As the principal of Emerald Builders, Reggie Lebel is well aware of how the decisions made when building a home dictate its energy use for decades to come. So, when it was time to build his own home, Reggie says “Solar was easy.”

“Solar hot water and space heat was a great way to get greater energy independence right on our own property,” he continues. “We chose Revision Energy because of the company’s reputation and continued commitment to their product, their vast knowledge of the systems, and their friendliness and patience with our endless questions and ideas.”

Helping the system to make fiscal as well as environmental and security sense was over $6,000 of state and federal incentives.

The system consists of a large (90-evacuated tube) solar hot water system that provides 100% of annual domestic hot water, as well as a portion of solar space heat. The system is backed up with a Thermolec electric boiler, which opens up the possibility of adding a photovoltaic system down the road for a completely net zero home.

The Experience

“[Project Manager] John Capron and the crew were a blast to have on site, they were meticulous with every aspect,” Reggie says. “They went over the systems and components and schedule with us routinely, and were very concerned about getting the job done right, and on time – you could tell that everyone really cared about the product.”

While a solar space heating system is enormously complex to design and schedule, the actual crews are only on-site for a few days. Once commissioned, the system will provide clean water courtesy of the sun for decades with little to no maintenance.

Living with Solar Hot Water and Space Heat

“The system does everything that Revision designed it to do,” Reggie says, “The house is very evenly heated, and routinely heated by the solar hot water system.”

For now, and for decades to come, his system will generate over 16,000,000 BTUs annually, offsetting over 4,000 lbs of C02 emissions – enough to make anyone breathe a little easier!

The new home of Susan Turner and Karl Karnaky will be net-zero, meaning it generates as much energy as it consumes during the course of a year. It was constructed using the “rammed earth” method and features numerous recycled/repurposed materials.

Although Maine is still the most oil dependent state in the U.S., a Bar Harbor couple is proving that people can live comfortably year round at our latitude with virtually no fossil fuel energy.

Rammed earth involves packing a mixture of sand, gravel, and cement into a form, which then that solidifies into walls. This dense material is an excellent thermal mass for passive solar applications, and practically soundproof.

The home also features numerous recycled/repurposed elements including a recycled aluminum and steel roof, a soapstone farm sink from a cabin found on the property, and plank flooring and beams recovered from an 1836 house in Dexter.

Going Solar

Turner and Karnaky’s sustainable mindset applied to their choice of mechanical systems, as well.

“Deciding to go with solar was the easy part,” Susan Turner writes. “We found that we could get a system that would cover the entire winter’s [radiant floor] heat. Knowing that the panels are creating our electricity leads me to consciously decide how I will use electricity and to be aware of not wasting it.”

Turner and Karnaky were so impressed with the installation that they opened their home up this past October to be on NESEA’s Green Building Open House Tour. Approximately 50 people visited to see the “striking” house which the MDI Village Soup said combines “the earthen feel of an ancient construction technique, the intriguing attractions of vintage elements reanimated by new use and the aesthetics of a contemporary sensibility.”

Enjoying the Sunshine

The new home should be “net zero,” meaning that it will generate as much energy as it consumes throughout the course of the year, required no fossil fuel inputs!

The 5kw grid tied photovoltaic (PV) system will produce roughly 6,000 kilowatt hours of clean, renewable electricity annually. Electricity will be used for normal household loads as well as a Thermolec electric boiler which supplies radiant heat, and a backup element to the solar hot water system.

From May through September, the evacuated tube solar hot water collectors will provide nearly 100% of the home’s domestic hot water supply. Combined, the two systems will offset roughly 11,600 lbs of C02 emissions each year.

“We hope our home will inspire more folks to decide that solar is the way to go,” Turner says, “We are excited about ‘free’ heat without using non-renewable energy, and we love the hot showers provided by the sun!”

Tim Gaudreau’s eco-friendly art studios now have half of their yearly electricity supplied by this 2.5kw grid tied solar electric system.

For Tim Gaudreau, being green is more than just a lifestyle choice – it’s a responsibility.

“I think that those of us that have the means to buy in on the earlier side of this green wave have a responsibility to, and by doing this will do a lot to advance the whole movement … To me, a potent manifestation of the possibilities becomes tangible when, less than six months after my solar pv system installation, two different friends are installing pv on their homes.”

Tim Gaudreau Studios is situated in an old barn re-purposed into a green studio that incorporates passive solar energy, wood pellet heat, solar hot water and a 2.5kw solar electric system.

“Over the recent years, I’ve worked to reduce my oil consumption for political and environmental reasons, and going solar was the next step,” he says, “As a New Englander, I think I’ve got a fierce independent streak and I absolutely love knowing that my hot water and over six months worth of annual electricity are generated right at home — I find that thrilling.”

The thrill comes from generating roughly 3,350 kilowatt hours of clean, renewable electricity each year, as well as over 10,000,000 Btus of clean solar thermal energy.

The Experience

The solar hot water system on Tim Gaudreau’s home will produce over 10,000,000 btus of thermal energy each year.

“I chose ReVision to do the work because it was clear that they knew what they’re doing,” Gaudreau says. “I have been thoroughly impressed the everyone’s professionalism, from taking the time to listen to my concerns to explaining the equipment and what to expect.

“Actually, most things exceeded my expectations — especially how much power my pv system puts out! Nothing beats watching the PSNH meter spin backwards. I also love the guilt-free feeling taking hot showers provided care of the sun.”

But it’s not just the personal benefits that interest Gaudreau.

Spurring the Green Energy Economy

“I feel these green technologies are really on the cusp of becoming mainstream between tech advances, growing public awareness and acceptance, and federal/state subsidy,” Gaudreau says.

Tim Gaudreau’s “Self Portrait in Trash” documented the things he threw out over the course of the year to both showcase the artist’s relationship to trash as well as the explore the meaning of the things we discard.

Tim Gaudreau’s commitment to ‘eco art’ has lead him to create numerous art projects that challenge the viewer. His “Self Portrait as Revealed by Trash” was featured in the popular Treehugger blog and his “Sprawl Viewer” snapshots dot the landscape of Southern New Hampshire, calling attention to development issues.

He is currently helping to head up the Zero Waste Portsmouth initiative, which aims to put attractive decorated single-sort recycling bins throughout Portsmouth. ReVision is among the dozen or so business partners who have signed on to provide fiscal support for the project.

“It has been the responsibility of artists to mirror society, to challenge accepted thinking and to provide a critical voice,” Gaudreau says of his work.

In life, as well as in art, Gaudreau is among those proving that a more sustainable way is possible for all of us with the will to pursue it.

ReVision’s own Josh Rollson opened up “Solar Saturday” at Gritty McDuff’s Freeport location on 9/25. There was plenty of sun at the event celebrating Gritty’s new flat plate solar hot water system.

Last week the sun greeted us in full force for a celebration of solar energy at Gritty McDuff’s in Freeport, Maine.

The event, dubbed “Solar Saturday,” featured live music by Josh Rollson and Megan Jo Wilson, eco-friendly vendors, great food, great Gritty’s drinks and family friendly activities. ReVision and WCLZ co-hosted the event and in attendance were our sister company, ReVision Heat, ski area Mt Abram, the Bicycle Coalition of Maine, and Rook Energy.

Solar Powered Brewing

Solar hot water is a no-brainer for buildings with significant hot water loads, such as hotels, restaurants, and breweries.

These businesses use large amounts of hot water and by switching over to the sun they can repay a solar investment extremely quickly.

Generally the solar hot water collectors are plumbed as the primary source of domestic hot water, with some sort of fossil-fuel backup, ideally a modulating on-demand unit so that an unlimited supply of hot water is available for the least possible amount of energy.

When the sun is adequate to supply the building’s hot water needs, the backup appliance won’t be used at all. If the solar is not quite enough, the system functions as a pre-heat and the backup raises the hot water temperature the just amount it needs to to go into the restaurant.

In Gritty’s case, we installed 12 flat plate solar hot water collectors with three super-insulated hot water tanks plumbed in parallel. For backup, we replaced an extremely inefficient high mass residential scale boiler used to heat a water tank with a super-efficient on-demand unit.

The result is a system that will produce over 480,000 BTUs of clean solar thermal heat on an average summer day. That’s enough to reduce Gritty’s propane usage by 2,600 gallons a year.

After factoring in the various government financial incentives, the system should pay for itself after the first year.

That’s enough to make anyone feel, well, sunny!

More Photos from Our Commercial Solar Photo Gallery:

The elegantly and minimally designed home of Ian and Zofia Weiss is heated nearly entirely from the sun.

Photo courtesy of locative DRD

What defines a home? The materials it is made out of, or the human experiences that happen there?

For Ian Weiss and Zofia Weiss, a home is a combination of both. In 2008, the husband of wife team, founders of locative Design Research Development, started on a journey to build a new home and office for themselves that would combine two different, but not antagonistic ideas:

• The Rational House – Designed and built to efficiently endure Maine’s climate for the next century
• The Emotional House – Designed to serve socialization between people and interaction with place

They write:

An energy-efficient house appeals to a person’s rational side. It does more with less. It requires less energy, thereby reducing the burden on the owner of securing, paying for, and shouldering the consequences of that supply … Working among the various ideas surrounding sustainable architecture, we came to the conclusion that energy use should be the primary measure of whether a house is “green” or not … An energy-efficient house’s savings over its lifespan CAN outweigh all other choices a person makes regarding energy use.

Yet, a home is more than the sum of its parts:

The architecture facilitates a way to sit and read, to observe the outdoors beyond, to enjoy the sun … The Emotional house concept as we perceived it … was built on favorite moments in houses and apartments we lived in, exciting features we came across in houses of friends we visited. It was the settings of our most emotional memories, indoors and out, the places that served as the backdrops and stage sets for the actions of people. It was angles of sunlight in the morning and afternoon, the warmth of a kitchen.

Solar Heating as a Solution

“Our primary goal was to build a new house of our own design that did not rely on fossil fuels,” writes Ian Weiss. “It became obvious early on that a super-insulated house would require only a small heat source, which opened the door for employing solar hot water for space heating as well as domestic hot water. The combination of solar hot water with in-floor radiant heat was a perfect fit that would provide the majority of our heating.”

The keys to a successful solar space heating system are a super-insulated building envelope, excellent southern exposure, and low temperature distribution (i.e. radiant floors vs. radiators). The Weiss’ included all of these aspects in their design, with R values of 50-58 throughout the structure and a perfect southern orientation on their home (which also helps with the Emotional side of the house – providing ample sunlit areas to work and live during the day).

Due to the high insulation value, the heating needs of the space are low, which means that solar thermal is viable as the home’s primary source of heat. In deep winter, when the sun is at its weakest and the heating needs are at their highest, the energy gap is made up with seamless electrical backup, as well as locally harvested wood.

The Weiss’ created this useful graph for understanding this energy gap when compared to a conventional home:

Solar Space Heating Design

The great part about solar hot water space heating is that the same system provides all of the home’s domestic hot water.

The system we designed and installed consists of a 120 evacuated tube hot water array tied into two solar hot water storage tanks. When the temperature at the collectors is hotter than the tank, the pump begins to circulate a non-toxic food-grade antifreeze solution through the collectors and into the heat exchange coils in the storage tanks.

Should there not be enough sun to heat the domestic tank to its set point, the integrated electric element turns on and provides automatic backup.

The Experience

“The installation was simple because our project was new construction,” says Ian. “The design phase went smoothly with ReVision trusting us to handle energy modeling and to determine a design load we were comfortable with. Easier than expected? Yes.”

Now he and his wife are living in the home and starting to enjoy the more emotional parts of the experience:

When the sun shined, our solar array made hot water, even when it was 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside. We were thrilled to be so warm. Yet, the Rational House’s performance in the winter conditions told half the story of our satisfaction with it. The Emotional House was the one we really lived in, wrapped inside an energy-efficient super-insulated rational shell.

Learn more from their profile of the 57 Union St, Belfast home, or see Locative DRD’s website.

From our Residential Solar Photo Gallery:

For more installations, see our Solar Projects Map

Aqua Maine’s new water treatment facility in Rockport uses solar hot water and solar electric systems which will work together to provide over 80,000 kw/hr of energy each year.

The Free Press, today featured our recent project with the Camden and Rockland Division of Aqua Maine.

The new $7.2 million wastewater treatment facility in Mirror Lake in Rockport features both solar electric and solar hot water systems.

The solar systems will work in tandem to provide more than 75% of the needed energy to heat 2,500 gallons of treated lake water to 95° F each day (a feat that requires up to 1,209,300 BTUs in the wintertime!).

According to The Free Press:

The new facility uses more power to push water through the filters, and the microfiltration membranes must be periodically cleaned with heated water. Rick Knowlton, vice president of operations, says, “While the original design of the facility included a large electric heater to warm water for the membrane cleaning process, we knew that this would be a perfect application for a solar thermal system to supplement or reduce the use of the electric heater. Almost 2,500 gallons of warm water will be needed every day, and the solar system being constructed should reduce our purchased electricity by 80,000 kWh every year. It’s one of the larger solar systems installed in Maine.”

Over the first 20 years of its life, the system is expected to save over $210,000 in electric costs. And according to The Free Press, “the power savings have been passed on to the Camden & Rockland Division customers as part of the recent Maine PUC decision on rates.”

Not only will Midcoast Mainers benefit financially from the project, but they can breathe a little easier, too. The solar system will offset roughly 1.27 million pounds of C02 each year, the equivalent of planting over 3,600 trees.

More Photos from Our Commercial Solar Photo Gallery:

For more installations, see our Solar Projects Map

The solar hot water system for Scratch Baking Company has reduced their natural gas usage by more than 25%

For Bob Johnson at the Scratch Baking Company, solar hot water was a matter of “very simple math.”

With a modest investment in a solar hot water system, his business could “take a pretty big chunk out of our carbon contribution as well as save money by using less gas to heat hot water.”

With such a nice intersection of environmental stewardship and economics, it was simply a matter of finding the funds to invest in the system.

“Based on our calculations, the payback [for the system] would be relatively short, but we still wanted to find some sort of grant or partial financing so we would not have to take the full cash hit on the install,” Bob says. “ReVision’s staff was on top of this goal and advised me last fall that there was a Commercial Projects Grant available for solar energy projects of our size and scope. This was a Federal grant administered by Efficiency Maine. Jen (from ReVision) and I partnered in putting the grant together and it was awarded to Scratch in February.”

Make Hot Water While the Sun Shines

ReVision Energy co-founder Fortunat Mueller, one of the leading solar thermal experts in the northeast, designed a 120-tube solar hot water system with a Rinnai Continuum natural gas on demand hot water heater serving as backup. When the sun is shining, sun-heated antifreeze pumps from the rooftop collectors through a heat exchange coil at the bottom of a super-insulated storage tank, producing domestic hot water for Scratch.

When someone in the bakery turns on the tap, water flows from the solar tank and through the Rinnai hot water heater. If the water temperature is above a pre-determined setpoint, the Rinnai does not fire up at all. If the water needs to be warmed by a few degrees, the Rinnai is able to fire up to provide just the amount of heat required to get the water to the appropriate temperature.

The system has been living up to expectations, allowing Scratch to seriously benefit from the solar spill we experienced in May. So far Bob estimates that the hot water system has reduced his natural gas usage by more than 25% during the first month that the system was installed.

“I go down to look at the tank temp every morning when I get to work,” he says. “If the day before was a sunny day, we will be sitting on 210 gallons of 145 deg. water that we will need to blend down to 120 deg.”

But it’s the environmental benefits that excite Bob the most. “I believe Scratch is a perfect application for this kind of technology, and being a neighborhood bakery that is a values driven business, a very good use of these kinds of funds. And because of our location and customer base, we have a real opportunity for educating people about what is possible with solar.”

Jen and Hans Albee celebrated their July 4 with an Open House for Energy Independence

This Independence Day ReVision employees Jen and Hans Albee (both of whom work out of our Liberty office) held an open house at their home in Brooks to celebrate their growing energy independence.

Earlier this year, Jen and Hans finished installing a 40-evacuated tube solar hot water system to supplement their Rinnai on-demand propane hot water heater.

Though on-demand Rinnais are extremely efficient energy users, nothing feels so good as hot water from the sun! Their system will generate roughly 12,045,000 BTUs of clean energy each year.

Weatherization in Tandem with Solar Hot Water

In addition to solar hot water, the Albees are participating in the Home Energy Savings Program, which will rebate homeowners up to $3,000 for approved energy efficiency projects, regardless of income.

They’re working with Curry Caputo of Sustainable Structures to air seal and insulate attic and second floor walls and drop down stairs, as well as adding better ventilation to their bathrooms.

In our photo gallery you can see some additional photos – with Hans putting on the finishing touches on the system, and the other of Hans and Simone (their dog) enjoying the sunshine over the holiday weekend: