The Greening of the Avise Home

We installed a Geo Thermal system one year ago and are about to install solar so I decided to write some about that journey. Re: the Geo Thermal, we are on a shelf of dense rock that's about 9 feet down in most places. After doing some test drills to confirm this they decided they would have to do vertical bores: two or three well-like bores into which loops of pipe could be lowered to circulate and cool fluid. When they came out to start that process they brought the horizontal bore machine first to run a bore from the "well" sites to under the basement of the house. Coming up the drive they saw a clearing next to the pole barn and, across the drive, a hill. They did a test bore at a slant down from the clearing 9 feet, hit the rock shelf, and leveled off just above it and went under the hill. That worked so well that they fanned out five horizontal bores, pulling the bit back with a loop of flexible pipe each time.

With a year's experience, we unequivocally love it. It's gentle, without the on and off of the furnace and without ~ $2700 annual of propane. It uses a little more electricity in the winter but much less in the summer.

This winter, before we went South in March, I replaced all of the regular light bulbs in the track lighting on the main living level with LED bulbs. It took some looking but I found the light that I liked best and that looked the best on the art was the 8 watt (equivalent to a 55 watt bulb) Ecosmart LED from Home Depot. They dim and fit in the track "pots" and are the cheapest I found. They use between 15 and 20% of the energy of the bulbs they replace and last (hopefully) longer than I will.

This month we will put ~7000 kilowatts of solar on the hill next to the house. The initial estimate for a 10' by 30' single axis tracking array was 5000 kilowatts but a reassessment of the orientation put the estimated production at 7000 kw. The array will track from east to west and will contain 20 solar panels. This is a stock picture of the type of array which will be installed:


And, if I drive 55-60 mph, the RV gets 16-17 mpg. The mini-van gets 17.9 (multi-year average); and the little '93 Honda Si gets 40! I get about two weeks to 1.5 liters of Korbel!