Rain Barrels and Solar Panels

Picture taken on July 26 showing the finished exterior paint, a growing garden, and rain barrels.

The rain barrels are re-used food grade storage containers and will be painted to match the siding and installed on the north (left side) of the house.

Today I signed a contract with Advanced Solar Energy LLC to install solar voltaic panels on the house made locally in Washington State. The locally made panels are more expensive than other comparable output panels but there are a couple of advantages; they are stronger than other panels for one. Also, the rebate check given to the buyer of the panels will be about 3 times higher than a conventional panel. This was established by Washington state law makers as I understand it to encourage local solar products. The result for the consumer will be huge; several hundred dollars per year. It was hard to make this decision to spend the extra money for this but I feel that a buyer will realize that it the payback will be in a short period of time, probably 4-5 years. As far as I know this will be the first spec home in the state to use these panels & I hope that others can find a way to use them in their projects too.

'Humble Humboldt House' early model of Sunnyland Sunhouse

Here is a picture of my first green design with John Nelson as the builder. I had been interested in passive solar and energy efficiency and John brought in other ideas like rain sceening behind the siding and water barrels (on the corners).

We developed the idea of keeping the heating ducts inside the heated envelope and using a highly efficient furnace inside the heated space too.

Its located at 2228 Humboldt Street in Bellingham on a small infill lot that I owned and couldn't sell for what I had into it. In 2008 I decided to build a small house on it a John had been thinking about such a small and efficient home as a model for affordable housing.

The project was a great success, the house sold quickly since it was by far the cheapest new home in Bellingham at the time and had a lot of energy saving features that few houses had and was an Energy Star home.

The 'Sunnyland Sunhouse' is located ony a few blocks from this house and is based upon this design to a great degree. The new site is far superior especially from a solar perspective.