Great site for DIY
The build it Solar site is a one man operation, and thank goodness he keeps it up !
Not only does it have the actual energy savings of his own journey, the half project ( he and his wife set up to cut their energy useage, home, transport in half, they exceeded it handily) what they did, how much the bills went down, but is FULL of links to all kinds if DIY plans any green wizard would love
He has the half project projects broken down so you can easily see which ones are the easiest with the best quick return on investment, for the top 8 he spent $378 and saves $907 a year, year in year out since that time.
You can go to teh half project charts and see the first year rate of return on all 23 projects he did.
When you look thru all the extensive links on other projects, a good idea would be to write down or print out your favorites, I am finding web sites like these going away quicker than I would like, and alot of what he has for other projects are links, and they can easily go away
Ken
Sun, 03/27/2022 - 17:03
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Analysis
https://www.builditsolar.com/References/Half/ProjectCharts.htm
I haven't prowled through his site thoroughly yet but will some evening this week. The 'Half Project' is a noble goal and I wanted to see his charts first thing. My initial impression is that the data is far too simplistic to be much use to me. I'm concerned about embodied energy, eventual disposal, lifespan, durability, etc. not just the initial purchase price and a wild guess as to the energy that particular project saved.
The Prius is a good example: the embodied energy and outsourced pollution that it represents is reason enough for me not to be interested in one and unless the electricity where he lives is generated without using any fossil fuels (which is extremely unlikely) the greenhouse gas emissions chart is simply wrong. I feel like I'm nit-picking but if someone is presenting data about energy consumption, it seems to me that the data needs to be honest and inclusive of material life-cycles rather than gee whiz, "I saved half my electrical bill with these simple hacks."
mountainmoma
Sun, 03/27/2022 - 18:24
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His personal solutions may
His personal solutions may not be for some of us, but do look thru the site. There are links to a tremendous amount of DIY ways to get passive heat, hot water, etc... and links to proper insulation air sealing,, all the things that the green wizardry book talks about.
It is otherwise hard to find plans for building these things and how to air seal etc....
ClareBroommaker
Sun, 03/27/2022 - 17:23
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Time to walk through
Time to walk through that site. I missed that you had posted this, and linked the site under your comment on the Amory Lovins / Rocky Mountain Institute thread. I should have a look through it again. It's been a while. I see it shows a "box bed" such as David Tremmel recently brought up.
mountainmoma
Sun, 03/27/2022 - 18:36
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chart of actual saved bought in power
so they did this 15 years ago, so from 2001 to 2007
And true, he can show the reduction in what they ahd to buy in terms of electricity, propane, gasoline. Then shows the payback on the other charts using money spent vs money saved, not embodied energy in what he bought vs energy saved. So there is a thought of using the money as an equivalency which of course it may not be an exact equivalent.
DIfferent people make different choices. I do note that JMG even in both the green wizards book and the retro future book does advocate for just such energy savings measures and even a small amount of solar. We could argue about the larger solar array and prius for this family as the last stage they did, but it is unclear that it could be worse than what they were doing before, most likely better at least in the lens of 10 years ago