More Thoughts on Our Green Home
In response to some questions about our green plans for our home, here goes:
We're doing rainwater harvesting and geothermal, and possibly solar water heating, from the start (geothermal should work particularly well for us because, the more contact the coils have with groundwater, the more effective the installation, and the groundwater is just below the surface on our lot). PV electrical will have to wait until later, but we'll put the necessary conduit and brackets in place so it's not a radical renovation if and when we do add them. It looks like wind power is not a viable option in our area right now, but we'll be ready for it if that should change in the future. And should we put the juice into batteries, or have it grid-tied? How about hydrogen fuel cells! I'm actually most interested in doing something with that in the future.
We will make the envelope of the house as tight as possible and incorporate passive solar principles, including thermal mass. We hope to use structural insulated panels, which make a really tight wall, not to mention it moves a lot of the construction into a factory and minimizes waste. The foundation will be insulated concrete forms. We hope to install heat exchangers to keep the heat energy from hot air and water leaving the house.
Finally, we're planning on using as many reclaimed supplies as we can find. We're also planning on low VOC-paint (actually, tinted clay plaster), reclaimed wood and tiles etc., whenever we can. We'll start looking for that stuff when the floor plan is finished.
WI has good rebate and incentive programs available for homeowners using renewable energy, but we don't know a ton about it so we're going to hire a consultant to help with all that.
We're doing rainwater harvesting and geothermal, and possibly solar water heating, from the start (geothermal should work particularly well for us because, the more contact the coils have with groundwater, the more effective the installation, and the groundwater is just below the surface on our lot). PV electrical will have to wait until later, but we'll put the necessary conduit and brackets in place so it's not a radical renovation if and when we do add them. It looks like wind power is not a viable option in our area right now, but we'll be ready for it if that should change in the future. And should we put the juice into batteries, or have it grid-tied? How about hydrogen fuel cells! I'm actually most interested in doing something with that in the future.
We will make the envelope of the house as tight as possible and incorporate passive solar principles, including thermal mass. We hope to use structural insulated panels, which make a really tight wall, not to mention it moves a lot of the construction into a factory and minimizes waste. The foundation will be insulated concrete forms. We hope to install heat exchangers to keep the heat energy from hot air and water leaving the house.
Finally, we're planning on using as many reclaimed supplies as we can find. We're also planning on low VOC-paint (actually, tinted clay plaster), reclaimed wood and tiles etc., whenever we can. We'll start looking for that stuff when the floor plan is finished.
WI has good rebate and incentive programs available for homeowners using renewable energy, but we don't know a ton about it so we're going to hire a consultant to help with all that.
posted by Thayer Coburn @ 9:18 PM
1 Comments:
At 4:25 PM ,
rachel said...
Will your architect or engineers model your proposed energy use with the green features installed? If you want to keep track of your energy use post-occupancy (weather adjusted), let me know: I'm building a web-based tool to track and display building performance (for my work.) You could maybe be the first residential user. Right now the energy module (and associated greenhouse gas emissions) is most developed, but I hope to incorporate stormwater management measurements to the tool in the future.
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