

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:32:47 -0400

The result of the tour in June was a whole lot of publicity in the local newspapers. Articles appeared in the Greenville News.pdf Lifestyle section, the Pickens County News.pdf, and the Pickens County Courier.pdf. All of this has led to a lot of contacts with other people wanting to build green. In fact, we are starting to find that when we meet people, we sometimes get the response, “Oh, you’re the people with the green house”, which is encouraging-we didn’t realize how widely the local papers are read.

The South Carolina Energy Office determined that we had met the conditions for a state rebate on our solar hot water heater, making it even more affordable. The calculations we did for the rebate had us figure out how long it would be until the heater paid for itself, which we thought was funny, given that no other water heater has to “pay for itself” but rather it’s usually calculated as “cost per year”. if one takes into account the cost to run an electric or gas water heater and the price to purchase, you quickly realize that the difference is the “up front “ cost of the solar heater. Once we are past the 8 year mark, both the heater and the water are free-but the heater is designed to last much longer.

The Platinum Tour

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:06:19 -0400

It’s not official yet-we are not certified, but we’ve been awarded 99 points toward LEED certification, which is the Platinum level-our goal from day one. While we will end up being the third house in SC to achieve this instead of the first because of the certification delays, it’s still an honor and all the contractors, the architect and everyone who put time and energy into the house are to be commended. We received 4 extra innovation points for the landscape design, which reduces water consumption not only by using native plants, but by harvesting all the rainwater ever required for the landscape, even during a drought, in a pond. We heard we may become a case study for the ways one can use innovation points to build on the LEED criteria.

Yesterday we hosted a tour for the Upstate chapter of the Green Builders Council, in which almost 90 people toured out home over lunch and asked questions of the architect, ourselves and all the contractors. The local news channel did a piece on the house, and while it had it’s share of errors (they tried to make the house rarer than it is) it was still a nice little snippet and we’re glad for the publicity. Have a look at http://www.wyff4.com/video/19796305/index.html

Learning how to maximize energy savings

Sat, 30 May 2009 17:39:00 -0400

We think all information and certification is in for LEED and now we are just waiting. But in the meantime we’ve been working hard installing the landscaping and arranging the outdoor space. Native plants and edible landscaping is the way we are going with the yard, and we are trying to do as much of it ourselves as possible. Obviously, the grading and digging for the pond that will gather water from the whole property for irrigating our garden is out of our league, but herb beds, gravel paths, and planting shrubs we can handle.

As we approach the solstice, we are ecstatic about our energy use. The solar panels are pumping out over 20 KW a day when it’s sunny, the solar water heater is using very little electric backup, and June starts tomorrow and we haven’t needed to turn on the AC yet. While it’s been a mild spring for SC in general, we’ve had a good number of days in the mid to high 80s. But the design of the house is meant for this time of year-all the French doors and most of the windows are under overhangs or shaded, to minimize solar gain, and we can open them for breezes in the evening. The house is so well insulated that if it’s cool in the morning, we open only a few windows and leave it for the day. It remains cool (not cold, but comfortable) and if it heats up a little toward the end of the day, 15 minutes with the doors open at nightfall cools us down again. In contrast, our garage, which has no insulation but is in the shade half the day, is an oven when we come home from work. But since all it houses is the automobiles, and they aren’t in there during most days, it doesn’t matter.

The large amount of outdoor living space designed into the house means we spend a lot of time on the deck or screen porch in the evenings and mornings, using nature’s air conditioning. All this means we have little to no electricity going to climate control-basically just the cost of running the ceiling fans. We expect when we get to 95 degrees and 95 percent humidity by mid summer, we’ll be conditioning the house, but right now our electric bill is almost nothing-we make all we use.

We’ve also started learning how to plan our daily needs to maximize energy savings. The solar water array gets maximum sunshine between 1 and 4 in the afternoon right now. The major cost of running our Energy Star dishwasher and washing machine is heating the water. But we ordered both of these appliances with a time delay start program, which allows us to set everything up in the morning before we got to work, then run it when the hot water is free. We come home to clean dishes and clothes just like before, but the heat and electricity to do this came from the sun, not coal power plants.

Our house will be featured as a tour for the SC chapter of the Green Builders Association in June-our first official “showing,” although we’ve brought a lot of people through the house individually already. One of our friends is a videographer; he and his wife spent an afternoon filming and will be making a short video about the house, which we will link to when it’s finished.