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You’ve gotta love brilliant people. I have this one friend who designed and set-up a system that uses basic filters and plants to purify the water leftover from his recycled paper-making business.
And then there’s the people who just wake up one morning, scratch their noggins and decide, “I think I’m going to make a solar panel this week.” I just marvel at those people. M. Davis of Arizona did just that.
Ok, so it might have taken him longer than a week, but with some materials scavenged from his garage, some parts sourced through ebay and a touch of brilliance, M. Davis now has solar power.
My first thought when I saw this project was ‘good for him. Too bad I’m not gifted enough to build a schmancy solar panel.’ But M. Davis has taken the time to document how he did it in plain English on his own web site and on Instructables. Plus, you can email him if you have questions!
Based on Davis’ writeup, the skills needed to build a solar panel like this are:
Basic Woodworking Soldering Electronics Wiring
For a seasoned do-it-yourselfer those skills are old hat. But, if you’re just starting out, recruit people you know who have these skills! Building a solar panel like this could save you some good cash. You could either make like M. Davis or hand over $485 CDN to Real Goods for a 62 Watt Solar Module.
Oh, and if this project is to basic for you, try building your own wind turbine. Or better yet, build me a solar panel!
Yes, we passed final electrical inspection, by default because the inspector didn’t show up in the two day window. Apparently a group of inspectors will be coming shortly… this presents yet another educational opportunity. So officially all we need to get final occupancy is the completion of the railing on Merrily and Howie’s deck. We had purchased used fishing net material to fill in under the railing but apparently this does not meet code. So plan B was to use a bit of our left over deer fencing as this is very strong and UV stable…but no go as well as the 1.5 inch toe holds may allow for a child to climb. So once we solve this we can move in…that is after we move a few residents out. With doors being open and all the traffic, our home has had a few guests, which have become long term… perhaps, even a generation or four. There is nothing to eat in the house (clay and sand have no food value) but the squatters like to sleep inside…who could blame them. For months we have been live trapping and releasing outside…they have had peanut butter and oatmeal for months. Read the rest of this entry »
Every year as temperatures plunge we return to the age-old feat of staying warm. We unearth our familiar woolies, don knitted slippers, and gradually slip into a 6-8 month hibernation period. This year, why not put extra layers on your house as well?
Insulation Types
Choosing a sweater that brings out your eyes is far easier than selecting and installing one or more layers of insulation in your house. So, let’s start with the basics. Natural Resources Canada has compiled an extensive list of different insulation types, how they work, and what their R-values are. The University of Alaska also has an informative at-a-glance chart (pdf) to easily compare your options, while HGTV’s Ecologue’s snappy insulation overview video is sure to warm you up to the idea.
Wondering what other function your toilet could possibly perform? Hand-washing, of course. Not in the bowl, silly! On the lid!
With this Real Goods Toilet Lid Sink, you can cut water consumption by washing your hands in this nifty add-on sink. When you flush, this gadget directs clean water to a sink on the lid of your toilet for hand-washing. Once you’ve washed your hands, the water drains into the toilet tank to complete the flush.
Think of it as a mini-greywater recycling modification to your toilet. According to Real Goods, it installs easily without tools. Each unit is made from porcelain-like plastic and retails for $89 USD.
We’ve cheered on the creative and efficient dome home design in recent months, and have now discovered a truly unique variation that’s sure to turn heads. Innovative company Solaleya was spotted at recent West Coast Green Festival by Inhabitat writer Chris Worrall. Solaleya is the creator of the dome house that, wait for it - rotates to follow the sun.
Yes folks, you’ve heard of rotating restaurants and dance floors. Now, you can actually order and live in a house that slowly spins to take advantage of passive solar heating and natural lighting opportunities. The domes come with a remote control allowing you to orient your picture window to the view of your choice.
Framed with FSC-certified wood and insulated with cork, Solaleya’s design presents a number of eco-friendly benefits. Unfortunately, each unit is pre-fabricated in France, requiring that it be shipped overseas to the construction site. But here is a design for living that can respond to the seasonal angle of the sun. That’s an impressive concept by any standard.
Over the past season I’ve become intimately acquainted with my right-hand water fixture. Nope, I didn’t have the flu and yep - my pipes are in great shape. Instead of a sickly me hanging over the toilet bowl, a curious me tinkered around with the twoflush toilet conversion kit by Alberta company Aquanotion.
Toilets & Water Conservation
Eco-rhetoric calls on us all to meditate upon the final destination of our sewage post-flush. But there’s only so much meditating one can do without a bit of plumbing experience. Environment Canada tells us that our ‘retro style’ 18 litre toilets slurp up “30 000 litres of clean, fresh water per year just to get rid of 650 litres of body waste” while newer 6 litre models sip only a third of that to do the same job.
To Upgrade or to Retrofit
The water savings alone are enough to make anyone want to dump old faithful for a younger more evolved comparable. And though it was a tough decision, I committed to making it work with my current throne. Just think of all those old toilets piled up in the dumpster. I know what you’re thinking, but sadly not everyone wants a toilet planter in their yard.
One of the things we noticed when we plugged in our new chest fridge was the amount of condensation we were getting inside the fridge and how useless the little drain hole in the bottom was. To be fair it IS supposed to be only for draining water when defrosting…
It got so bad that we were actually getting a little bit of rust forming at the seams inside the compartment! Needless to say this wasn’t a very healthy turn of events for either us (possible mold) or the fridge (rust).
I got to looking around the internet and turned to the home brew forums to see what the kegerator guys who led me to the Brewer’s Edge controller had done for their keg chest fridge’s when condensation happened. Many said you would have to wipe the inside down and eventually replace the appliance when rust ate through the coolant tubes, but others said they had good luck with a product called Damprid that sucked moisture out of the air. Exploring further it turned out that Damprid is merely calcium chloride which is used for road salts in some places and for chlorine free pool treatment as well and can be had at much lower prices in large quantities than you pay for the name brand products.
I went out to Home Depot and found a 1KG bag for $6 and made a holder out of two ice cream buckets inside each pother with holes in the bottom of the top one to let the brine that develops when the calcium chloride absorbs moisture drain into the lower bucket. Within a few days of putting it into the fridge the beads of moisture that coated the inside of the fridge were gone and all surfaces were bone dry!
It seems there are many lessons to learn from those inventive home brewers!
Get an instant $50 subsidy on the purchase an eligible low-flow / dual-flush toilet from Home Depot on Saturday, September 6th and Sunday, September 7th from 9am to 5pm. Bring in your water bill to prove eligibility and the City of Calgary will remove the paper work. Toilet manufactures will be on hand to answer you questions and how-to work shops will be offered. See in store for additional savings on other low flow fixtures and appliances such as showerheads, faucets and front-loading washing machines. More information about the sale and eligible toilets can be found at www.calgary.ca/waterservices or by calling 3-1-1.
Nestled within Green Living Ideas’ collection of practical resources is a top notch piece on why air conditioning is best used as a last resort, if at all. It echoes a few concerns that I’ve been ruminating as this summer steams along.
Beyond an overall discomfort with consuming massive amounts of energy to rid our homes of heat (also energy) while warming the climate in the process, the Eco Air Conditioning piece points out the social and health costs associated with air conditioning systems, and reminds readers of both simple and technical solutions to an overheated home.
Still, it amazes me that as we control our indoor environments, we forget that heat is energy. Why have we not yet found a way to harvest this heat for domestic water heating and other applications? Let’s make like a martial arts master and ‘harness the strength and momentum of our opponent for our own benefit’.
While we await the next generation of heat harvesting-cooling technology, how about we embrace non-technical solutions that don’t rely on energy consumption to kick heat out of the house? Visit Green Living Ideas for the full article.
I’ve thought about the heating system for the Mill Creek NetZero Home (MCNZH) for months now. The home will need a very tiny amount of heat because it’s so superinsulated, super sealed, and passize solarized. The computer model that simulates the energy performance of the house (using HOT2000) has the MCNZH using 2500 kWh. That’s roughly 6% of the heat that my renovated (with new insulation and windows) 1950s bungalow uses.
So we’ll need the equivalent of 9 Gigajoules of natural gas per year for space heating. Given that being connected to the natural gas grid costs about $400/year, and 9 GJ are worth $50-$100/year, it makes no sense for us to connect to natural gas. Plus, Canadian natural gas production is waning, so I don’t want to depend on having gas in the pipe in 20-50 years from now.
So we’ll only be connected to the electricity grid. That leaves the following heating options:
1. A Seasonally-charged, Huge Solar Water Tank: This is what Peter Amerongen used for the Riverdal NetZero Project. I’ve eliminated this option. The system ends up being very complex, and I think that it loses too much heat from standby losses whilst waiting for the heating season to come around. Godo Stoyke told me that they modeled 1.5% heat loss per day, given a tank with R100 and heated to 90 degrees C. In the end, the benefit of whatever heat is left over from the summer in December, when you finally need it, doesn’t justify the complexity.
2. Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP): I was pretty set on this option until recently.There’s a new one out that can heat your hot water too (at lower efficiency because domestic hot water needs to get quite a bit hotter than space heating hot water). It is expensive, though. Like $25,000 for a tiny system.
3. Baseboard Heaters On Each Floor And An Electric Instant Hot Water Heater. The big advantage is the heat delivery system is DEAD SIMPLE. The entire system is just so simple. Plus, although I’m not giving up on the concept of true net zero, we will have a wood stove in the home. If we burn 10-20 fires per winter (I know, I know, ground source pollutants - we’ll consider the fact that we don’t drive to be our offset for those), we will be using barely any electricity to heat with.
The question is, then, do we spend $20,000-30,000 on a GSHP that will almost never be used, or use the money to finance more solar electric, which will definitely be producing all summer long, regardless of how many fires we burn.
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