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“Converting a normal 30 year old home to become a major “Carbon Sink” … and a Cash Generator”

Since we have a major issue hanging over our children’s & grandchildren’s heads I am taking action. The issue is Energy – its capture, use and consequences. Why do I say this? Well, because of a dozen reasons: National Security,  Personal Financial Security, Resource Depletion, Food Security, Climate Security, Environmental Destruction, Inter-Generational equity, Inter Species Equity … the list goes on and on.

So, what can we do? Well, we can Bitch and Moan … or we can act. Mohandas Ghandi has said:

“Be the change which you want to see in the world.”

This statement has been guiding my actions on energy for many, many years. In the last 8 years, being “retired” from AT&T Bell Labs by the 2001 tech bust, I have accelerated my focus on becoming more a piece of the energy and climate solution rather than continuing to be some part of the problem.

The energy issue is multi faceted. Thus, sometimes it is said that “There is no Silver Bullet.” I believe, however that there is a Silver Bullet … BUT … it takes more than one Silver Bullet. One also needs a lot of Lead Buckshot.

The Silver Bullet is Personal Commitment and Responsibility.

The Lead Buckshot is walking your talk in the many, many necessary ways to clean up your personal energy act.

You need one unwavering commitment (Silver Bullet) and a lot of follow up personal actions (buckshot) to carry out your commitment in the many diverse ways which are required to clean up your energy act.

So let’s say that you have made the personal commitment … now what next? Well, the first action is to study until you totally understand your energy usage. You need to be a student of your lifestyle, your home, your transportation, your food sources … etc. Study, Study, and Study. There are good books which can guide you: 1) “Insulate and Weatherize” by Bruce Harley and 2) The Homeowners Guide to Renewable Energy” by Dan Chiras. You might also consider “Food, Not Lawns” by H. C. Flores. As I said, you cannot do the clean up job until you understand the job you need to do!

I did do the study ... made the commitment … The process was not short. The lazy American way is to buy someone else’s (claimed) cleanliness and be dirty yourself … buy carbon credits … donate a token to save the rain forests … etc. But this will not really erase your ecological sins. Credits are false gods! Many are truly false … a scam. You Need to clean up yourself … your own act! Then help others to clean up theirs.

Lets look at food, transportation and housing… Food First. If you have a home and yard, can you grow your own food? Yes! Can you replace the lawn with vegetable gardens? Yes! I have done so, and I have also built a dual purpose SunRoom: It provides a place to 1) grow food and to 2) heat the house with the sun. The indoor crops include: broccoli, lettuce, spinach, and beets as well as dwarf fruit trees: Navel Orange, Mandarin Orange, Grapefruit, Lemon, Lime, Pomegranate, and 6 varieties of Dwarf Bananas. The room is made of recycled, surplus, and cull building materials which were going to be wasted. You can get many of these at the “Habitat for Humanity” building supply charity shops (or similar) or even at regular lumber yards (ask to see their “Cull material bin”).

For cooking your food you can use a “Sun Oven”. It reaches 370 degrees inside using just the heat of the sun (320 degrees in winter on your sunny deck or driveway). I have 2 Sun Ovens. I use them over 300 days a year. By the way, in that Permaculture garden you might want to use Bio Char (Google it for information) to improve yields and sequester more carbon. I was pleased with the results from this exercise as I pulled over 900 lbs. of veggies (over 20 varieties) out of my former lawn last summer!

Next, Transportation: I have several pairs of shoes at the front door. Some are for walking. Some are for cycling. Some are for driving. When I leave the house I plan the trip and put on the appropriate shoes. Weather permitting, trips under 1.5 miles each way call for walking shoes. Trips under 20 miles each way (time and weather permitting) call for bicycle riding shoes (of a type that are also good for walking). Other trips call for driving or “bussing” shoes.

Lets now consider housing. There are several aspects: 1) Lighting, 2) Heating, 3) Cooling, 4) Water Heating. Before going into each of these, I will say that you have to view upgrading a home as a hobby… a nibble hobby.

You nibble away at it. A house is a big thing. But you should nibble with a plan. And, you should keep the statistics which reflect your results. Learn to understand your utility bills! Put the Therms and kilowatt-hours into a spreadsheet so you can see your progress as you work to tighten up your home.

Examples of results:
My natural gas usage was 1094 Therms in 2002 for a combination of space heating and water heating. In 2009 it was down to 252 Therms. This is for 3250 sq. ft of home at 5890 ft elevation in Northern Colorado.

On the electricity side, I used 8165 KWH on the base line. By 2009 I had added cooling to the home and a plug in car. Also I had added a Radon Remediation system which runs 24/7. With these additions, I had still dropped the electrical usage to Negative 8400 KWH. This was a drop of over 16,500 KWH of energy expenditure while adding comfort, transportation, and energy security. Most of the drop was due to energy efficiency. The rest was from adding Photo Voltaic panels on the roof.

When doing the arithmetic, the over production of electricity which I shipped to the grid more than made up for the residual natural gas usage of my home. Thus I achieved carbon negativity on the structure, fed electricity to the plug in hybrid, and generated a lot of my own food, saving food transport energy usage.

If you have a “Do It Yourself” type of mentality you can make the weatherizing process be very cost effective. If you want to pay professionals, get ones who are really serious and want to get big results … not just 20% to 50 % savings on energy usage. Get ones who have the concept: “Get rid of all Fossil Fuel Needs”. Now as to doing it yourself … as I said, it is a “Nibble Project”. You do it in little bites. But you make sure the little bites are part of a big program to systematically raise your energy efficiency. You can raise your attic R values to R-100 and your walls to R – 50 or more. But, I get ahead of myself.

Lets talk Lighting: Natural Lighting removes the need for light bulbs in daytime. Add BIG “Sun Tunnels” (also called “Solar Tubes”) where possible. When I say Big ones, I mean 22 inch diameter. These give 4.8 times the light of 10 inch tubes … and 2.4 times the light of 14 inch tubes. And the light is really good – natural spectrum… and free! I added 6 big Sun Tunnels. For Night time, you may need a light bulb… or more. Now there are LED bulbs available – better than CFLs. More Efficient! Also Cleaner! You need to hunt for them. I converted over 149 bulbs to LEDs. Most are 1.5 watt!

Now for water heating: Many possibilities. The most effective cheap fix, if you have a conventional water heater, is to turn down the Water Heater Setting to “Warm” – and have it be that your “hot” water comes to the shower at the temperature you like to bathe. Do not mix cold into it. That is throwing away the heat you already bought! Wash clothes Cold.

Other possibilities: Instant (tankless) Water Heaters; Solar Hot Water, and my choice: GE’s new Hybrid Electric 50 gallon water heater. It has it’s own “Heat Pump”. It will be my next water heater since I have a Photo Voltaic system on my roof that is over producing.
I can use the excess solar electricity (very efficiently) for my water heating. The only more efficient approach I can determine is to move the house to be next to a hot spring further up in the mountains.

For Home heating (and much I say here also goes for efficient cooling) you want a very high efficiency heating plant (unless you can do without through fantastic weatherizing … my eventual goal). Then you seal your home well and insulate the holy heck out of it! Sealing means stopping nearly all of the air leaks (Caulk, Caulk, Foam, Foam, Caulk, Foam … etc). You can test with a “blower door” to find the leaks after you have done your best manually.

Insulating is a real nibble job … attack area by area with rests in between. You will want to learn about your house in detail (houses are conceptually simple so do not be put off – but there are lots of details). You can have this be a long term project. Each year you make more areas warm up (winter) and cool down (summer). Basically you will want to identify all cavities in the homes external structures. Then you will want to fill or layer them with appropriate insulating materials. Cellulose is great fill for attics (recycled newspapers). I have done this myself (with a friend as an assistant). You use the loaned insulation blower from Lowe’s or Home Depot where you buy the fire treated cellulose material. Cellulose is also great for adding to “always dry” cavity walls (not up against below grade concrete foundation walls, which pass moisture). Fiberglass can be blown into potentially humid foundation wall cavities. Sheet foam insulation boards can be applied to walls in any position. I dug the basement walls from the outside to a depth of 4 foot and added about R 30 to the foundation walls before back filling and sealing off the tops. I then blew fiberglass into the open cavity walls in the basement between the foundation wall and the false wall (9” space). This brought up former R-2 “walk out basement” walls to be well above R 60! There is very little heat loss now through my basement walls.

Blowing Cellulose insulation into the attic I raised the R value from a stated existing R-30 to over R-100 in the flat ceilings and R-70 to R-80 in the Cathedral Ceiling ( Scissors Truss ) areas. On the main floor walls I am working my way (a “nibble Project”) around lining the inside of the external walls with 6 inches of aged poly-iso foam board (an R-43 add). This further enhances the existing walls which were about R-9 but have been “Tube Filled” with cellulose to an R-14+ level. This brings the walls to R 57 before I line the inside with a lovely natural knotty pine finish layer with redwood trim and accents. All of the Poly ISO as well as the wood was procured as "cull" and was in the “Clear out free” or the “80% discount” bins. However, if one is patient, and willing to work with it, great things can be done with materials which other folks just discard.

For cooling, I benefit from the great insulation and sealing job I did. Additionally, I have improved the attic ventilation with under Soffit vents (there were none) and ridge vents. Then, taking advantage of Colorado’s dry climate, I added a small evaporative cooler, on an East facing wall, to the formerly hot home. It is now very comfortable with cooler operation only needed in the evening of the hottest (98 to 104 degree) days.

My planned future nibbles are:

1) Finish the main floor walls to a standard of R-55 plus using recycled/ cull materials.
2) Add another South Facing sunroom using recycled/cull materials for more winter heat gain – and indoor avocado and fig trees.
3) Convert the water heat to GE Hybrid Electric… this would be new, not recycled.
4) Consider a wood fired backup stove for periods when there is no sun for 5 days and the outdoor temp is below 0 degrees.

When I achieve these goals, I can remove the natural gas meter and just collect the “in feed” checks from Public Service of Colorado for the excess power I generate and pass to their grid.

I will also be both comfortable physically and comfortable in the knowledge that I am a part of the solution in the energy crisis which we are approaching. I will also be happy as I consider that I am doing more than my share to de-carbonize the atmosphere and try to stabilize the climate before it is too late, and tipping points are passed.

 One last point - the home space I have made carbon negative is also my work space in my retirement work: 1) Experimenting on Sustainability and 2) Maintaining a Museum/Gallery/ Library of sustainable Transportation. So, I have one space, 2 functions. In making that space become Carbon Negative, I made both functions become carbon negative. Some ask why not have the bike museum have it's own building. The reason is very clear to me. I would have all of the carbon footprint of 2 spaces. I would have all of the cost of 2 spaces. I would have all of the hassle of 2 spaces. See www.goldenoldy.org .