What have you done today to lower your impact?

We are washing away the foundations of our existence on every front. It is high time we move from crashing about on the planet like a bull in china shop and find a way to go forward with intent. We must find systems of living based on sustainability. The systems and tools exist, it is up to each of us to adopt them.

Sunday 17 June 2012

Efficiency going up!

This morning when I got up, at 7am it was 70º in the house, over the next several hours as the temps rose outside the temp only rose inside to 71º when I left at 10:15 to go to church. In those hours I had aggressively ventilated the house with wide open windows, ceiling fans and an extractor fan upstairs. As the sun rose and began to heat the east side of the property I lowered exterior blinds and gradually began to close windows and insert reflectix in them on the outside between the glass and the screen. Eventually, right before I left all windows were closed and had reflectix installed. When I returned around 2:30, the temp outside was 79º but felt much hotter in the sun, while the house was still a cool 71º. This is encouraging because we don't even have the full shade structure in yet. I'm sure when the real summer heat gets here we'll have a bigger challenge keeping the house cool without AC but I think we are making progress. 
SSE shade structure over the deck. The grape and kiwi will complete the shading of windows wall and water tanks.

SSW shade structure going up. This is where the solar thermal and PV will go.

No comments: