Going Green

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Comment by Kelly Florence on November 3, 2015 at 1:06pm

Here's a quick article from Katahdin Cedar Log Homes (based in Maine) about making your home more green, interesting stuff!  Whether you're looking to build a new home or just want to make your current home more energy-efficient, these tools and tips show how easy it is to integrate environment-friendly practices into your home.  Enjoy! http://www.loghome.com/building-green-from-the-ground-up/

Comment by Greg Beck on May 14, 2013 at 5:21pm

This group is a ghost town these days, I use to enjoy it a lot, what a shame, I guess we covered it all

Comment by Denny Johnson on February 13, 2012 at 11:18am

I have been researching solar for quite awhile and finally jumped in. We found some used solar panels for sale on Craigslist and drove a couple of ours to pick them up. We decided to start small to learn all about it. I am a ham radio operator with a UHF repeater system up on our hill so I thought it would be perfect to use solar to power the system. We bought 4 100 watt panels. I used 3 of them for the repeater with a Xantrrex 30 amp controller and a couple of 6 volts golf cart batteries. It works like a charm. Now thinking about adding some more batteries for longer storage and having the system power the garage. It really isn't as intimidating as it starting out being. Glad we are moving in this direction. It's been exciting to see what we can do.

Comment by Rose Glenn on July 11, 2010 at 1:12pm

Ro, welcome to the group and thanks for your input. It is nice to have friendly and helpful people as members of this group. I look forward to your photos!

Comment by Ro Bailey on July 10, 2010 at 3:33pm

Thanks! I will post more photos when I get around to updating them. Right now the house is in the usual chaos from just moving in and trying to figure where everything should go. Starting a specific discussion is probably the best idea, rather than highjacking Rose Glenn's discussion. I'll repeat the original post there so folks know the context. Thanks for the suggestion.

Comment by Glenn V on July 9, 2010 at 10:13am

Welcome to Going Green and thank you for your post Ro and btw your home looks GREAT! I am looking forward to more detailed posts of your home and pictures. You can start a discussion and tell us things you incorporated into your home and things you left out, and ideas and products you discovered you wished you would have used. With 20" logs R 60 roof and ICF basement you should be able to stand any weather Alaska can throw at you.

Comment by Ro Bailey on July 8, 2010 at 8:33pm

Hi, all,
I am just finishing a handcrafted full round log home in Fairbanks Alaska, so some parts of green are critical, some are hugely effective, and some can't be done at all. I started with an existing partial foundation, septic, and well, so much of site prep was "recycled", a significant cost savings as well as the intrinsic value of reuse. My logs are 20 inch at midspan, for wall logs, and substantially larger for the roof structure. All scrap logs were retained and will be used in the high efficiency wood stove to augment the primary boiler heating system. It is built on an ICF foundation with an added 4 inches of foam insulation on the outside. The house is built into the hill, which insulates two sides of the basement, and the rest has that extra foam plus stucco. Stucco was chosen because the color is in the material, and so never needs painting or any refinishing except minor touchup for nicks and chips that may occur. The roof insulation is 9 inches of a soy-based foam that gives me R-60. It just finished a research project at our Cold Climate Housing Research Center, so I was the first Fairbanks user. On top of that is a metal roof, which has an guaranteed life of 30 years and an expected life of 50 years, after which I'll be dead but it could be recycled. My garage door came from Canada with R-17 rating, my front door was built on site with 2 in of insulation inside, and all my windows are triple pane. Radiant heat in all three floors means I have great zone control but setbacks don't offer any value at all. My heat source is fuel oil, not many alternative choices here due to very limited sun in the winter and virtually no wind. However, the electrical system is set up to accept any non-line power source by simply plugging it into the receptacle installed on the outside of the house and throwing a master switch in the power panel. I can use a generator, solar, wind, or any combination in the future (when I have some free cash again). All paint in the house was very low VOC, as was any other stain, sealant, glue, mortar or other chemical if any such was available on the market. In some cases it simply wasn't possible, but we sure did try. Some of my flooring employed recycled materials--underlayment for carpet, some carpet--but it is a bit hard to find out on some of those products. Some of my lighting fixtures are antiques, recovered from architectural salvage firms, and rewired to accept today's CFLs or even LED lights. I don't have air conditioning, as it's silly here, but do have a heat recovery ventilation system which can move air through the house if it really gets hot (rare event). All my light fixtures have either CFL or LED lights, which were expensive going in but every one of them gets a $25 credit on my electric bill, not to mention contributes to energy reward programs here in Alaska. My gutters aren't installed yet, but when they are, they will set up to feed rainwater into a holding cistern once I get that set up for watering the grounds and my horse. The logs are also not yet stained and sealed outside because my contractor told me last summer that they needed at least another year before they would be ready, but they will get a water-based stain and sealant when it happens. Two weeks ago the energy rater scored my house a 94.6, the highest rating he's ever achieved on a log home, and well above what's necessary for 5 star plus rating.
There's more, but this is probably too long already. The key is for all who are contemplating how to incorporate green, it can be done, with lots of close attention and the right mindset in your various contractors. It needs to be a priority from the start, and your prime, if you have one, must be experienced in working green. Mine was committed, and yet we were chagrined at things we missed. Some things came off the table for cost, or for technical reasons, of course, but if it was reasonable and available, we did it.

Comment by Rose Glenn on April 25, 2010 at 12:57pm

Awesome! Keep us posted on your progress, okay? We're all ears when it comes to new ideas and technologies that use alternative sources of energy. Thanks!

Comment by Noah Hedges on April 25, 2010 at 12:54pm

we're working on it... unfortunately it takes about 1600 watts to run the Husky 316e. So we'd need a pretty big array and batteries. But I think we can make something work with a 400watt array and the right battery combination + lower wattage saw. Right now I have a 200 watt car-top array for jobsite battery charging.

Comment by Rose Glenn on April 24, 2010 at 5:58pm

Hey Noah, where did you find a solar-powered chainsaw? I tried to research this and all I could find was a guy who could plug an electric chainsaw into an inverter on a solar golf cart. Pretty cool if you want to watch the utube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFYpNrbyKCA

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