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This last week has been super busy on the property. The September 11 activities and subsequent reliving of that horrible day took the wind out of my sails for a few days but we are back.

Ryan and I have been making trips up to the property in between work shifts to process the wood. Our chainsaws just got back from the repair shop so we will be able to make some real progress in the coming days. We offered our neighbors the entire dead tree but that somehow was misunderstood, so between the neighbors that burn, we are giving away half of the trees fell. We hope that by the time we actually get up there they remember that we come in peace.

A shout out to Triangle Resources, they take as much as we can cram into our truck and let us dump it for only $7. They are 6 miles away from our lot, so it is gratifying for us to be able to recycle the wood waste rather than be forced to burn it.

I was researching the fridge that we want to put in the house and stumbled upon this list of Reefers that are Energy Star Compliant.  It is such a big list that I had to share.


Energy Star Compliant Refrigerators

This is the one that we are looking at.. it uses so little power that they use them in places like the middle of the jungle in Guatemala. Sunfrost

The Materials Petal is next

Trees Down

On Friday, September 9, 2011, Wright Tree Service cut down our four trees. According to our neighbors, the process was exacting and very professionally done. They put those trees down with precision. In fact, even though they could have, they completely avoided the willow tree smack dab in their way and opted to fell two trees on either side of it. A few of the neighbors have already approached us about the trees. Ryan and I feel that there is plenty to give everyone some for the winter. We are most excited about being able to help some others who burn exclusively and have been hit hard by the times. Mainly we are happy about the PUD being able to help us with these trees, because we were kind of lost in knowing what to do.

The dead tree delimbed itself!!

Me and Lacey chillaxin'

This is our current view from the north end.  See the Willow Tree? Those guys are amazing!!

Ground View

Trees.... Trees we want to cut down.

In our Solar Survey post, we demonstrated how the trees and buildings around you can affect your solar exposure. In general, our current solar exposure is truly great, but we can always dream, can't we?

That pesky bump on the right hand side of our survey was problematic for us on several levels: it limited both our solar and wind exposures (Ideally, you want your wind turbine to be above everything else.), they exposed our structure to a falling tree hazard and lastly, one of them was DEAD. D-E-A-D as a doornail. What is a doornail anyway?

Ryan called every tree man and yard he could find near our site. Four trees was not enough of a haul to even mess with.  We were at the property cutting down one of the damaged trees last week and our neighbor Mike showed up. He said, "You have a dead tree. Just call the PUD and they'll remove it for you."  Really!!!???  Seriously??!!!

These trees??    They're kind of tall. Mike went on to say that since the power lines go along the road, the PUD was invested in preventing an issue with the dead tree possibly falling over during the rough Washougal winters.


We were so disheartened that somehow we were going to have to figure out a way to cut down that dead tree ourselves.

Enter Jim Huggins of Clark PUD.   (Our new favorite man in the whole world)

We met with him and his tree man this week.

One signature on a permit and it's all set up.

The best part is that they are going to fall all four trees because the dead one is in the back and a real pain to get to.

Here is a photo of the marked trees. The dead one is the left one in the back. Right next to it is one that is dying and leaning.


They will be falling all four of these trees whole next week. We will try to be there and get a video.

For the next... year? or so, we will be chopping up these trees. We plan to give some of the firewood to our neighbors as a gesture. We will be able to use some of it but suffice it to say, we will have quite a bit of firewood if any friends or family are interested. 

Clothes Dryer

The clothes dryer we have now is between 20-30 years old. It is an old Maytag and it works like a champ. I couldn't tell you exactly how much power it uses (mainly because I am almost afraid to look at our meter when it is running. :( ). I am guessing that it uses around 5000 watts when it is on. We try not to use it much.



Two years ago I bought a rotary clothesline and installed it in the backyard. I chose one called the Breezecatcher. It is very stout and clean and awesome. It can handle a huge load of clothes and is very balanced so it rotates in the breeze even if I load it unevenly.

This is the Breezecatcher in our backyard. [off topic comment ] Beyond is our neighbors house. He thinks that Tyvek is the same as siding as it has looked that way for 3 years now. This year he stopped paying attention to his yard altogether so now it looks like we live next to some abandoned house. I am waiting for a car to start showing up on what used to be his lawn. [/off topic comment ]



Ryan took a while before he accepted the fact that we were hanging clothes on a line. The clothes are scratchy and , well, it's just more work than throwing them in the dryer and turning it on. That is true.



Why use a clothesline?

• Dryers use a HUGE amount of electricity. KOIN news report


• I can't justify NOT using one during the summer.


• The dryer adds to heat in the house and for those who lack air conditioning, this is an unnecessary problem.

What are the drawbacks?

• If it rains while your clothes are out there then your clothes get wet all over again.


• It's more work.


• Drying your clothes on a line does nothing to remove dog hair or lint.


• There are some neighborhood associations that forbid having a clothesline due to them being "unsightly". CBS News: Dispute in Bend, OR
  
  
  
  -OR-

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There is an organization that is trying to create a movement towards using clotheslines: Project Laundry List

If you think back 40 years ago... every house had a clothesline. Yes, I was a little worried about my neighbor seeing my underwear on the line, but you know what? I can count 4 separate times when I have personally witnessed him peeing on the side of his house. He lets his guests do worse than that in the neighbors yards. In light of that, worrying about him seeing my underwear on the line shouldn't be a big deal..



The compromise that changed everything. This year, taking into account the drawbacks of having the clothesline, we reached a compromise. We hang the clothes and then put them in the dryer for about 5 minutes with a dryer sheet. This fluffs up the clothes, imparts some of the magical "dryer sheet softness" on the clothes and gets rid of all traces of pet hair. Lacey, we love you but your hair is everywhere.

At the new place, we will be installing another Breezecatcher and placing it in a covered area. This way, we can hope to use it closer to year round. It should also allow us to buy a smaller, more efficient dryer.



As long as there is wind, clothes will dry on a clothesline

Water Heater decision made

After having shown Ryan the Dainkn Altherma videos and some follow-up discussion, we have decided to pursue the Daikin Altherma.  This consolidates our home and domestic hot water heating into one system while allowing us to take full advantage of the planned Solar water pre-heating systems.

This decision also gets us further down the road with the Energy Petal compliance as the Daikin Altherma is electric.

Another Daikin Altherma Video

I found a better Daikin video which illustrates its capabilities better (there is also sound).

Tough Decision

Ryan and I are trying to figure out the water heating piece.

We know that we want solar. We have decided on a Drain-Back system for the initial water heating. The cost will be somewhere between $11- $13,000 to have Solar Energy Solutions install it.

We decided on this configuration for several reasons: it is the most maintainence free configuration, there will be no worries about anything boiling over or blowing a gasket in the summer, no glycol (at $50 a gallon this is a good thing) and there is some awesome monitoring that we will be able to set up.

That decided we now have the water heating piece.  The solar system deposits its pre-heated water into an 80 gallon tank. Fair enough. In the summer, this will be all we need. In the gloomy months however, we will need some kind of heater to heat the pre-heated water so that it is hot.

This is where it gets complicated.  Per the Energy Petal, all of our energy usage has to come from renewable resources.  NO!!! WOOD IS NOT CONSIDERED RENEWABLE|. Can you believe it??  I just learned today that there are NO COMBUSTIBLES ALLOWED in Living Building 2.0.    No wood stove. Can you imagine living in the woods and not being allowed to use a wood stove?  If they could burn wood 2,000 years ago, we should be able to burn it now as it is carbon neutral.  I digress.

Lucky for us we are in the Pilot Project so we can have some combustion. Baby steps. I for one don't think the technology is there yet to have no combustion, but that's just me.

We were researching electric water heaters and gas water heaters and learning a lot. Then Andrew of Solar Energy Solutions suggested that we use a tankless water heater. We have one at our house right now and to be honest, I have not been blown away by the energy savings, but mine was installed in 2003. I hear that they have gotten a lot better. Andrew suggested we look into a Takagi TK3 as it is the only truly solar compatible tankless water heater.  What does "solar compatible" mean?

Most tankless water heaters take the water, at whatever temperature it comes into the unit at, circulates it and causes it's temperature to rise a certain degree (say a rise of 60 degrees). So if your water is 40 degrees entering the unit, it will be 100 degrees when it comes out. There are some adjustments, but on the Bosch I have here, it is just a knob that you turn. Solar compatible units monitor the incoming temp of the water and only apply enough energy to heat it to a certain temperature, thereby using a LOT LESS ENERGY in the process.

The problem is that the Takagi uses natural gas or propane. Combustion is not allowed!!  To add another layer of complexity,  we are going to have a Hydronic Radiant Floor Heating System, which is a closed loop system, therefore needing it's own heater as well. We had thought that we would get an air to water heat pump to be used solely for the floor heat. Keep the systems separate...Simple enough right?  Wrong.

The heat pump is run on electricity which helps us with the renewables requirement but the one that we have been looking at, The Daikin Altherma, also has a domestic water piece. So, it can be the domestic water heater for those gloomy months. OH... it also has a solar preheat piece.  So now we have the possibility of having two separate systems that do exactly the same thing but in totally different ways. Can we have one system do everything?


We have a call into a friend who is using the Daikin in his house and this will hopefully give us some answers. Like... how exactly does one heater give both water for hydronics and domestic hot water?  Do we end up drinking water that has run through the tubing used to heat our house?  Will a tankless water heater fill the bill for the hydronic system (we wish that it was electric).  What is the actual cost?  The Takagi is less than $1000 and it seems like the Daikin is over $10,000. If this was only about the cost, I think it would be easy but then there is the efficiency factor.  Heat pumps are super efficient while the tankless water heater might be expensive to operate because we will be using Propane.

This video might help:

If anyone has a comment or opinion, we would love to hear from you.  :)

Our Solar Exposure

Please pardon the interruption of our regularly scheduled program of the Health Petal to bring some information that we just learned.  Our site has awesome solar access.  Ryan and I took the Pathfinder tool to the property site yesterday and conducted a Solar Survey.

In a nutshell, this device has a compass and some special paper. Stand at the place where you think you want to put your solar panels. Ideally, get up on something high so that you can duplicate the height of the panels. We did ours on the ground. Doing this skews the results to the conservative side.

Point the tool to TRUE SOUTH. In our area that means 165 degrees. Place the dome over the paper and reflected on the dome are all of the possible sources of shadow or sun blockage. On the paper is the path of the sun at the various times of the year. Trace the shadows on the dome to the paper.  Add up all of the values, factor in the angle of the panels (you can use 100% value if your panels are mounted at the optimum 33-37.8 degrees of tilt, which ours will be). The result is the percentage sun exposure of your site. You will be able to see on the paper, where the sun will be every month of the year approximately. It's pretty cool.

According to our survey, we have 83.1% solar exposure!!! 

This is a conservative value as we were at ground level, used only the full values on the paper and the fact that we may be cutting down one or more of the trees that you can see on the bottom right of the paper (one is dead).