My wife and I are building a “green” home (if there is such a thing) and are wondering what has worked for people in the past.  These are the features we are putting in for our budget:

1. Active solar
2. passive solar design
3. Solar water heater
4. sealed crawlspace
5. “cool” attic (we live in NC) — meaning the attic temp. is guaranteed to be within 3 degrees of the house
6. lycene insulation sprayed in
7. Energy star everything
8. no-VOC paint and water-based poly for the floors

Things we could be better about:  I don’t know where the wood floors are coming from, but I am assuming they are from sustainable tree “farms”.  Our impression of the builder is that they care about the energy features, but they don’t so much care about the chemical “features” of the home.  We had to ask for those things and are paying extra (but not too much more, Home Depot, for instance, sells a no-VOC paint.)  Also not sure they care about the notion of sustainable forest stewardship, but I guess you can’t have everything.  So, my question is, what other things should we think about and are reasonably priced?  For instance, I was considering installing a rain water collection system.  Have more or less decided against it b/c we are on septic/well, so I figure all the water that comes off the house is going back down to the well eventually anyway.  Is that false?

My other big concern is the house is currently in a development where the power produced by the solar panels is sold back to the energy company.  I still am not convinced this model makes a lick of difference in the scheme of things.  What does Progress Energy do with the power produced?  Does it actually reduce one iota the amount of energy their coal plants produce (considering there will be 30 houses in the neighborhood each with a 2kW system)?  Or is this just  “green-washing” by the power company to say they are solar friendly?  Granted, my bill will be less, and that is cool, but I am still skeptical about whether it is actually better for the environment.  My understanding of electrical production is that the power companies pretty much can produce as much energy as they want, pretty much anytime they want and can slough off energy in the grid.

Eventually, I think I will consider switching the system to an off-the-grid approach whereby we install enough panels to supply all of our needs.  We will have a propane powered generator as backup, so I am confident we could live off the grid w/ enough panels (maybe 1kW more, but I need to do the calculations.)  I also know that I can plug directly into the panels at any time, which I will probably do when it is convenient (i.e. the plugs will be outside.)

At any rate, are we fooling ourselves?  I know reducing the energy we use is a good thing, so the well-insulated house and energy star appliances are all good.  I also know using the low VOC stuff is good.  And the Solar Water heater makes A LOT of sense.  Same goes for the passive solar design.  For centuries, people built around the sun, only recent did builders forget how to do that.  I guess I’m just not convinced yet on the active solar model being employed.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 6:14 am and is filed under environment, going green, housing, pollution, solar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.