Living Within Our Limits,

            In September, our new solar panels went live. It is a 2.2 kw system—eight panels sitting thirteen feet off of the ground, above the greenhouse. Whenever people see it, they nod— it’s a cool design, unlike anyone else’s system. We like it a lot. The panels should, over the course of the year, cover our electric use. But, because I am not convinced that they will, I have been investigating energy savings. It’s not easy. We have already picked all of the low-hanging fruit, like power strips on the computers, replacing light bulbs, and insulating all of our spaces. I borrowed a Kill-a-watt gadget from a friend and I have been exploring our energy usage for the past month to see where we could conserve.

            My first step was monitoring the lights we left on, but after running several through the kill-a-watt, I realized that, even with three or four lights on, the impact on our panels was minimal. The table lamp used .03 kwh for two hours. No big deal.  I then checked the internet modem-- .12 kwh for 24 hours, so turning off the modem would save up to 1.2 kwh in ten days. That is significant and worth our efforts.

  How Bad Are Bananas?, boiling water using a gas stove burner or an electric kettle is about equal, and the stove is better, carbon budget-wise,  because it heats the room a little bit as well. We, however, have an electric stove. I believe the electric kettle is more efficient, partly because we save by boiling only what we need, but do not have the data to back it up. It is certainly faster. Maybe we need to drink less tea…

          I then turned my attention to the biggest energy hog in our house—the stove/oven.  It is difficult to get accurate measurements here, because we do not have a meter to measure 220, although Mark is considering a purchase, IF our stove plug would fit into the meter. (The stove is from the mid-1950s.)  Is it more efficient to boil tea water on the stove or in an electric kettle? The kettle takes .11 kwh to boil three cups of water. According to

            I have also been examining the crockpot rather than cooking soup beans on the stove.  The Carbon Buster’s Home Energy Handbook suggests that crockpots are more efficient than an electric burner.  Ours, which is from 1972, cooks a pot of dried beans into a rich soup using .7 kwh but saves hours of monitoring and washing stuck-on food off of pots. We are eating far more local beans than we did before, which saves transportation energy—although not electricity.

            Finally, I have been eyeing the oven. We considered insulating it, but, when we took the side panel off, someone had already beaten us to it. There was white fiberglass tucked in all around; it looked like a late 1970s project, but was still clean and tidy. Once again, I cannot measure the energy used, but it is a large oven. I consulted the Carbon Buster’s Handbook. It says a toaster oven is twice as efficient as an electric oven. Even if it uses more energy per square inch, our little toaster oven, by virtue of size, has to be more efficient! It used .3 kwh to cook a batch of sweet potatoes last week. The biggest drawback to the toaster oven is its location; it lives in the unheated back hall, rather than the center of the house. It cannot warm the kitchen on a rainy fall night as it bakes our potatoes.

            For the stove and oven, the best energy savings may be in cooking habits. I can only run the oven when full—bake bread, granola, and a gratin for dinner, rather than just baking a loaf of bread. I can turn it off as the food comes close to being done. When I have something small, I use the toaster oven. It is large enough to hold a casserole dish easily, but not a muffin tin for twelve muffins. I need to buy a smaller tin at Goodwill. I am working on peeking in less, as well. In the winter, the oven does heat the house while it bakes or dinner.

            Our other energy hog must be the refrigerator. It is a small one, nine cubic feet, with a freezer above. I cannot measure how much energy it uses and I could not find it on-line, but it is a new model, about four years old, and small. It is usually full and the freezer is packed. If I could give up ice cream and frozen local berries, I could shut the whole thing off for the winter and store my vegetables and mustards in the larder. We would have to buy small quantifies of milk and yogurt, but it would not be any different from week-long car camping trips.

            We will be monitoring all of our energy use closely in the coming year. I am very interested in how much we will produce as the sun comes back. Right now, on a dark and rainy day, we are lucky to eke out .5 kwh for the day. A bright day will produce 1.3 kwh, mostly in the middle of the afternoon. We have calculated how to see what our consumption is as well as production. When the lines cross in the spring, life will be good.

Whole Wheat Anise Cookies-- A December favorite

Cream 1/2 c butter, 1/2 c margarine,  and 1 cup of sugar.

Add one egg and 2T anise seed.

Add 1.5  t BP, 1.5 c whet flour, 1.5 c white flour.

add 1/4 c water.

Roll out between sheets of waxed paper and chill for several hours. 

Cut into star and mmon shaepes and bake in a 350 degree oven.

Planning for Solar Panels, part three

The planning and execution of our greenhouse/solar panel structure has been complex. We needed to shift installation companies, apply for retro-active permits, and build the structures during the hottest summers on record. It was a whole summer project, which has just wrapped up last week.

Because of rebates, a real concern about climate change, striving for the Georgetown Energy prize, and peer pressure, solar panel installation is way up in Corvallis this year. In March, solar companies were seeing a ten fold increase in the number of people interested in installation and that continued throughout the summer. All of the companies in town were booked out early. We worked with Benton Electric, who was able to reach further afield for teams, but the press of business made communication difficult, which had long term impacts on the permitting process.

In late June, we worked with Benton Electric to begin the process. They calculated that eight panels, creating a 2.2 kw system, should cover our use for the year, if we were conservative. Nine would be better, but they would block considerable light into the greenhouse, and we decided against the extra panel. Once we had the dimensions for the layout of the panels, our builder went to work constructing the greenhouse and panel rack. It is an uneven hexagon, a bay with windows of three different sizes projecting into the yard, with a long annex that reaches all along the neighbor’s garage. Because of the design, it does not dominate the view of the gardens, but blends in, even without mature plantings. For days, he dug deep post holes and planted the treated beams that would hold the structure upright. Once they were all planted, he needed to cut the roof angles, all different because of the shape. When the angles were cut, he had down the roof and framed in the windows, then hung them, and framed them in with cedar. Once the greenhouse was finished, we painted the clawfoot tub and moved it in, setting up the shower.

When the greenhouse was complete, Mark, our builder, moved onto the rack for the panels, which is also a funky structure of angles and braces, raising the panels thirteen feet above the ground for maximum light and minimal visual intrusion. He finished the evening before the panels were to be installed. The next day, in early August, the installers arrived. “That’s interesting,” the head installer commented, “but I can work with it.” In four hours, they had installed the panels, wired the system in, and added an outlet in the greenhouse.  We were on track for completion, just waiting on the electric installation….

And then things came to halt. The electrical inspector, seeing the structure and thinking “that’s weird” referred us for a building permit before the electric could be inspected.  “But we don’t need a permit,” I argued, “the structure is too small.” “Code says that you do,” the city returned. What code? We don’t know. What did we do wrong? We don’t know. One person talked about earthquakes, another about hurricane force winds. Maybe we should cement the posts in, even though that rots them faster….it was never really clear. Don’t ask, was the general message. Hire a structural engineer to write a letter saying that the whole plan is ok. It will be easier than bringing it up to building code. So we did. “Humrph,” he said. “That’s interesting.  Lets put a little brace in here and call it good.” “A trellis? I can live with a trellis.” Several weeks later, we received the retroactive permit and passed the electric inspection. But the panels were still not on.

Pacific Power needed to replace our meter—and Benton Electric needed to repair a fuse so that the system worked. That added another week to the whole process….finally, I came home to a new meter. Two days later, to a functional system. The meter was spinning backwards! For the first week, we produced four to five kwh  per day; when the clouds went away, production went up to six, then seven, and today, eight. We are at the equinox, with the sun sliding down in the sky further every day, so production will slowly drop off for winter.

So, what did we learn from the process? Perhaps to ask very specific questions before building—despite talking with three city departments, we did not know that we needed permits for the structure that attaches the panels to the greenhouse. Now that we are done, we are working to live within our means, to not use any more electricity that we will produce, even if we are not always using fresh electrons.

Fish Pie

This is a layered dish.

Layer one: finely diced carrots and celery to cover the bottom of the dish, followed by .25 pounds of various fish—shrimp or scallops, salmon, and white fish. Scraps are good.

Layer two: 1.5 cups of white sauce, with leeks, salt and pepper.

Layer three: mashed potatoes for a crust.

Bake until bubbly in a 350 degree oven.

Planning forSolar Panels/greenhouse, Part Two

The garden bed before construction

The greenhouse/solar panels project is progressing. We have determined that we will need eight solar panels to cover our energy use for the year, and they will be laid, in two rows, landscape, over the greenhouse, about twelve feet in the air. This will minimize the visual impact and raise them well above any local shrubs and foliage, thus increasing efficiency.  The greenhouse itself will tuck underneath, with an asymmetrical bay window in the front, projecting a little beyond the edge of the old flower bed and the raised beds of the vegetable garden.  It is already creating more of a room around the dining table, which is tucked into the ell of the house and ties in nicely to the flourishing gardens in the back. There’s been considerable geometry used in the back yard this week.

Once the frames are all constructed, the green house will have a clear plastic roof and walls made from old double paned windows from a farm shop, then framed simply in fir. There will be a narrow green metal band around the bottom to mimic the garden shed, and a red wooden door on one end. Inside, we’ll set a claw foot tube, Mark’s tea plant, and all of the starts for next year (along with a folding chair and probably a high up cat perch). Although the solar panels will have a much greater impact on our energy use, we are far more excited about the greenhouse!

C

Cleared ground

Two days in

four days in

Planning for Solar Panels, part one

Planning for the solar panels/greenhouse has begun….I came home last week to find two men sitting in my back yard, contemplating the blue wall. One had a notebook, the other a tape measure. They were discussing building code.

We began thinking about solar panels last winter, when we went to a presentation, not because we were interested, but because we wanted to think about something positive in town for a change. But, after hearing about the rebates, and looking at our electric bill, I was intrigued. We would not need a huge array to produce all of the electricity we use over the course of a year, especially if I took down a string or two of Christmas lights. We average 8 KWH per day. I called Abundant Solar, Kirk came out with his solar gain measuring tool from the 1970s, and he studied the west facing roof of the house. Not great…then he wandered into the back yard and eyed the blue painted wall of our neighbor’s garage. “Are you thinking,” he mused, “of adding any more buildings back here?” Why yes, we were. I had plans for a green house in that space. He nodded, climbed on ladders, examined tree shadows, glared at the huge yellow plum in the middle of the yard, and began to plan.

A few weeks later, we had generated a list. The structure should:

·        Generate all of our electricity over the course of the year.

·        Provide a warm place to start all of our seeds, raise chicks in the awkward stage (too big for house, too small for coop), and shelter the beehive in cold winters.

·        Extend the growing season—eggplants and hot peppers? Salad greens in winter? A citrus tree? A tea plant or two?

·        Hold the soaking tub and provide a nicer place to bathe.

·        Allow Mark to read outside and stay warm in the winter.

·        Not mess up the already existing eating area in the nook of the house and garage.

·        Look nice. I’d like the roofline to echo the shed’s interesting overhang, which Mark built.

Once we had the list and had paced around the backyard for a few hours, we called Mark Meyer, our builder, who is a genius at taking my vague ideas and turning them into beautiful structures. He was one of the men sitting in my backyard, contemplating the wall a few days later.  He had a sketch of a bayfront greenhouse that would sit under the panels, shifted to one side of the wall, before he went home to investigate building code. Just how close could we come to that garage? We should know on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, we have begun to assemble various parts. Mark found a pile of double paned windows in aluminum frames on Craig’s List for one hundred dollars. “It looks like a good deal,” he told me. When I followed up, the seller had found three more, and threw them in for the same price. We now had a pile of windows for the walls.
I then contacted a friend who had mentioned a staff of claw foot tubs—and yes, they have three in the backyard. I am welcome to one, also for one hundred bucks. Planning has begun.