Kermit Was Right

It ain't easy bein' green.

Wind
I've been trolling the web for over a year trying to find an affordable wind turbine for the house we're building. One of the 1.5KW turbines I researched had an MSRP of $7500 and a 40 year break even point, if I installed it myself. The company selling this particular product recommended that the installers charge between $7500 and $20,000 for the install alone, based on degree of difficulty. This is a company that only cares about the green they can put in their pocket, and is apparently convinced that there are enough fools out there to help them rake it in. Let's hope they're wrong.

Pacwind sells the 3KW vertical axis wind turbine featured on Living With Ed for less than $5000, but has recently experienced some quality control and customer service issues. At least they are closer to having a product with a reasonable break even point.

What is a reasonable price for a 3KW wind turbine? I'm not convinced that any of them have more than $1000 invested in parts and labor, including the inverter needed to tie the system into the power grid. If you are a wind turbine manufacturer, and you put a 50% mark-up on your product, they will fly out the door, you'll get rich, and as a bonus will play a big part in saving the environment and weaning this country off of foreign oil. That doesn't seem like a bad deal.

Water
We're building in Hays county, Texas. Hays county recently outlawed gray water recovery systems, due to the large number of people installing them incorrectly and causing the run-off to discharge into the creeks and aquifers.

We are having a rainwater recovery system installed, instead of drilling a well. The costs will be the same, but the impact on the environment will be much less.

Solar
Way out of our league, for now. We'll build the house solar panel ready, and hope the rumors of a big price drop in the next few years actually happens.

Insulation
We're insulating our new home with a soy based foam. The foam, along with the aluminum roof, will cut our electricity costs dramatically, by a whopping 70%!

Starting Over

We're in Wimberley for the next few days, meeting with builders, and it struck me that once the new place is built this will probably be the last time I start over. I've lived in so many different places, and finally found a spot that feels like home.

Minimalist by nature, out of the seventeen times that I've changed cities, I've given away most of my household goods on at least a dozen occasions. Most of the time I'd leave with nothing but my guitar, a few clothes shoved into a suitcase, and a couple of boxes of books, music (Lp's, tapes, Cd's), and song lyrics, and a handful of keepsakes. My wife, on the other hand, has saved damn near everything she's ever laid her sentimental hands on, from the time she was about six years old. I can already feel the first twinge of lower back pain.

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

Three very cool things are just around the corner. At the moment I'm in a holding pattern, biding my time until the fun starts. My wife and I own property outside of Austin in the Texas Hill Country, and will be moving there soon to build our dream home. About that same time I will begin recording a new CD, and at the end of the year we're taking a family vacation in Vienna and Paris. It's like I'm a kid again, and Christmas is still so far away.

Christmas was sometimes a pretty tough holiday when I was a kid. My stepfather worked as a union electrician, and went on strike every two or three years. Santa never skipped our home, but I did notice that some years he was considerably less generous than others. Occasionally the season was pretty good.
One year, when I was about ten, my mom woke me up in the middle of the night.

"Wanna know what you got for Christmas?!"

I had already figured out the deal with Santa, and excitedly agreed to this rare privilege. Mom grew up poor, and on her best Christmas probably received less than her children did on our worst. This year Christmas was especially good, and Mom was so happy she just had to tell someone. We snuck out of the room I shared with two of my brothers, and Mom showed me some of the toys I was getting. I couldn't believe my luck. It was the best Christmas yet, gift-wise. Mom let me play quietly with one of the toys for a few minutes, then it was back to bed so that she could re wrap my presents and hide them until Christmas morning.

Mom was a kid when she had me. Married at eighteen and a new mother at nineteen, looking back I marvel at what a kid she was for most of my childhood. She was and is a great mom, but when I become impatient, and start focusing on the destination rather than the journey, I remember that I come by it honestly.

Here Comes The Sun

We’re planning to move closer to Austin, Texas, sometime in the next year. We have a beautiful little piece of ground that backs up to a year round creek, and want to build as green as possible. Hydropower is unfortunately not an option, but we can and will make as much use as we can afford of the available solar and wind technologies.It’s going to be expensive in the short term but as far as I can tell, with rising energy costs we’ll be able to recoup our investments a lot faster than the projected 20 to 30 years.

Research isn’t as easy as I hoped it would be, for there is an almost paralyzing number of websites out there for people interested in building green, and with the nature of Internet search engines it’s sometimes hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.I’ve spent most of my life trying to be as green as possible, and still have a life. When I was sixteen I planted an organic vegetable garden, mulched with hay to keep the water bill down. Of course, I was in Port Neches, Texas at the time, and the air, dirt, and groundwater was poisoned by decades of runoff and discharge from the nearby petrochemical plants. Looking back, I probably ingested more poison that harvest season than if I had just bought everything at the local grocery store.

Now we know better, at least most of us do. More and more average people are paying attention to where their food comes from, and how it was treated. I’ve been boring the hell out of my family and friends for the past five years or so that organic food was going to save the American family farm. Even supermarkets have organic alternatives now, and they are increasing the number of green items for sale on an almost weekly basis. My wife and I have been buying organic as much as we could for several years, and the first thing we noticed was that organic tastes better. A lot better. Most times it’s also much more nutritious.

Organic farmer’s markets are popping up all over the place, and the demand for green living is no longer limited to the pantry. Architects specialize in green design. Bamboo has become the wood (even though it’s a grass) of choice for flooring. More of us recycle. Electric cars are back in vogue, and this time it looks like they’ll be here to stay.

Our new home will have a rainwater catchment system, a gray water recovery system, passive solar hot water, solar panels, wind turbines, and will be constructed of as much natural material as possible. We’ll also have a greenhouse and a small orchard. In short, we plan to be as self-sufficient as we can without living like Trappist monks. We’ll still have the big TV, air conditioning (My wife is from Minnesota. She does not do sweaty.), and all the other modern amenities that make life grand. We just want to do it without adding to the problem.