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As I said earlier, I am working through each “Task of the Month” suggestion proposed by Earth Care Indiana and was happy to discover that we’ve already done the March task.  Sort of.

March task: Install and Use a Programmable Thermostat

This was a task we managed to do four years ago when we were still renting, as it is minimally intrusive (although you do have to do a little wiring to get it set up).  We brought the thermostat to our house when we moved but upgraded soon after to a version that tracks the number of hours that the furnace or air conditioner runs.  It’s a nice feature when you’re trying to get a feel for how often the furnace or A/C kicks on in the night. (Yes, we have our thermostat set to “Auto” so that the whole house fan only runs when the house is being actively heated or cooled, which is more energy efficient than setting it to “On” and letting the fan run constantly.)

However, we haven’t used the programming feature on our thermostat very much for the last two years because we keep it set at 60 degrees during the winter and 78 during the summer.  Will works from home so it doesn’t make sense for us to use an “away” setting during the day.  We could probably let the house get a little colder overnight during the winter but 60 seems cold enough.  In the summer, it is a question of how much heat/humidity we can stand and our tolerance actually goes down at night when we are trying to sleep so there’s not much wiggle room there.

We did add a ceiling fan in our bedroom last fall, which we’re looking forward to using this season.  Last year we got by with an assortment of box and pedestal fans.  Fans do use a little energy but a lot less than our A/C and they have an amazing impact when blowing directly on us.

Earth Care suggests (for their “advanced” step) to experiment with greater setback – e.g., push your comfort zone by setting the temperature a little cooler than you normally would in the winter and warmer than you normally would in the summer.  I feel like we have done a good job with this and am holding off on trying anything more extreme for the moment.  I think our next step will be to improve the curtains, shades, and vegetative shading on our house to minimize heat gain through our lovely south-facing windows during the hot, sunny summer months.

Our house is actually quite well designed with respect to the sun.  We have lots of windows on the south side but with an overhang to keep out the sun during the peak months of summer (except for our bedroom window, for some reason).  We have almost no windows on the north side, which minimizes heat loss from cold wind in the winter.  Additionally, we have windows that open on all sides of the house so it’s easy to get good cross-ventilation on pleasant days.  All we need to do is add some evergreen plants on the north side of the house for insulation and some deciduous vines for shade on the south side.  I’m thinking arctic kiwi and passionfruit on the south side and native honeysuckle on the northside.  Stay tuned for more details…

I go to a lot of meetings, as someone who is interested in improving my community and willing to serve on committees.  Sometimes I have trouble getting excited about a particular meeting, which is what happened when I recently agreed to attend a public input session for updating the Growth Policies Plan for Bloomington.  I am fascinated by urban growth and excited to have a voice but it was the third night in a row of rushing home for dinner before heading out the door to yet another meeting…

Happily, I had a very nice time talking with a few fellow Bloomingtonians about the future of our fair city.  We were asked to brainstorm words & phrases that describe our city now and our hopes for Bloomington in the future.  The word cloud shown is our ideas for the future, and you can see how Will and I influenced our little group.

Okay, granted “sustainability” is pretty tiny but you can clearly see how we’ve been thinking about walking as a main form of transportation, both as a way to reduce our carbon footprint and to increase our general health.  We also mentioned better public transit, better access to trails, better opportunities for business development, and how to better integrate our diverse population that ranges from university students to retirees.

Will has been walking close to 20 miles a week and I hope to catch up with him when I end my contract in Columbus.  We also want to start biking more and are excited that the B-Line Trail is now complete and fairly close to our house.  However, access is still a big issue, especially in our neck of the woods where there are no side paths for a couple of miles.  It’s quite a design challenge, really.  The B-Line Trail used to be a railroad so naturally all the houses and businesses turned their backs to it and often put up fences to try and screen out the passing trains.  Now it’s a bustling trail filled with potential customers and businesses further north (in the downtown area) are adding patio areas, “walk-thru” windows, and back entrances that attract trail users.  Our neck of the woods is mainly residential with a few spurts of industrial/warehouse areas, which means there is less incentive to open up to the trail. (In the image shown, our house is the yellow star and the B-Line Trail is the long green line on the right.  Our closest access point is the railroad spur heading southeast that is marked with a dashed yellow line.  However, if we are headed north (towards downtown), we often walk one block further north on Rogers Street and cut straight east at Hillside.)

I am serving on yet another committee that is looking at how to develop the surrounding area into a park and I am hopeful we will be able to come up with some realistic access points to solve this dilemma.  For now, it’s easy for us to get on the trail to head north (towards downtown) but if we want to go south (towards Will’s business partners), we have to go up and then back down again.  Still, we’re glad to have the B-Line and are excited to see Bloomington get even better for walkers and bikers.

One of my goals this year is to complete each “Task of the Month” suggestion proposed by Earth Care Indiana.  I think this is a great program because it is so achievable – simply complete one task per month for a year to significantly decrease your home’s energy usage.  Will and I have already taken a lot of these steps so my secondary goal is to create a “green belt” advanced level of tasks.

January’s task: Insulate Your Water Heater.

We did this already, although I can’t remember when and apparently did not think to write a blog post about it (*gasp*).  Probably it was in 2010 when we started the Energy Challenge.  It was very easy, except for the bit about crawling around in the crawlspace.  For gas water heaters, you have to be careful not to crowd the venting whereas with electric water heaters, you can wrap the whole thing up as snug as you’d like.  A friend suggested that a good way to evaluate the intrinsic insulation of your water heater is to put your hand on it and see how warm it feels.  Ours was a little bit warm but not very, so I think the insulation is a good idea but perhaps not as significant as it could be with an older water heater.

The other suggestion from Earth Care is to lower the temperature on the water heater thermostat to 120 F.  Our water heater has two thermostats: one for the top heating element and one for the bottom heating element.  We initially turned them both down quite far, which saved us a lot of energy during the Energy Challenge.  In fact, I think we turned one of them completely off, which motivated us to take short showers before the hot water ran out.  Unfortunately, it also made me rather grumpy as I could not take a bath at all and my showers often ended on a lukewarm note.

About six months ago, I was feeling deprived and turned both thermostats back up.  I gloried in the decadence of hot water for the first couple of months but I have to admit, I took it too far the other way.  We really do not need scaldingly hot water.  This weekend I tweaked both thermostats to try and get them both around 120 F, which should be hot enough for baths and relatively long showers but not so hot that it can scald out of the tap.  We may have to keep finagling a bit.  (Note to water heater designers: Please do not design the cover of the thermostat to be attached with a Phillips head screwdriver and the thermostat itself to require a flat head screwdrive – that’s just annoying!)

As to coming up with an “advanced” task on this subject, the next logical hot water step should to install a solar hot water heater.  It could be a fancy solar hot water panel integrated with the house plumbing, or a freestanding 3-season backyard solar shower.  We are leaning towards the latter, although hoping to build one nicer than the camp shower  we experimented with in 2010.  The challenge is figuring out a good design and location – especially one that fits our budget and construction abilities.  I’m moving it up on the “To Be Designed” list.  Right after “chicken coop.”

The daffodils are blooming, six weeks earlier than last year.  Is it global warming?  Is it the weirdness of Indiana weather?  I say “yes” to both.  Two weeks ago, I took advantage of an unseasonably warm day to inspect my fruit trees and do a little pruning.  I am an overly squeamish pruner so this year I decided to make up for years of neglect with some serious hacking at the trees I planted in 2009 (the ones that actually look like trees).  My 2010 and 2011 trees still look pretty twiggy.  They also suffered from severe nibbling by the local deer population, so my pruning focus for them was mostly surgical.

Once I was done cutting off bits and pieces, I determined that I really need more deer protection if I want these babies to grow.  The rule of thumb for trees (and all perennial plants) is that the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap.  I have several that are due to start leaping and I don’t want the deer to interfere any more than they have.  So, last weekend I installed random bits of fencing around all my fruiting trees and bushes, except the Nanking cherry bushes, which I think might take over the Earth if left to their own devices.  They have definite nibble marks but also have formed about 5,000 buds that look poised to burst into flower.

I also made the bold decision to uncover my fig tree from its winter cocoon of foam padding, leaves, and plastic bags.  Last year I waited until Easter and a week later it sent up new stems from the rootbud, which made me worry that the rest of the tree was dead.  However, the rest of the tree perked up a week later and looked just great so I’m hoping for the same results this spring.  Actually, I’m hoping for an explosion of growth and even more delicious fruit for me to enjoy.  (I ate about 15 figs last year – yum!)

Here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve planted since we moved in.  So far only the fig has produced fruit but that’s pretty typical, as trees and bushes take awhile to mature (especially when they keep getting chomped on).  If you’re in a hurry you can plant some small fruiting plants – I did eat some alpine strawberries and huckleberries last year from plants I grew from Baker Heirloom seeds.  And of course, there’s always gleaning – I think I scrounged about three pounds of mulberries from my neighbors’ trees, as they don’t consider them “proper fruit.”  Whatever; they were delicious.  Anyway, here’s what is in my yard:

• Apple, Enterprise, 2009, Trees of Antiquity
• Apple, Akane, 2009, Trees of Antiquity
• Apple, Liberty, 2010 Brambleberry Farm
• Pear, Seckel, 2010 Brambleberry Farm
• Fig, Chicago Hardy, 2010, Brambleberry Farm
• Cherries, Nanking, 2010, Renaissance Farm
• Chokecherry, 2011, Garden Fair
• Pawpaws, 2010, Brambleberry Farm
• Gooseberry, 2010, Brambleberry Farm
• Jostaberry, 2010, Brambleberry Farm
• Trifoliate Orange, 2010, Brambleberry Farm
• Currant, Black (I think), 2011 Brambleberry Farm
• Black Raspberry, Jewel, 2011 Brambleberry Farm
• Blackberry, Apache (I think), 2011 Brambleberry Farm

Plans for this Spring

• Elderberry, grown by me from a cutting and currently in a pot indoors
• Blueberries, varieties TBD, Backyard Berry Plants
• Kiwi, Arctic, from a fellow permaculturist

Some day my yard will be full of delicious fruit.  Soon….

I am in the early stages of planning a roundtable discussion with the working title “How to Bicycle to Work and Still Look Great – Tips & tricks from working women on how to look professional, stay safe, and have fun while traveling to work by bicycle.”  It will take place the evening of May 2nd at the Monroe County Public Library and I have recruited an excellent panel of ladies who are experienced at commuting by bicycle.

I hope to count myself among them by the time the roundtable happens.  Alas, I have a long way to go.  For the last six months, I have been driving to Columbus three days a week, racking up 300 miles a week on the odometer.  In February, I was also commuting twice a week to Indianapolis, bringing the grand total to about 500 miles a week.  Bleah.  Even with a Prius, it’s hard to justify that kind of carbon footprint. 

My contract position in Columbus expires at the end of March and I hope I can find long-term employment within bicycling distance of home, or at the very least a job within Monroe County.  The weather is becoming much more appealing as of late so I look forward to at least doing some recreational biking.  I’d love to become a bicycle commuter but if that doesn’t work out, my secondary goal is to be ready when the next “Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Bike Ride” comes around.  It’s organized by a couple of inspirational women cyclists who work for the City of Bloomington.  This year it was held on February 18th and promoted with the following description:

Rain nor sleet nor snow nor roving bands of zombies will keep us from the streets during Bloomington’s first annual Terrible  Horrible No Good Very Bad Bike Ride.  The 5-mile ride will traverse urban cycling routes around Bloomington to prove that it’s possible to bike in all kinds of weather.  Intended for both the fearful and the fearless.  If you can ride on this day, you can ride any day.

Alas, ever fickle Mother Nature ruined their carefully laid plans by providing a warm and sunny day but the 40+ folks who showed up all claimed to have a wonderful time anyway.  They talked about clothing options, bicycle fenders, and other techniques for minimizing the impact of icky weather.  Next year, I want to be a confident velocipedestrienne riding along with them, fearing neither cars nor rain nor roving bands of zombies.  My role models are the confident lady bicyclists who terrorized the streets in the 1860′s, as captured by the wonderful artist Kate Beaton.

Watch out, world.

We’re having an open house! 

608 W. Guy Avenue Bloomington, IN
Sunday, February 26th, 2:00-4:00PM

We are hoping it will be sunny enough to demonstrate our solar furnace (that big black box shown behind us).  For a sneak preview, check out our post about how it works and our more recent post about our experience so far.  We have enjoyed the extra heat a lot and think it is a very neat form of solar technology.  I’m afraid our pup won’t be joining us; she’ll spend the afternoon with a friend so she doesn’t get overly stimulated by NEW PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE OH MY GOODNESS.  And hopefully between now and then we will give the inside of the house a nice scrubbing plus have time to bake some cookies!  No promises about the yard, though.

Please RSVP by sending a note to us at maggie at greencouple.com.  Thanks!

During the Energy Challenge, we discovered that our dryer is a major electricity hog (as pretty much all heat-generating electrical appliances are).  In warm, sunny weather it was pretty easy for me to get motivated to use our clothesline but I’ve found it more challenging during the winter months.  I also wasn’t sure if laundry would actually dry in sub-freezing temperatures, so I decided to do some test runs.

First test (shown in picture) – inconclusive.  Approximately 5 minutes after I hung my laundry to dry, clouds rolled in and proceeded to dump snow on my clean clothes.  I brought them inside and hung them on our indoor clothesline, where they dried after about 36 hours.

Second test – success.  It was very sunny and temperatures were hovering right around freezing so I’m still not totally sure how it would go on a really cold day.  It has been a weirdly warm winter and we haven’t had many super cold days.  Today, in fact, it was about 65 degrees out, which is just wrong for February.  The poor daffodils are sending up shoots and buds, which I have no doubt will be frozen off in another week or two when our “normal” weather resumes.  With a little luck, there will be a sunny day in the teens when I can get a definitive answer to my laundry question – will it dry?

Our prize for winning the 4th quarter of the Energy Showdown last year was a very cool solar attic fan.  It took us awhile to get around to installing it but we found plenty of motivation and dry weather in July.  I convinced my dad to come help, despite his preference to stay at ground level.  I took the fun job of cutting a hole in the roof (gotta love those sawzall projects) and then he helped me install the fan itself.

We were both a little surprised when the fan started spinning as he handed it up to me.  But it was sunny and the air temperature was above 80 and that’s all it takes for the fan to get to work.  The brand we got is called “the SunRise” from SRS (SunRise Solar, Inc) and it was made in Jordan, Indiana.  I’m happy to know we have some solar manufacturing in the state and so far I’m definitely impressed with the fan.

It’s a very simple one-piece unit that was pretty easy to install.  (For detailed instructions, check out this article from Home Power Magazine.)  My first step was to climb into the HOT attic and pick a location near the roofline and near the center of the attic.  I drilled a hole halfway between two rafters and left the drill bit in place. Then I climbed up on the roof, found my drill bit, stuck on the circular cardboard template that came with the fan, and used the sawzall to cut out a circular hole.  (I did nick the rafters on both sides but only a tiny bit.)

After that, we pried the neighboring shingles loose so we could position the fan unit into place.  A few screws, a huge tube of caulk, and we were done!  We probably could have done the whole thing in under an hour but of course we had to take two trips to the hardware store – one for screws and a second one for a star-shaped drill bit that fit the star-shaped screws we had picked out.  Good times.

It’s hard to tell for sure how much of an impact the fan is having but it has definitely been running a lot.  The mechanics are pretty simple – there’s a photovoltaic panel attached to the motor but with a thermostat so that the fan will only run if the air temperature is above 80, which it has been for most of the last six weeks.  The goal is to pump hot air out of the attic, keeping it a little cooler and slowing down the amount of heat that seeps into our house.  I think it does reduce the burden on our air conditioner.  Yes, we have been running the air conditioner (set at a modest 81 or 82) although it’s mainly to keep the humidity down since we’re in Indiana swamp season (90% humidity nearly every day).  We also use fans, which make a huge difference.  Right now we only have a ceiling fan in the living room so we have a couple of box fans.  The trick is to minimize power use by only turning the fans on when you’re in that particular room since they don’t actually cool the air temperature; they just make you feel cooler by blowing away the layer of hot air around your body.  (Check out this post about staying cool from Mr. Electricity for a nice graphical explanation and some other non-AC cooling tips.)

Eventually we hope to add more ceiling fans but that will require an electrician.  For now, I’m planning to stick just with projects that involve cutting and gluing, which I think I mastered in kindergarten.

Will and I were lucky enough to travel to Alaska last month with his family and visit several amazing national parks.  Denali was probably the coolest (grizzly bears!  caribou!  huge mountains!) but I also was super impressed by the Kenai Fjords National Park with its coastal glaciers.  It’s pretty humbling being next to a giant river of ice and to watch an immense chunk break off with a loud “CRACK” and fall into the ocean.  Amazing.

While we loved the wildlife and the beautiful landscapes, we also enjoyed seeing all the ways the parks strive to be green, including quite a few renewable energy technologies.  It seemed like every building (even the outlying bathroom structures) had a solar panel on it.    Eielson Visitor Center, deep into the tundra of Denali National Park and with spectacular views of Mt McKinley, was the most impressive and is a LEED platinum building.  It’s essentially built into a hill with tundra plants growing on the roof to help it blend even further into the landscape.  One of their challenges (and motivations) is that there is no electric grid available 66 miles into the park.  So, the building uses several different energy sources (solar panels, hydroelectric generator in a nearby stream, and small propane generator) and was designed for maximal passive heating and lighting.  One advantage they have is that the center is only open for four summer months (June – September) because it is snowed in the rest of the year.

We happened to visit on the summer solstice, when the official sunrise was at 3:45 AM and official sunset was at 12:21 AM the next day (a 20 hour 36 minute day) but it never got truly dark -  just dusk-like.  You can generate a lot of electricity from solar panels on a sunny day in that part of the world!  However, they also have a lot of cloudy days so it has been an experiment to see how solar electricity and solar hot water work for the center.  I think it’s awesome that the parks are able to try out different technologies and do the best they can to have a minimal impact on some of the best natural landscapes in our country.

In Kenai Fjords, I snapped a quick picture of an electric car driven by the rangers.  I expect it makes a lot of sense for traveling between their two visitor centers that are about fifteen miles apart over flat paved roads (as opposed to driving through the backcountry).  We are still intrigued by the idea of getting an electric car for our household since so much of the driving we do is short distances on city streets with low speed limits.  However, it doesn’t look like it will bubble up to the top of the priority list anytime soon.  I guess we’ll let the parks work out all the kinks and then we’ll adopt the refined version.

The good folks at SIREN gave a stirring presentation last month about how now is the time to switch to solar electricity.  Panel prices have fallen significantly due to the recession, electricity prices look poised to raise (at least here in Indiana where Duke Energy is spending several billion dollars to construct a coal gasification plant in Edwardsport and pass costs on to customers), and there’s a brisk market for renewable energy credits.  We had already caught the fever a bit and the talk just convinced us it was time to get an actual site assessment and cost estimate.

We’re working with Alex Jarvis of Solar Systems of Indiana, a quirky guy who knows a heck of a lot about solar.  He came out to discuss some different options and to do a site reading of a few potential spots using his handy dandy Solar Pathfinder.  It’s a very simple little device that maps shade to determine if a particular spot has a good solar window.  The image above is from the middle of our roof, which has a very good solar window of about 85% between the key sunshine hours of 9:00AM and 3:00PM – solar time.  (See rant on Daylight Savings Time below.)

He also measured a few other spots in our yard so we could think about doing a pole-mounted solar panel.  You could argue that the pole-mounted systems are a little on the ugly side but they are very practical in terms of maintenance – no climbing on the roof, no trying to patch the roof under the solar panels – and they are great for houses that have a shaded roof but sunny yard.  We are leaning in that direction simply because our roof is 20 years old and will need to be replaced well before the solar panels.  Alex actually has his panel (shown at right) configured so he can move it around during the day to maximize its exposure to direct sunlight and therefore maximize electrical generation.  He is the first to admit that is way too hardcore for most people but he is a tinkerer and enjoys fiddling.  Most people just retilt their panels twice a year at each solstice.  At the spring solstice, the panel is tilted closer to horizontal since the sun is higher in the sky during the summer.  At the fall solstice, the panel is tilted more vertical since the sun is low in the sky during the winter.

After that is the decision of what kind of solar panels and inverters to get, which I must confess is mostly Greek to me but Will is drooling a bit at the thought of enphase microinverters that broadcast all kinds of exciting data for him to analyze with a fine-toothed comb.  We’re looking at getting six modules that are each rated somewhere around 240 watts, giving us a system that is around 1.44 kilowatts.  Here in southern Indiana, we average about 4.7 hours of direct sunlight per day once you factor in cloudy days and the fact that our days are significantly longer in the summer but shorter in the winter.  In a perfect world, our solar panels would produce 6.8 kw-hr per day (1.44 kw x 4.7 hours) or 2,470 kw-hr per year.  However, there are some losses that we have to take into account with our lovely fudge factor friend, the derate factor.   The derate factor has several components:

• Shade on our system.  Our solar window is about 85% open, 15% shade.
• Losses from the inverter, connections, and wiring
• Losses from dirty solar panels (we’re going to assume we can keep ours clean – with a hose if needed)
• Losses from improper angling (again, we’re in good shape with a pole-mounted system that can be tilted at least twice a year)

In the end, we figure our derate factor is about 0.8 (meaning we lose about 20% of the ideal production level), which reduces our expected output to about 5.4 kw-hr per day or 1,970 kw-hr/year.  That should still just about cover our needs and in our area it’s not worth overproducing since the electric company will just keep rolling over our credits until we move.  If you’d like to try this game at home, check out the PV Watts calculator developed by the National Renewable Energy Lab.  Soon we should have some prices to go along with our power estimates but for now we’re excited about the possibilities and also trying to brainstorm how we might landscape our yard to make the solar panels blend in a bit.  Any and all suggestions are welcome!

Daylight Savings Time Rant:  Indiana only recently adopted Daylight Savings Time while staying in the Eastern Time Zone, and I am not a fan.  Today the sunrise was at 6:30AM and sunset at 9:15PM, which means our solar noon is really about 1:50PM and our key sunshine hours are 10:50 to 4:50.  It also means that the fireflies don’t come out until 10:00 and it’s awfully hard to schedule fireworks, bonfires, or drive-in movies that children (or I) can stay awake for.  I liked it better when we were in straight-up Eastern Standard Time and never had to worry about changing our clocks.