NESEA Green Building Home Tour

I wanted to mention two events happening in the next month.  The first is the NESEA Green Building Home Tour on October 2nd from 10 to 4.  Our house will be included on the tour and you can get more information at the NESEA website.

Also of interest is a Passiv Haus (Passive House) workshop sponsored by the Solar Energy Assoc. of Connecticut on October 9th at 2pm in Manchester, CT conducted by the New England Passive House Alliance.  

I recently made a presentation to the Solar Energy Assoc. of CT on the design and performance of our house (my first Power Point presentation!) and I found the organization to be great source for information on renewable and alternative energy and energy efficient building.   Their members include people from a broad range of backgrounds and disciplines including architects, engineers, builders, educators, activists, and students.  Check it out!

A Case Against Geothermal

After being asked about a zillion times by a house tour participant where my geothermal system was, I decided it was time for me to clearly state my opinion of geothermal heating systems.  As I said, this is only one persons opinion, and with any decision involving spending copious amounts of money, one should conduct thorough research, and talk to as many people as possible, while considering the backgrounds and motives of "experts" before proceeding.

We decided a geothermal system was not right for our house for the following reasons:

1) Cost.   A geothermal system is going to run $25K plus (mostly higher) and that only includes wells, piping, pumps, etc.  You still need ways to convert that 52F water to either heat or cooling for your house. 

2) Limitation.  As stated in reason one, you're only getting water to 52F, which is fine for cooling, but in our climate (Northwest Connecticut) we heat our houses much more than cool them, so you still are going to need energy to convert that 52F water.  Most homes with geothermal use heat pumps to harvest the energy (via temperature differences). This is, obviously, a very simplistic way of looking at it, but it was pointed out to me by an engineer friend that it equates to running a whole-house refrigerator/condenser 365 days a year.  Doesn't that seem excessive??  A well insulated house in CT should not require a whole lot of AC, so heating is your primary concern.  In my subjective opinion, geothermal is better suited for mid-Atlantic states, where the AC is running more than the heat.  

3) The conundrum.   Geothermal systems use huge amounts of electricity to pump the water down and then back up the geothermal wells.  The solution I hear THE MOST regarding this problem is "Well, you can just install more photovoltaic (PV) panels to offset the added electricity use and cost."  Every time I hear this, I usually want to: A) scream,  B) stifle a well rehearsed, but condescending explanation of the "less is more" sustainable building theory, described below, or C) ask "With who's money?" The later answer about who is paying is an interesting conversation in itself, because the current state of rebates in CT right now that include PV and geothermal systems means that lots of people are actually paying for these systems, not just the homeowner or home builder.  

4) The less is more sustainable building theory.   The whole idea of building more sustainably SHOULD BE to use less, being materials, energy, land, whatever,  NOT to build systems that can operate your 10,000 SF mansion cheaper.  People will likely call me un-American for this, but what the heck.  Building smaller IS building greener.  Smaller houses use less materials, use less energy, and are less expensive to operate and maintain.  Hopefully, our fascination with purchasing lots of stuff that we don't need, and can't afford, and building houses to hold all this stuff is coming to an end, thanks in part to the Great Recession.  

Case in point (Boy, I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for this one), the likely winner of the CT Zero Energy Challenge is a house that few people could afford to build and no bank would touch a mortgage for it.  This is because so much money was spent on the renewables and heating and cooling systems, there is no way an appraisal would justify the costs.  It has something ridiculous like 65 PV panels, many just to run the systems in the house including geothermal.  The goal of the Challenge is to promote energy efficiency/green building and to show builders and homeowners that they can achieve net zero energy.  How can you expand your mission when your poster project is so unattainable. 

5) Matching the technology to the scenario.  All the previous points notwithstanding, I do believe that geothermal can work correctly and efficiently under the right conditions in the right project, but the current craze for geothermal means the technology is being used in places where it is neither effective or beneficial.  There was an article recently in the Waterbury Republican  American newspaper in their Green Living weekly series (our house was featured one week) about a guy who recently installed geothermal.  The article praised the system then ended with a breakdown of costs.  I'm quoting numbers here from memory because I couldn't find the article online to verify my facts, so forgive me if I get my numbers wrong.  He spent $28K for the system and the first two years didn't save anything due to electric costs (his costs actually went UP!!).  So he spent more money for different pumps and to rework the system and achieved a savings of $1200 on the third year.  The cost benefit analysis proves this technology was not a good choice for his home.  

The geothermal craze won't end soon enough for me.  Then maybe I won't have to explain that our geothermal system is located in the basement, then gleefully watch as the hapless fool looks for the basement door.   Unfortunately, CT has started a geothermal rebate program that is fanning the flames of misinformation and the "experts" pushing these systems are drillers making fortunes on installing them, and don't care about operating costs for the homeowners. Such is life.

State Sponsored Home Energy Audits

The state of Connecticut has a Home Energy Solution, HES, program that provides home energy audits to home owners for a great price of $75.  It includes a walk through inspection of the home, a door blower test to determine air leakage in the house (a great value in itself- ours costs $350), and insulation evaluation, appliance inspections, and air duct inspection and test.  Air sealing and weather stripping will be done afterwards to stop major air leaks.  The technician will also make recommendations on capital improvements to make your home more energy efficient.  With this program there are rebates and discount loans available for capital improvements (I assume like windows and insulation).  The CT Energy Efficiency Fund sponsors and subsidizes unsecured loans through AFC First and the rates are great - 0% to 2.99% depending on how much you borrow.  The state website for the HES program is http://www.ctenergyinfo.com/dpuc_home_energy_solutions.htm.   

For information on the loans go to www.CTenergyLoan.com 
This is a pilot program so nobody knows how long it will last.  Probably until the stimulus money that funded it is gone.

On the Outside

Now that summer is beatin' down our door, we've been working on the outside of the house.  I built 2 raised garden beds out of local hemlock from the mill down the road and filled them with topsoil/compost mix.  We also built some flower beds around the house and planted edibles and native plants.  Due to the expense of good quality native plants, I'll have to fill the flower beds over time.  For now I just planted things like squash and melon, so the beds wouldn't be so bare looking this season.  Our other big item is a 20' by 15'  blue stone patio that was built by Peter Ledda Landscaping.  We were very pleased with the masons who built it, including a small stone retaining wall (step) on the driveway side.  They were able to use stone from our property.  Apparently, we have great stone here and lots of it, so I'm thinking of all sorts of projects for the future.  Likely some more walls and flower bed borders.  We used blue stone from New York and I think it goes really well with the house and the native stone we incorporated in the patio.  They also poured two footers at each outside corner of the patio so we could add posts for a large pergola over the patio.  We'll definitely need the shade on summer days.  We've been working on a design and thinking about materials.  Jeremy is going to visit the CL&P substation near his business and see if he can pick up pieces of some old utility poles for the posts.  Hopefully we can get some without too much creosote on them, nasty stuff!  If not, then we'll probably use hemlock because cedar is really scarce around here and very expensive.

Enough with the Fluff!!

OK.  So the last several posts have been on the fluffy side and it's high time I try to put that engineering degree to some use (my parents will be so proud).  I know many of you have been wanting more details on the mechanicals and I have been holding off writing about the performance until we had a few good months of operation under our belts, so to speak.  

Here's an overview...we have solar thermal collectors for hot water generation.  The heated glycol from the collectors goes to a 80 gallon Steibel-Eltron tank, that has dual heat exchanger coils.  The bottom coil is for the closed solar loop and the top coil is for the backup heat (also a closed loop), which is provided by a Takagi on-demand water heater.  Hot water in the tank supplies domestic hot water to the house and hot water for the radiant heat system (after going through mixing valves to cool the water prior to entering the PEX water lines).  This system is called an "open system" because drinking water is going through our radiant lines.  The radiant system consists of three loops in our concrete slab on the first floor and "staple-up" radiant tubing on the second floor.  The slab thermostat is a floor sensor that keeps the floor around 69 degrees and the second floor radiant is controlled by a typical thermostat.  We have a third set of radiant loops located deep within the three-foot earthbox under the slab.  The purpose of this set of tubing is two-fold.  First, in the transition months (Spring and Fall) when plenty of sun is available (and thus excess hot water is produced) we send hot water into the earthbox radiant loops, essentially "storing" that heat in the mass where it will passively help to heat the house.  This Spring we found this greatly reduced the amount of time the slab radiant heat turned on (and thus reduced the use of propane).  The second purpose of the earthbox radiant is simply as a heat dump for the system when the tank gets to hot.  Minimum temp for the tank is set at 120 degrees and the max temp is 165 degrees.  We have found that the heat dump will occur once on a really sunny day and only when I'm not using a bunch of hot water (i.e. laundry day).  The dump results in heat going to the earthbox for approximately 20 minutes.   We have NOT seen an increase in the slab temperature (or interior house temperature) more than 1 or 2 degrees due to this, even this week when we had two days over 90 degrees.  This can be attributed to several factors; first, the huge thermal mass of the earthbox and slab, and its ability to absorb the extra heat.  Secondly, we positioned the solar panels to optimize the winter sun (they receive more shading in the summer than winter due to their position next to the house), thus reducing the solar gain and heat generation in the summer.  Lastly, like photovoltaic panels, evacuated tube solar collectors are more efficient in cooler temperatures.  Radiant Floor Company designed the system and calculated the energy loads.  They also supplied all the parts and we hired a heating contractor, Paul Martin, to install the system and the solar collectors.  We did not take advantage of the CT solar thermal rebate program, because we already had a relationship with Paul and did not want to switch to a CT "approved" installer to get the rebate.   Paul is a distributor of  SunMaxx Solar thermal systems.  The evacuated tube solar collectors (hot water generation) were installed in January and it took about 6 weeks to get the control settings and sensors placed properly and get the system running optimally.  Until then, we were burning through an uncomfortable amount of propane.  By the middle of Feb. we were seeing excellent results.  We used about $145 worth of propane in Feb and $90 worth of propane in March, and the last propane fill up was on April 19th for $79.  Since then the propane system has only run briefly on one rainy cold day.  Keep in mind that propane is our backup energy source for hot water for BOTH domestic hot water and space heating in our radiant systems.  We are a family of four.  In a typical year, we would likely use more propane, but it has been unseasonably warm this spring.  All in all we are thrilled with the performance of the house and mechanical/solar systems.  I hope to include some graphics/tables of our energy use in future posts.

Tree House and Big Rocks

The past three weekends we've been working on several projects down by our brook.  Jeremy's friend, Al, built a stone wall for us around our fire pit.  We figured he would just pile up the stones found in the area where it appears that an old wall stood, many New England years ago.  He did more than that...he built this gorgeous semi-circle stone wall with flat sides and top, an enlarged stone fire pit, and built a small stone border around a sitting area by the brook, where I can sit and watch the kids play in the water.  The first weekend Jeremy rented a small bobcat excavator which he used to move some of the biggest rocks and some really large stumps from the area.  We also built two rain gardens which will hold the rainwater from two of our roof downspouts and allow infiltration.  We've planted native species that like to have wet roots.  It's a wonderful idea and I'm anxious to see if it solves a bit of our runoff issues.

Last weekend I built two 10' by 5' raised garden boxes from hemlock I purchased at the sawmill near our house.  Cedar is hard to find here and very expensive.

Jeremy started building a tree house.  He's been doing research on tree houses for years now, and was excited to start on one.  I think it's quite an ambitious project, but he never had one as a child and I think he's wanting to make up for that.  Oslo, of course, is very excited, and cheers Jeremy on from below (the framing of the structure is still too precarious for Oslo to be helping out directly).  Once the floor is built he'll be up there plenty.

Our First Award!

The company that manufactured and installed our structural insulated panels, Timberline Panel Company, entered our house in the annual building excellence competition held by the Structural Insulated Panel Association.  Out of over 80 applicants who entered nationwide, our house won 2nd place (Honorable Mention) in the residential category.  We are so excited to have been recognized.  You can read more at the SIPA website.  Congratulations Jeff Brooks and the rest of the Timberline team!