Happy Green Beings

Mark your calendars for The Energy Fair, put on by the Midwest Renewable Energy Association. It’s going to be held this year June 20-22 in Custer Wisconsin. Our family has enjoyed the fair in past years. There’s lots of workshops, exhibits, speakers, entertainment and yummy food! This year is the 4th annual Clean Energy Car Show, and there will be a Green Home Pavilion. As in past years, there will also be fun activities for kids. For more information, visit www.the-mrea.org.

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If you want to know more about Earth Hour, visit our “favorite web sites” at the rite hand side of your screen and click on Earth Hour.

You can make a difference!

Participate in Earth Hour 2008 on March 29.

TURN OFF YOUR LIGHTS FOR ONE HOUR!

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I didn’t know about this until this morning. Our clan will be participating and I’m encouraging YOU to join in too! All the info can be found here.
Pull out the candles, find a good bottle of wine and make it a date!

This video is a little long (6 minutes) but good and gives an overview of Earth Hour 2007.

(PS - If you have trouble with video on this blog, please let me know!)

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We live in a part of the world where water is plentiful. The Great Lakes, the melting snow, and the summer rains all provide regular sources of water to our state. It’s easy to forget that in other parts of the country water is less available and in many parts of the world it is a scarce resource.

Water is getting more attention though these days in some surprising places. I thoroughly enjoyed the following clip and LOVE that this technology already exists.

Won’t it be cool when this project teams up with this project.

This year our family is planning on installing water barrels on many of our downspouts in an effort to cut in half the amount of water we use for the gardens. We’re not sure what we’re doing and last year it was really dry so we’re hoping for more regular rain this year. We’ll keep you posted on how the project goes.

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Around this time of year here in Wisconsin we start to get a little stir crazy for Spring to arrive.  A couple of weeks ago I hit my winter wall - I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed some spring and I needed it now.  I needed to feel dirt.  So I pushed some furniture around in our spare bedroom, hauled up the bag of potting soil, and broke out the stash of seeds.  That day our daughter Meg and I planted tomatoes, basil, parsley, potatoes, peppers, oregano and dill.  I couldn’t stop myself from planting seeds.  Well, our work has started to pay off.  There are a bunch of delicate little shoots coming up in the yogurt containers and egg cartons we used to start our seedlings.  I find myself in there several times a day just watching them grow - dreaming of when they are big enough to provide delicious meals for our table.  A taste of spring a little early.

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These are a few reasons I don’t like being an American:

1. America is one of the top two contributors to Global Warming.

2. We are the most obese country in the World.

3. Despite being a rich country, we have worse health care than Cuba.

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I’ve been watching the sun a lot the past couple of months. Wondering, will we ever see the pay-off on our investment in a solar hot water system? (Click to see ours.) Frankly, it’s been surprisingly good weather after all of the snow we received earlier this winter, so here’s what I’ve learned from the experience:

1. Snow slides off of the panels until it piles up at their base on the roof’s surface. That causes it to back up onto the panels until I clear the snow pile, and I may as well clear the panels while I’m at it. I broke the plastic pool brush that I was using to clean off snow initially, so I took an old aluminum shovel and turned it’s bracket around to make a roof rake. Now, I can keep everything clear again. The solar electric panel that runs the system’s pump is small and easy to keep clear, but I think that clearing the four 4′ x 8 ‘ solar hot water panels is worth the time since the snow just piles up at the base.

2. Don’t count on a quick return of the Focus on Energy rebate. We had to have a follow up inspection from one of their people, and I’m not sure where we are in the process at this point. I’m hoping that the contractor will come address the concerns of the inspector soon since $3K of our money is at stake. The contractor’s only incentive is positive word of mouth since they are paid as soon as the job is complete. Guess who’s volunteering to be part of the solar home tour? We’re the ones who want the rebate check, not them.

3. The system needs a good chunk of space for a family of 6. The 100 gallon tank, plumbing for the heat exchanger, and the associated valves were laid out fairly compactly, but they did require that our washer/dryer be stacked to make space. Think about the same footprint as a full sized clothes washer. The good news is, it’s not in a finished space, so we tend to keep the door to our utility/laundry room closed most of the time anyway.

4. A simple system is what we were promised, and with the decals showing the direction of flow through the pipes, it is fairly easy to tell what is happening. Propylene glycol coming in off of the roof entered our house at 125 degrees F when it was -20 degrees F, and it drops anywhere from 10 to 20 degrees as it passes through the heat exchanger. That’s after about a 40′ run through insulated pipes outside! Water coming out of the top of the tank is often hot enough to avoid burning any natural gas to heat water on sunny days. I’ll bet we don’t burn any natural gas during the summer.

5. Water within the solar heated water storage tank varies in temperature from 55 degrees F in the bottom to 130 degrees F in the top, and we draw the heated water from the top into our regular 40 gallon water heater. I had no idea that such a small storage tank could contain water with such a wide temperature range.

6. Even a simple “2-3 day” installation may have it’s share of complications. First, there was the application process for the rebate program once we signed the contract on the 1st of November. I thought we’ld have the project done by the end of the year at that point. The application was approved on December 28th. Then, the installation was relocated to the garage roof because the space directly over the living space initially proposed had too many elements that would interfere, including a sky light and roof top ventilation. That in itself cost a couple of extra days due to the time laying copper and insulating the pipes. Also, because it was installed during an unusually snowy month of January, there was a fair amount of snow removed from the roof to create a work surface where the panels would be installed. Throw in the California based suppliers not shipping items since they were in the midst of taking inventory, and it stretched the job out quite a bit. Most of that impacts the contractor more than us. But, we are still waiting to see the rebate check in late March after the job was completed and paid for at the end of January. Still, I’m of the opinion that it will be worthwhile once we receive the rebate and take the tax credit during the following tax year.

7. I’m not sure what kind of impact this is having on our carbon footprint, but it has to help. We have two teenagers and two younger boys (who still prefer to avoid bathing at this stage). Once things warm up outside, we use a lot of towels due to a swimming pool, so that increases the hot water use. No, we won’t hook up the system to heat our pool. We’ll just keep using the solar cover instead. I’m hoping to offset any increase in our use of water (longer showers!) by installing rain barrels at all of the downspouts around our house. That will mean less water out of the hose to water the garden.

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I got the email the other day. You know the one. Gas prices are so high we should all not buy gas on some specific date. Oh, wait, this one had a much better idea than just not buying gas on a specific date; it said that we should all just avoid buying gas from the two biggest companies. And this will really work, really. And we should all forward this to all 209 people in our contact list. Really.

I wanted to reply, but resisted to avoid appearing cheeky. I actually wanted to “reply all” since I got this email twice in the same day from two different people, with open recipient lists. I really had to actively talk myself out of it, because that would have really been cheeky. Really.

So, here’s what I would have said if I had replied.

Yippee! The price of gasoline is finally so high that even people who aren’t weird, hippy, granola types are thinking twice about how much of it they buy. (When I bought my first car nearly 20 years ago, my family mostly giggled because I really wanted one that got good gas mileage. Really.) I can hardly wait until it gets to $5.50 per gallon to see just what it will push us to do.

If I don’t buy gasoline on a specific day, how does that matter? I don’t buy gas most days, only about once per week. It’s very likely that I won’t be buying gas on the arbitrary urban legend date in the email that everyone is forwarding around. And I’m probably not avoiding the purchase of gas on that day because of the email; I probably just don’t need to buy gas that day.

Let’s talk about what kinds of things we could really do that would make a difference in the price of gas.

We could demand that all cars are highly fuel efficient.

We could advocate for efficient, convenient, cost-effective transportation. I long for the day I could just jump on a train for the three hour trip to visit my sister and her kids. I’d love to spend that time reading to my kids or knitting, or doing just about anything other than driving.

We could permanently park our gigantic fuel-sucking SUV’s and Hummers.

We could work to make new urban development inviting and friendly for pedestrians and bicycles. I live less than 1/4 mile away from a large chain grocery store. I walked there exactly once to get some milk in the 18 months we’ve lived in this house. It is not convenient, safe, or enjoyable to walk there on roadways that are clearly only designed with vehicular traffic in mind.

We could stop bombing and threatening to bomb countries in the Middle East that are rich in oil.

We could let the Alaskan wilderness remain wilderness.

We could use people powered mowers on our lawns (do you know how much gas you use mowing your lawn?)

We could turn our cars off in parking lots instead of leaving them idling. If your car idles 1 minute, you’ve already used more gas than you will to start it up again. I know we live in Wisconsin, but your car doesn’t get cold that fast, does it?

Let’s start having some real conversations about real changes that can impact our consumption of gasoline. Really.

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This is the first of many posts about living, working, and being green. We are two families, 10 people (plus two cats and and dog) who are passionate about living lightly in the world. Check back regularly to see what we’re up to!

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