Journals

Ehren's Chicken Scratch

• Week of June 5th
  • Met with Charlie and Colin to get a head start on the SusSys course (notes from meeting follow).
    • Agreed to be the phone monkey and call: Gus Duke at RP&L + Contact RP&L and the electrical inspector about plans for a PV sys.
    • Agreed to look into using interlibrary loans to pick up some more sustainability books.
    • Sounds like Charlie and Colin have got us hooked up with a WattNode monitoring device. Mal Sehen. I probably should stop by Miller Farm since I haven't seen the inside yet. © Charlie: the first few classes will be focused on conducting an energy audit of Miller Farm.
  • Made contact with Harry Phillips, 973-7261, (Marketing @ RP&L). © Harry: interested in PV and alt. power. See no reason we shouldn't go ahead, but first contact Steve Saum, 973-7410, (Manager, Engineering @ RP&L).
  • Got a hold of Lynn Spencer (Wayne County Electrical Inspector). © Lynn: getting a permit will be a snap. Just stop by the office, anyone can pick one up. Would like to stop by and see our work when we get started. Chill about the details, mostly worried about the connection to the grid.
  • Chatted with Steve Saum. © Steve: Would like to be kept informed and take a look at our designs. Grid tie no problem on his end, but we should talk with IMPA about buy back since RP&L has exclusive contract for buying power with them.
  • Library run for alt. energy books turned up a big 401.

• Week of June 12th
  • Playing hookey in OK.

• Week of June 19th
  • Got my Degree Days and Back to the Basics reading nailed. Maybe we should calculate our personal degree days: I think I spend a lot of my time trying to maintain a steady 98.6. Discoveries:(1)Reader's Digest is not riviting writing, but it is informative. (2)Using trees and terrain to build wind breaks around a house can save up to 30% on your energy costs. (3)Dan looks a lot like his brother. (4) 1 acre of woodland can sustainably produce about 2/3 cords of firewood per year.
  • Met the other members of the SusSys crew at class on Tue. We spent our time working on the HES energy audit. After we measured the farmhouse dimensions with a 12 foot tape, we found some longer tapes and got all the window measurements. Northface: 107 sqft. Eastface: 117 sqft. Southface: 39 sqft. Westface: 76 sqft. Grand Total: 339 sqft. of windows at Miller Farm (including the 2 glass doors). With raw numbers like that in hand we soon had Dan's HES audit running on the downstairs PC. Dan became the basement gofer for the heating info. Question of the day: When the heck was the Farmhouse built?