Get Along With Less Lawn — Ideas to Save Water and Effort

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Ideas for your living spaces, lights and landscape design.
Light up your living spaces with recessed light fixtures, a designer chandelier lighting or even a row of pendant lamps.

Award-Winning Ecoman and the Skeptic Launched Fifth Season Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 3 p.m. on The Green Talk Network

Rob Fryer, Rob Fleming, and Chris Pastore

Ecoman and the Skeptic, the award-winning green radio show designed to educate, inform and entertain listeners on a wide range of topics relating to sustainability, kicked off its fifth season on Wednesday, Sept. 21, from 3 to 4 p.m.

The first green radio program to broadcast live from a college or university, sustainability experts Rob Fleming and Dr. Chris Pastore host the innovative radio show in the studio at Philadelphia University.

Each show features prominent guests and regular features such as Green News and the popular GreenWash quiz with Rob Fryer, assistant professor of architecture. Previous guests have included actor and environmentalist Ed Begley Jr., Leonard Bonnaci, director of event operations for the Philadelphia Eagles, and Jim Kohm from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, who cautioned about false green advertising claims.

http://www.voiceamerica.com/show/1463/ecoman-and-the-skeptic

Stakes In The Ground

More like sticks. We planted sticks. That's what they look like, anyway.                                                              They're actually Heritage Red raspberry sticks. I mean plants. Someday we'll have lots of juicy red raspberries growing along the driveway. And maybe someone will pick them. I don't even like raspberries, but the Tween does. It'll be her job to pick them. 

Besides just plain eating them, there are other uses for raspberries and the plant's leaves. When I was pregnant my midwife suggested raspberry leaf tea. It's used as an herb in female reproductive health. I've also heard it can  be used to for mouthwash (go figure) and as a fertility aid, but we won't be needing it for that.

If these six plants thrive, I'll have to find ways to use them. The Tween can only eat so many.

Out With The Blue, In With The New

Out With The Blue

We planned on replacing the blue tile at some point. With the kids at sleep away camp, the point is now.

James Tile Guy found us beautiful Travertine tiles for a real bargain. He didn't think the powder blue tile was original. In a mid-century house with another bathroom down the hall tiled with Pretty Pretty Pink, I had to disagree.

Thinking—rather, hoping—there was some sort of subfloor between the concrete wet bed, Rob went into demo mode. Guess what? No subfloor. Just concrete. 1950s concrete. Old stinky, 60-year-old concrete. ORIGINAL TILE FLOOR. Really, REALLY hard to take up. About one hour, three cuts and two holes in the concrete later, it was decided to leave the demo to a professional.

So now, the sink is in the bedroom, the toilet is in the dressing room (now that I think about it, this actually sounds like an incredibly convenient set up). Oh, and we may be looking at a more complicated job than we planned.

In With The New

The Plants Are In

Our friend and permaculture specialist Jon has been amazing. He and Rob removed and replanted a few bushes in order to put the salad and herb garden next to the house. I had a virus of some kind that day (really, I did) so I wasn't much help.

A few weeks later they built the first of three raised beds. We now have actual food growing in the yard! This self-sufficiency thing just might happen! Jon created a master plan that includes not only the three beds but also fruit trees (coming soon), berries and chickens.




Yup, I said chickens. We're planning to raise a few of them to provide eggs and fertilizer for the crops. That's what chickens do. I don't think we'll use them for food——but you never know. For now we'll be watching the new crops to see what they'll yield.

$11 Electric Bill for April

We just got all our bills for April and the results are fantastic - sorry for being a bit boastful but this is really cool:

Electricity savings 93% versus April last year - that corresponds to an $11.40 electric bill. The savings came as a combination of behavior change and our 2.8 KW solar array. Last year our KWH was 600. this year our KWH usage was 303kwh which means we cut our electric bill in half via changed behaviors. we also generated 263KWH of power form our array leaving 40kwh on our bill which cost $11.40. Our PV array was 13,364 dollars and we received 30% rebate from the federal government and 2.25/watt from the state, so we received roughly 9,800 dollars in rebates!

Heating also improved, partly due to warmer weather...and that might explain a small portion of the reduced electric since we have forced air system. we reduced our heating by over 50% using the pellet stove and careful use of the thermostat.

our dollar savings for 2010 versus last year so far are:
Electricity: $267
Gas: $391

Stay tuned for more details

Preliminary March Results

Last year our family of four used 600KWH to power our house during the month of march. This March we used 450KWH. That's a savings of 25%! Mainly we just kept turning things off. We did install many CFl bulbs and we started using power strips in key areas of the house such as the family room where we have lots of electronics that that draw power even when not in use.

Now for the best part.
We collected 150KWH from our new solar array. That is a 33% offset on our bill. Overall, we are using 50% less electricity compared with last year at this time. Now i just need to make some cool charts so we can visually track our savings.

Lastly, we saw a 22%reduction in our gas usage - mainly due to thermostat adjustments and our pellet stove.

Stay tuned for more fun statistics...

Permaculure!

We had our first look at our permaculutre plan for our property prepared by a sustainable design student at Philadelphia University. Johnny did a great job and he is convinced that we can grow a lot of food on our land and even have a few chickens - that will be interesting. We'll be uploading some drawings soon. In the spirit of taking the first step, we moved our composting bin as per the new plan!

Looking forward to energy bills?

I know its weird, but i am really looking forward to receiving our march energy bill. we had a lot of sun this month after some rainy weeks. This should be the first month that the power from our solar array will show up as a credit. My dream is to have a zero energy bill - at least for four months this year. That's tough given that a 2.8KW array is not big enough to supply enough energy for a family of four - even a green family. A new post
with savings will be coming at the end of the month.

Power Outage - lessons learned

We lost power for 12 hours today. We learned that we need a backup plan beyond the fire place for heat and power but we also learned that on a sunny day, the temperature in our house is 54 degrees - not bad, lending credence to the strategy of south facing buildings with lots of glass on the south side. I plan to undertake a BTU/sq. ft. calculation to determine how our performs versus other houses.

More savings

Based on our most recent energy bill, our family used 36% less electricity this January over January last year. Adding the impact of our 2.8KW solar array - we generated 168KWH (this will be our lowest producing month) so our total net KWH reduction is 49% over this time last year. We also used 28% less natural gas versus January of last year. Its been cold in the house, but not freezing. One of the things I noticed was the impact of a south facing house. there were days when the heat was set at 62, but it was 65 in the dining room as the south sun provided passive heating (40 degrees outside). (think of it as something similar to getting in your car in the winter on a sunny day). the temperature outside is cold but its warmer in the car. So, finally, we are starting see some benifit of all this effort and investment.

Pictures of PV Array

This is our 2.8KW PV array installed by EOS Energy. It looks like it will generate about 1/4 of our power in the winter (we have forced air heat which requires electricity). In the spring and Fall, we expect a near-zero bill (if we are really careful about our consumption). Our inverter tells us how much power we generate each day and how much CO2 we have saved since the system was installed. Next post will cover the various rebates that we will be receiving.

Its starting to pay off!

We received our electric, gas and water bills this month and I am proud to say that paying attention to energy usage is paying off. I've been collecting data from our bills all last year when we lived without much focus on being efficient.

Last December, we used 1094 KWH and this December we used 861 KWH. That's a 22% savings over last year. Our house uses forced air heat with a pretty inefficient furnace (we'll upgrade that when we can). Our gas use—minus cooking and hot water—went from 237cf to 203cf—a 14% savings—mostly due to careful use of both the thermostat and the pellet stove. We used about ten bags of pellets at $4.50 per bag, so we saved a little bit of money there.

Electric prices in the Philaelphia area are expected to rise about 20% next year so these savings will become more important. The PV panels were activated in January - so stay tuned. Our water bills, thanks to energy star washer and dishwasher and a dual flush toilet is consistently about half or less of the national average which saves us about 600 dollars per year. One day we'll have a large rain water cistern to bring that number down further. Stay tuned for pictures of the 2.8 KW array!

Beautiful Noise

There is lots of activity inside and outside the house today.
Inside, the kids are enjoying their Christmas bounty with Aunt Kathy, who has come for her holiday visit from California.

Outside, the sounds of footsteps, drills and hammers on the roof. The PV array is finally going up. FINALLY! It's not the 3.5k system we had originally planned, but a smaller 2.8k system. Them's the breaks. We should be fully functional by the end of today. Fingers and toes are crossed.

This is a huge leap from where we were just a few weeks ago. As I wrote earlier, we'd experienced an unbelievably stressful fall/early winter.

We were let down by Solaris Energy, our previous solar installer. Let down is a very nice way to put it. Our trust (and out investement) in the company and it's president was completely pretty much lost. Let's just say that we now have the attorney general's office and local court system involved in the relationship with them.

The situation with Solaris Energy has potentiallly set us back several years, but the beautiful noise reminds me why we set out on this journey.

What a @#%&* Fall!

FIVE MONTHS. Five months since the last entry. PA-thet-ic!

In the last post we were happy. The roof was done, no more leaks during rain storms, and the solar array was about to be installed. It was Tuesday, July 28 and the solar installer was to begin the installation the following day. Ah, the good ol' days when we were young. OK—so we were the same age it feels like we aged far more rapidly than normal.

No one showed. That does happen. Sometimes contractors fall behind schedule and don't always call. We're patient people. Understanding people. We waited until the Monday. Nobody and no evidence that any equipment had arrived. Not a thing. OK, time to call Mr. McKinley, the friendly solar contractor who was so jovial on camera during the Renovation Nation episode. A regular Mr. Happy. So helpful, so charming.

So we called. And our dear Mr. McKinley told us that there was a snafu with the panels. They would be drop shipped to the house on Wednesday.

Thing of Beauty

Finished, completed, leakless.

The roof is done and it looks lover-ly! A lovely roof? Seriously?

In our old house the way the roof looked didn't matter. It was three stories above eye-level. The beauty of that house was in the victorian details of the porch (even though it was falling apart), windows, and masonry. But that was in the big city. Out suberbia, the roof on our split-level house is akin to Dr. Suess's Cat's hat. In other words, the roof is a major part of the house's visual identity. And did I mention it doesn't leak?

It Ain't Sexy ...

... but it is a biggie in our eco-renovation journey.

Actually it is kind of sexy. For us anyway. A new roof. Exciting stuff ... really.

On Renovation Nation Steve Thomas was (rightfully) incredulous about the condition of the roof. While the structure was quite sound and nowhere near ready to crumble and cave into our living room, the shingles were in horrible shape. Pitiful. Ugly.

But that's all about to change. It's changing as I write. I can hear the roofers overhead. Sounds like wild animals on the roof. 

And who knew roof shingles could be ENERGYSTAR® rated? This new stuff (GAF Timberline®) is supposed to help us save on energy costs. Just in case you're interested, we selected the color Barkwood:

Oh, and there was the frantic call this morning to Mike the solar guy. He has to rush over to take down the small array so the roof can be completed.  

We're trying to get the shingles recycled, but the local company that specializes in roof materials recycling hasn't returned our calls. 

This really is very exciting! In a few days, barring any major mishaps, we'll not only have the new roof, but the full PV array up and running. High utility bills be gone!

Let There be Light

I know its corny but I find myself going in and out of the downstairs bathroom. we installed a sensor that automatically turns the lights on and then turns them off 15 seconds after leaving the room. If you have kids, then these are essential to saving energy. They cost 15 dollars and are installed in about 30 minutes (if you are good at electronics a lot faster). Anyway, we figure there are lots of rooms and closets where the automatic lights can help. we'll need every bit of help as we'll need to cut our family's energy use by 25% in order to have zero electric bills after our solar panels are installed in about two weeks!

Lighten Up!

All right. I've had a nice long weekend to chill out and cool down (all without air conditioning).

After listening to friends and family reactions and watching the show again, we were able to have fun and relax. It was a great experience, we may have earned some eco-cred, and Steve really is a cool guy.

Calm But Dissapointed

Maybe I'm taking this too seriously. Maybe I should let it go. And I will. After this post.

The following is our response to Steve Thomas's Journal on Planet Green:

While we understand the need to generate interest, tension, and ratings, we also feel it is important to get some of the facts straight: The cost of the panels was less than $5000, and some of that cost included the infrastructure (wiring, etc.) for the full system which will be installed over the summer—the originally scheduled installation time.

Our roof is absolutely not about to collapse. On the contrary, it is quite sound. Who would live in a home with a roof in danger of collapsing? It does, however, need new shingles—again scheduled for replacement this summer.

 

Nica was hardly embarrassed and does not consider this commitment and investment in her family’s future to be “eco bling.” It is a matter of not only being green, but also being practical and reducing the home’s energy costs.

Part of the reason the Flemings agreed to do a solar installation was to show how easy it was to take the panels off the roof. In Rob’s work he comes across many people who suffer from “eco-paralysis” because they are overwhelmed with trying to things the “right” way in the “right” order.

 

As for the financial investment for the small array we received an excellent price for the full system to be installed later.

As we move forward towards a greener future we need all need to learn to work together, avoiding divisiveness and criticism and begin to realize that there are many diverse paths to achieving sustainability – often requiring an open mind and a supportive environment.

We're just trying to do good stuff, Steve.