Tip of the Day

 Smart Energy Living Alliance  offers this Tip of the Day: 

“UNPLUG SOMETHING!”

 

Seems like a good way to start Lent.

The Solar Dog

Amidst the solar craze of the 70s, my father proposed a solution:  the solar dog.  He observed that our grumpy, tri-color Bassett hound sought the sunniest spots in the house or yard for naps.  With a black coat, the lazy dog absorbed a lot of heat.   

Dad suggested we get a pack of black Bassetts, send them out to the yard to sun, and then bring them back inside to heat the house.  He figured 10 dogs would be enough, if used in rotation. 

Calculating the cost of dog chow and adequate supply of treats to lure stubborn hounds back into the house, Dad considered his passive solar Bassetts to be far more economical than installing the solar panels championed by my mother.   

Amory Lovins, of Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, had another approach.  He built a 4000-sf home and office so energy efficient that the building is comfortable with exterior temps from -47 to 90 degrees, without a furnace.  Lovins says, “We’ve heated the house with a 50-watt dog.  On really cold nights we’d adjust her to a 100-watt dog by throwing a ball.”

We recently adopted a 4-year-old chocolate Labrador.  Though we’d planned to get another yellow Lab, we saw Maddie’s photo at Safe Harbor Lab Rescue, and knew she was the girl for us.  She’s a social dog, and chases a ball as long as someone will toss it.  She works even harder for a toy that squeaks. 

We estimate that Maddie out-watts Amory’s dog, but of course, our home is far less energy efficient. 

January light

At the cabin, shadows are getting long at 4:00 on this January afternoon.  We walk with the dog towards the large flat rock that is a favorite. 

Here we can stand on a broad, red granite slab edged with lichen, and look west towards a distant mountain range that can be seen through a V in the canyon.  We watch the sun scale slowly down into the trees, the glare splayed like sharp spokes of light through the broad branches of Ponderosa. 

I think of Madeleine L’Engle and her star-gazing rock.  There, secrets of the cosmos poke into everyday life, as if the rock were centered under a hole in the rachia, the great solid, perforated dome that formed the primeval sky of Genesis.  Strange truth drips on the rock like rain.

Each year I wonder if I will survive winter, with its frugal light and dust-brown horizon.  I grieve the hibernation of photosynthesis, the absence of green foliage that feathers the landscape and softens harsh corners, green that feeds the world.  I have tried to train myself to the practice of winter, to embrace the bare and the cold, to find beauty in graceful skeletons of aspens and the changeable contours of ice.  It feels like Lent without sweets, or music. 

This January has been better than most.  The several warm days, rare with cordial temperatures, have melted the snow drifts and lure us outside.  Returning from the broad watching-rock, we hike in sneakers rather than boots, without jackets.  Piles of boulders and fallen soldiers of dead trees darken as the day’s light retreats.  Our jagged shadows as we walk eastward are three times our height.  There is a sense we can never live up to them. 

On my left, the grass is illumined in a slice of light.  The waning light catches wheaten stalks, all the way to the base, and highlights every reedy strand.  Grass seeds and panicles glow at the tops of their stalks, each feathery shape picked out clearly like a nimbus or corona.  I turn to look west, and see a field of grasses detailed in their moment of shining, like a delicate blond beard against the rocks.  

What has always been dismissed as “just grass,” a homogeneous green that tickles at knee-level, now becomes a display of diversity.  The grass is not one, but many.  I snap off representative heads of grasses that are curled like the dense tail of a Husky, or sturdy and clutched like grain, or lacy and spread with tiny dill-like seeds. 

Ann Zwinger’s sketches tell us we have seen bluegrass, smooth brome, pine dropseed, and slender wheat-grass.   They have escaped the usual crush of snow.  

 

In a way winter is the real spring, the time when the inner thing happens, the resurge of nature.   - Edna O’Brien

So chic, so free

E2: Design Series

Don’t miss this! 

We watch E2: Design  every week.  Narrated by Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, this popular PBS series examines sustainable design and architecture stories from around the world.

Some favorite episodes:  ”‘Harvesting the Wind’ (wind power co-ops owned by Minnesota farmers) and “Gray to Green” from the first season (featuring a home built from materials reclaimed from Boston’s Big Dig construction project).  

The 2008 season has been a standout, from discussion of the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco (designed by Renzo Piano), to the intriguing Garden in Cairo.  We’ll be watching the E2: Transport series, about bicycles in Paris (so chic, so free). 

The webmaster has told me that 2008 episodes will be available for free webcast view through January.  Afterwards, the series can be purchased from iTunes.  Episodes are 30 minutes long, just right for a break with fair trade coffee. 

To view, click here, then click on “Webcast”. 

Village Architect Episode

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dissecting the Frog

The only frog I saw in school was in a 9th grade biology classroom filled with a clammy smell of formaldehyde.  The FROG Zero classroom may change that, by bringing a healthier, energy-efficient “frog” into the classroom.  At Greenbuild 2008, the Project Frog company constructed a modular school classroom to exhibit under the awning of the Boston Convention Center in 6 days.

Project Frog classroom

Configured for LEED Silver rating, the 1280-sf space uses 75% energy reduction.    A good photo tour of the Greenbuild structure can be seen at Jetson Green.  This structure is filled with natural light, technology, and thoughtful design.  Who wouldn’t want to learn here? 

The central spine of the classroom is taller than the side wings, making the front of the classroom the visual focus, and creating a sense of space and expansion.  Head room. These photos were taken after sunset, without benefit of daylight brought in through clerestory windows. 

The side wings have whiteboards, bulletin boards, and power strips for banks of computers.  The wings created a sense of shelter within the larger room, for hunkering down on a project.  The effect, on micro scale, is not unlike a cathedral, where attention is drawn to higher things, and great thoughts seek the light.  

classroom interior, Jetson Green

This year it’s my 3rd-grader’s turn to attend classes in modular classrooms, affectionately called “les chalets.”   Some teachers prefer the modulars, because awindows can be opened, and classrooms have greater connection with the outdoors. 

However, traditional modular buildings have a trailer feel–low ceilings, tight quarters, inadequate bathrooms for 2 classes’ worth of kids.   I have to resist the urge to stoop in the chalet, when volunteering to help children with worksheets on symmetry.  I wonder about air quality in the classroom when windows are closed in winter, and if the chalets were constructed with as much formaldehyde and VOCs as are used in trailers and modular homes.  

Modular classroom buildings are the pragmatic reality of crowded schools and lean school budgets.  They’re popular as the less-expensive alternative to building additional classrooms.   I suspect that savings in construction cost for standard modulars is offset with expensive operations cost—it can’t be cheap to heat a trailer with inadequate insulation, or light a room with few windows.   

As I sat in the FROG zero classroom in Boston, I thought about how design can become part of the curriculum.  Can a bright, well-designed space inspire a child in her learning, and her perceptions of the  importance of learning? 

Can a classroom built for a healthy environment, stretching the concept of energy efficiency and green building, ignite a child’s vision of the natural world, and how he relates to it?  Maybe it’s time to make that leap, and say yes.

Greenbuild 2008

Stand Up for the Earth

In Boston last week, the US Green Building Council sponsored GREENBUILD 2008.  Attended by an estimated 30,000 people, Greenbuild is no longer the annual meeting of LEED converts and fringe environmentalists.  It’s a force for bringing green building technology and innovation into mainstream design.   

Videos of keynote speakers, like Van Jones and Desmond Tutu, can be viewed free HERE.

On the plane to Boston, I sat by a man whose company’s clay tile roofing products had just won Cradle-to-Cradle certification a few days earlier.  At the Expo, with a half million-sf exhibit hall, I saw glass windows (used in commercial glass curtainwall buildings) with thin-film solar sheets integrated between the panes of glass, and energy-efficiency products that squeeze more juice out of expensive electrons.

Green is beautiful.  Architects and designers browsed the massive hall to see samples of cork and bamboo flooring, fabrics and carpet tiles that can be composted after use, surface treatments made from recycled materials.  There were colorful samples of engineered counter material impregnated with recycled glass, and paneling made from wheatboard or bamboo or recycled milk jugs.    

And urinals.  Waterless urinals are popular options for new buildings seeking LEED certification. Displays of toilets and urinals proved this trend is coming to a head (sorry).  I saw a well-dressed woman at the Kohler booth walk up to a toilet (thoughtfully mounted on a raised platform), fling open the lid, and peer deep into the wonder of water-miser technology. 

Several companies suspended large items over their booths, including a huge red-finned ceiling fan from Big Ass Fans.  They say, If you don’t have a Big Ass, get one.  You can even buy a t-shirt. 

Which would make me a LEED-accredited, early-adopter big ass solar fan who has seen more urinals than necessary, thank you very much. 

The Solar Year

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of our solar panel installation. 

Our 2.7kW array produced 4024 kW of electricity in one year.  In that time, we drew 3060 kW from the grid.  We produced at least 57% of our electrical needs.  A bit more than the solar installer predicted.

We can make the most of that production by tweaking:

• Go after phantom electrical loads.  We did some of this, but there are little electronic devices around the house that still slurp electricity.
• Finish changing out CFL lightbulbs.  We’re about 70% there.  The hard-to-reach ones in ceiling & hall fixtures are waiting their turn.   
• Put the fax machine on a timer. We run a biz from our home, and leave that machine on 24/7.  I used to turn the fax off at night, but usually forgot to turn it on in the morning…
• Use our “Kill-A-Watt” meter to learn how much power things use, like the obnoxious central vacuum.  

 We could get real serious about this, too:

• Empty the chest freezer that stores forgotten food. 
• Dry clothes without the dryer.  We enclosed part of our west-facing deck.  It has a slate tile floor, perfect for drying…if I remember to get clothes out there during the day.  If I remember to do laundry during the day. 
• Update our 1995 fridge.  Which I still love.
• The hot water heater is due for replacement.  Tankless?  Standard high-efficiency?  Solar thermal?  (There’s some southwest roof just waiting for flat-plate collectors….)
• I’ve been dreaming of an automated smart-house system that could program outlets throughout the house from my computer.  I could set time ranges on outlets we only use during day hours, and zap more phantom load.  Technology is available, but expensive –- intended for high-end home theater and security systems.   
• Finish installing window coverings that insulate.  We installed plantation shutters upstairs to block out cold and heat, but I’m stumped about what to do with the oversized living/dining room windows, which came with useless mini-blinds.  At nighttime during the coldest months, we close the decorative velvet curtains that came with the house. 
• Have our insulation levels checked & increased.  I also dream of an infrared photo of my house, taken on a bitter January night, which shows me where the heat leakage is.  I would frame it, and put it on the mantle. 
• Hook a couple old bicycles to a generator and make the kids pedal if they want to watch TV.  Well, ok, that should probably be for me. 

 The quilt, called “Sun Dance” is by Catherine Kleeman. 

 

Coal Train Blues

Our local utility announced this week that monthly utility bills will increase by 72% in the next 10 years.   An increase of 27% in electricity cost may hit in the next two years, as the city’s existing coal contracts expire.  Coal costs are expected to double in the next few years.   The 72% increase includes water and natural gas rate hikes. 

It’s a tough week to hear this news.  The federal government is proposing a $700 billion solution, as people open their mail to find bills they can’t pay, or watch values in their retirement and college funds tumble.  “We’re in it for the long haul,” people say.  “I don’t look at my statements anymore,” a friend admits.  

I posted a note on my desk that says, BREATHE.   

It’s time for communities to consider which sources of energy make the most sense for them.  Chris sent an article about 4 dairies in Vermont, which are turning crap into cash to produce Cow Power.  Cowpats are converted to biogas, which is burned in a generator that produces electricity for nearly 350 home, and then provides additional revenue opportunity for the dairy farmers.

The Vemont utility hopes to add 6 more dairies by 2010 to take advantage of this remooable energy source.  Those energy dollars stay right in the community.  

And what about southern Colorado?  To me, solar energy makes a huge amount of sense in this part of the world, with 300+ sunny days a year.  And wind energy, for when the sun doesn’t shine.  These aren’t 100% solutions to our community needs, but they could go a long, long way. 

What other safe, clean, and creative sources of energy can we find?  Because coal and natural gas are not the long-term answer.  We can’t seem to afford it in the short term, either. 

Solar Wordle

 

I’m yoinking this idea from Sarah’s post about Wordle.    I pasted text from a press release into the Wordle box, and voila!  a word map that’s pretty.  Click HERE  for a clearer image.   

The 13th Annual National Solar Tour, sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society, takes place on Saturday, October 4.  I’m helping to organize a tour in my community.   Visit www.NationalSolarTour.org to find a tour near you.

Solar Math

Word problem:  To date, our solar panels have produced 2831 kilowatt hours of electricity.  We have drawn 2525 kilowatt hours of electricity from the utility grid.  Question:  How much of our electrical needs have we met from our solar panels? 

I’ve learned to leave this in the hands of the professionals.  Here is an answer from Polly, a mathematician:  

“You have produced more solar electricity than you have used from the city.  The question (unanswerable) is how much of that solar electricity did you use, and how much did you send back through the grid?

If you used it all, then you have produced 2831 / (2831 + 2525) = 53% of your energy.  If you used none of it, then you produced 2831 / 2525 = 112% of your energy consumption. All the way around, impressive numbers.”