Going a Little Green

While most of the house uses conventional building techniques, we are incorporating a few green technologies.  The house will be very well insulated and will have several energy star appliances.  The previous owner of the property left a compost bin behind that we plan to use.  Our biggest venture into the green arena, however, is the installation of a geothermal heat pump which provides house heating and cooling and will also supplement the hot water heater in the summer. 

Geothermal systems are quiet and are 400% efficient compared to a high efficiency natural gas furnace which is about 98% efficient.  What exactly does that mean?  And who cares?  If you really want to know, Popular Mechanics provides a short clear explanation. I did quite a bit of research and found this article to be concise and understandable. Check out this link: Geothermal System.  The cost information in this article is out of date--the system cost a lot more than the numbers in the article.  Without the 30% tax credit available for such systems, I don't think we would have seriously considered installing it. Installation of the system was completed this week.  We had a Waterfurnace brand system installed and it will interface to a vertical loop.

I have talked to one person who has a a geothermal heat pump--the electrician working on the new house!  I only found this out when we were determining where the outside outlets would be located.  He asked where the air conditioner would be and I told him we were not going to have an air conditioner because we were installing geothermal.  He then told me has one.  His house came with one that was installed more than more than 20 years ago.  It had broken after many years and he replaced it recently.  The cooling loop was still intact so he only had to replace the heat pump.  He used the same supplier that we are using, E&D Company.  He has lived in this particular house for a few years.  When he told me where he lived, I was surprised.  Ironically, I had been to his house about 20 years ago when the previous owners lived there.  It was the home for the couple that owned and operated Sherwood Forest Theatre where I have done many shows.  It closed many years ago and the owners moved to Florida.  It really is a small world.  Of course, I knew and cared nothing about geothermal heating and cooling back then.

After we have some operating experience with this system, I'll have to report on how well it works and how we like it.

 Plaster rosette in the dining room

 Coil for the coolant loop

 Drilling equipment to drill two 300 ft deep holes

A lot of other work continues on the house.  The wiring, plumbing, and ductwork are all in.  The plasterboard is mostly installed and the plastering is well under way.  The yard has been re-graded and looks great (sans grass.)  We have a closing date of November 5, so things are moving fast.

While we were gone

In August, we attended the wedding of our first exchange student, Sandra, in Germany.  The wedding was in  a small town in Bavaria with the reception at a lodge high up in the mountains.  We hiked up to the lodge in sneakers and our wedding clothes.  Despite arriving at the top sweaty and out-of-breath, the hike was worth it--Steve might argue that point.  Although we didn't understand much of the ceremony as it was in German, there were plenty of English speakers there so that we really enjoyed the company.  We had a great time.  It was so nice to see Sandra, Henrik, and their families and friends.  After the wedding we went to Paris for two days before heading home.  We did a two day whirlwind tour of Paris so that Tania got to see most of the major tourist attractions.  I  felt a small amount of concern going so far away  with a house under construction.  But there was no need to worry. We came back to find out that the new house has a roof!  The top photo is what we came back to.

During our trip, we did have internet access on some days and we left an international phone number in case the builder or his subs absolutely needed to get in touch with us.  Although I tried to finalize the plans for the clawfoot tub well in advance, the plumber waited until the day before our leaving for the trip to note that we needed to make the decision in the next few days.  So the plumber and I exchanged messages as Steve, Tania and I travelled from Pittsburgh to Atlanta.  Fortunately we worked out the details before leaving Atlanta for Munich.  In the end, I had the plumber order the tub http://www.americanstandard-us.com/products/productDetail.aspx?id=231.  I might have saved a few hundred dollars ordering it myself, but we decided that by having him fully responsible we wouldn't have to worry about providing the right parts in time.

Work on the house continues at a fast pace--windows and exterior doors are in and the plumbing is well under-way.  Interior stairs have also been installed.  I met with the builder and the plumber Friday to work out some changes as a result of site work changing the elevation of the garage.  The garage is two feet lower than the rest of the first floor so steps needed to be added.  But where to add steps so that they won't interfere with the cars?  The result was to relocate the entrance into the laundry room to a different wall so that stairs could be added to the available space in another part of the garage.  It looks like this change will actually result in better use of the space in the laundry room.

As we enter a long holiday weekend, I hope to use some of this time to get our current home ready to list.  I've watched way too much HGTV so I know we have to box up all our clutter so that people will look at our house and not our stuff.  Time to get to it!