2008

December 31st is a time for summation. Listening to NPR, I hear end-of-year thoughts on politics, the economy, movies (Bob Mondelo's Top 20 is our Netflix guide for a year of viewing); and, naturally, I start to think of our own 2008, an outstanding year by any measure. We're comfortably ensconced on the south side of Block Island, the gusts of a winter storm harmlessly howling by, rattling the windows. Chloe and Hazel are thoroughly enjoying their time here; and, despite a shakey start in regard to employment, everything's working out just fine. Our house-to-be is waiting patiently in Sedgwick, and with a little luck my entry for 2009 will be made from Michelle's new office on the second floor. We've had a difficult time balancing the needs of house building, Chloe and Hazel, and Michelle's work. Who doesn't have this juggling act? We tell ourselves that our busy-ness now is a down payment on a more relaxed, slowed down future. Slowing down is now a conscious act, something you've got to have on the back burner of the brain, a constant reminder that hyper-drive is unhealthy. I need this reminder. Otherwise, my gift of being able to focus on nothing but work would blot out the rest. (I realize that what I consider busy is fairly relaxed by today's standards.) I'll abruptly stop there; that's all for 2008.

Germans Take the Lead

Here's a link to an interesting story in the New York Times about a new standard for energy efficient housing. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?hp
I could try to incorporate a passive heat exchanger into our house. Maybe a black box next to the wood stove. Fresh air piped in under the slab into the box, warmed with passive solar heat during the day and wood heat at night. The introduction of fresh air into a tight house is a critical piece of the energy efficiency puzzle. Leaky houses spend much of their heating energy warming the cold air filtering in. Without air exchange with the outside, though, the air in a tight house would become unhealthy. I was planning on having fresh air intakes (little circular vents in the walls that can be opened and shut) and your basic exhaust fans in the bathrooms and kitchen. In the middle of January with the house shut tight, the exhaust fans would operate with timed regularity and give us the air exchange we need. But I could, without much trouble, pre-heat the outside air coming in using something like the black box described above. The passive houses described in the NYT story pre-heat the air with the outgoing air and a little help from an electric heating element. A black metal box next to the wood stove work more or less the same way.

Guns

Just thought I'd log in for the month of December. I've been firing away for the last few weeks using pneumatic nail guns for shingling and framing, and I think it would be fair to say that I wouldn't be sitting here on Block Island if I had broken down and bought a gun. My reluctance to use the modern tools of the trade certainly slowed the pace. Anachronism has its price. If I'd used a gun, we might be living in our new house right now. But we're enjoying life on the island and looking forward to our return in May.

Working

I'm starting work tomorrow after a few weeks of wondering whether the credit crisis was going to sink our stay on the island. It wasn't looking good. Then, the phone rang. It was the first guy I'd talked to a few weeks ago. That first meeting wasn't encouraging; he had work but he didn't need anyone at the moment. A talk with Richard may have changed his mind. Whatever the reason, it looks like I have as much work as I can handle until we leave in May.

Since I'm in the act of writing, I might as well report that I may be able to order all the stuff for a solar hot water system through Richard's brother at cost. The savings could add up to 2 or 3 thousand dollars.

Solar Hot Water

I had a long conversation with a technician from a company called Houseneeds based in Waitsfield, VT. Using our solar hot water system as a back-up heating system tied into the slab is entirely possible. If we were going to try to do the same thing as a primary heat source, that wouldn't be the way to go about it. But if we only want to use it while we're not there to light the woodstove, it would be a low cost way to get an additional boost from solar instead of falling back on propane to do the job. The whole system, not including installation, would run about $8000. The state renewable energy rebate and addtional federal tax credit might bring that to around $6000.

Ready for Winter

Here are some pictures taken with the cell phone just before I left for Block Island. I'm not planning on making this a life-on-the-island blog, but there may be some planning going on between now and May and I'll post that.

The first thing on the agenda when we return will be to pour the floor, and I've been thinking about incorporating the back-up heating system into the floor with the solar hot water system as a heat source. So, for example, if the house is empty in the middle of January, we can convert the solar hot water system to heat the slab instead of water. I've been going back and forth on the merits of heating the slab and had all but decided that it was overkill. My argument goes something like this: The house is designed to be passive solar and the primary source of heat to supplement solar gain is a wood stove. On a stormy day in January we fire up the wood stove. Heating the slab with propane was out of the question, and heating the slab with a solar system didn't make sense because the space would already be heated passively on any day that the sun would be capable of heating the slab. Why spend the money on a system that would over heat the house? The only problem with relying on a wood stove is that it only works when you're there to put wood in it. I had thought that back-up heat would come from one of the standard propane heaters vented to an outside wall. We would need two, one for the main part of the house and a very small one for the utility room. We were looking at spending about $1800 on the heater for the main part of the house. But if we run tubing through the slab and use the solar hot water system to heat the slab when we're not around to use the wood stove, we'd spend about the same amount of money and in the end the back-up system would be less reliant on propane. That's the real issue. I want the house to use as little propane as possible.

The Move

I got on the Block Island ferry this afternoon and surprised the family by showing up a day early. The house is Sedgwick is ready for winter. A 15 cubic foot chest freezer is humming away in the utility room waiting to be filled with pork. Everything that needs to be is out of the weather. I'm looking forward to May to get going again.

For those who don't know, our phone number, the same one we've had for seven years, has been transferred to a cell phone, and our address on the island is: PO Box 744, Block Island, RI 02807