Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Published on February 14, 2010 By Draginol In Building a home

My wife and I are trying to have our cake and eat it too. A large house that relies largely on renewable energy.

 

IMG_0288

The house is jammed full of both open and closed cell foam insulation.  Every wall and ceiling is filled with this stuff. Even with the house unfinished, it’s had a major effect on keeping the place warm this winter.  This turned out to be a pretty significant investment because of the space involved. But the long-term cost savings will be enormous and result is a lot less heating and cooling being needed.

 

 IMG_0289

The Zo-e-shield windows weren’t cheap but even right now in the Winter with the house not done it’s amazing how blatantly more effective they’ve been than the windows we have at our current house.  With our current windows, you touch the glass and it’s very cold. In the new house, they’re cool but not cold. It’s very noticeable.

 

 IMG_0290

I agonized about having to clear land to build the house.  There were some black walnut trees, cherry trees, cedar, beech and a few tulip trees.

After talking to the builder, I found out that for a small cost, I could have that wood milled and used on the house. Most of that wood isn’t used in any particularly  flashy way but the wine cellar really benefits from the beech, cedar and walnut mix in giving it an old world look.

 

IMG_0291

In the United States, radiated heat is still not the norm. In Europe, for conservation reasons, it’s practically mandated. It saves a lot of energy heating and cooling the house this way.  Moreover, a closed loop geothermal system with 34 bore holes has been put in (it’s not hooked up yet so right now we have to use the backup boiler until the house is done).

image

To top it all off, is the 20KW solar array. 

Here’s the thing that most people aren’t aware of: conservation is 10X better than production. It’s cheap and easy to save a lot of waste on energy use. It’s expensive to produce energy.

The 20KW solar array won’t be enough to power the house in the Winter (I live in Michigan) but during peek months it should more than cover it.  So for some months during the Summer, I’ll be a net producer of energy.

Now, there’s a lot of other things being done too such as gray water system, water collection gardening, lots of use of natural light, and on and on.  But these are the “big things”. 

Something not quite related to the house but one of the most expensive things I’ve worked on is removing the invasive species from the 13 acres of property. A lot of people get caught up in Co2 emissions or what have you. But in terms of real world damage human are doing every day that we could easily resolve ourselves? Invasive species. They’re wrecking our forests, lakes, rivers, and yards. It’s a serious problem.  What we’ve done on our property is probably on the extreme side – literally paying tens of thousands of dollars to have the native trees fed, invasive vines removed from them, removal of invasive trees, bushes, etc.  But I think it’s pretty important for the overall ecosystem of plants and animals.


Comments
on Feb 15, 2010

pretty cool house so far. let us know how it progresses.

BTW, you have planned out a server/router room and gigE wiring for the entire house right?

on Feb 15, 2010

There is something to be said for going green, even without thinking about "global warming."

@ taltamir:  Agreed, I also wonder what sort of technology setup he'll be putting in here.  I would also suggest running speaker wires + wall mounts for 7.1 surround speakers. 

on Feb 15, 2010

oh yea... gotta have a theater room. Wires for both projectors and thin display (LCD, plasma, OLED, etc) so you could use either one in there.

on Feb 15, 2010

This is a great short article for anyone interested in how to really get conservation and environmentalism proselytized.  The key is to turn it into a financial conversation.  Big businesses like HP don't "go green" to increase their green cred--though that's a nice side benefit that may increase sales in certain markets.  They go green because it saves money.  There's nothing wrong with this, either; it took a lot of pushing by a lot of people for two generations to get the technology to the point where it made economic sense in the short-term, as well as the extreme long-term.

on Feb 15, 2010

um, it never has and never will make "long term sense" to do the "green" thing because AGW is a hoax.

In the short term sense, it is bad to use conservation technologies because you spend more money upfront.

But it DOES make sense in the long term to go with certain technologies that happen to be mislabeled as "green" because it will save you money (on electricity) over the long term. Said technologies are not any "greener" in reality.

on Feb 16, 2010

But it DOES make sense in the long term to go with certain technologies that happen to be mislabeled as "green" because it will save you money (on electricity) over the long term. Said technologies are not any "greener" in reality.

Geothermal is most definitely "greener".  But I went with it along with my other "green" technologies because it will save a lot of money in the long term.

on Mar 04, 2010

I read this post after I posted my other comment.  Some of these specifics (invasive species, gray water) look like things where you can actually raise the profile of something and help bring the cost down by being an early adopter.  Like how Priuses help bring hybrid technology closer to the masses.  Greenies could get behind that even though it's an expensive display.

on Mar 04, 2010

Geothermal is most definitely "greener".  But I went with it along with my other "green" technologies because it will save a lot of money in the long term.

for it to be "greener" it has to:

1. Reduce CO2 emissions.

2. For CO2 emissions to be destroying the earth. (dun dun dun!)

Most green technologies fail at 1, a few succeed at 1. geothermal is one of the few that succeeds.

But even if it succeeded, it would be pointless because 2 is false. The most "green" technology in the world (nuclear power) is not really "green" because CO2 is not harmful, therefore there is no such thing as "green" technology.

I do love geothermal though. Efficient, independent, cost saving.