[Greenbuilding] No Fracking Way?

Bob Waldrop bwaldrop at cox.net
Wed Apr 20 22:28:27 CDT 2011


This is pretty much what we did in 2005, except we did do a lot of insulation.  We live in a 1929 Craftsman bungalow, which had zero insulation. we put 14 inches of cellulose insulation in the attic, filled the walls, and then built new walls 5 inches inside of the existing exterior walls and filled that with insulation.  We got rid of natural gas service, I have major moral problems with our local nat gas provider (Oklahoma Natural Gas) for a variety of reasons related to my work with various Catholic charitable organizations and decided I just didn’t want to do business with them anymore.  

We put in an off the shelf mid-price electric water heater, and added an on off switch, so most of the time it is off and we turn it on maybe twice a week.  People periodically tell me that that doesn’t save any energy, for various reasons, and while it is true that I am not a scientist. . . as an experiment we left it on 24/7 a couple of months in the fall when it wasn’t especially hot or cold and our bill went up over a hundred dollars each month (more than a thousand kilowatt hours) so I would say that the simple on off switch does in fact save energy. Not to mention giving my poor frugal heart pains when I opened the bill. The plan when we get more money is to add a solar water heater.

We did other things like make R-20 insulated inside shutters for all our windows, planted lots of vegetation to shade the property in the summer.

Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City


From: Frank Cetera money 
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 2:15 PM
To: greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org 
Subject: [Greenbuilding] No Fracking Way?

I'd be interested in hearing folks' opinions and strategies surrounding the following goal:

Implementing an urban home retrofit using only electrical powered systems, with the potential of becoming an off-grid site in the future through reduced energy consumption and on-site generation (with purchase of alternative sources in the short-term), in order to relieve our dependance on natural gas as a fuel source due to its potential for high environmental damage.  (This would not be a super-insulated passivhaus sort of design and would rely on natural materials as much as possible for air sealing, insulation, and built additions/restorations)

Short and long term considerations for energy management and use on site?
Favored heating, cooking, and water heating in such a scenario?
Other thoughts?  (i.e. convince me not to do this?)

Thank you ~Frank

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Frank Raymond Cetera
www.AlchemicalNursery.org





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