Terry McIlveen recently reported that he is “amazed on sub zero days the temp on the collectors will hit 130-140 … It is high enough to offset demand for radiant heating.”

The idea of heating your home with solar may sound like a dream in the tough climate of New England, but with smart design, a well-insulated home, and reasonable expectations, solar can indeed carry a portion of your winter heating load.

A recent Mother Earth News article profiled one of our solar space heating customers, Terry McIlveen, and asked several questions of resident engineer and company co-founder Fortunat Mueller.

Scott Gibson writes:

When Terry McIlveen built his home in Maine in 1997, he made the unusual choice to install radiant floor heating. “People thought I was nuts,” he says. However, since that time, radiant floor heat has become increasingly popular, and it’s easy to understand why. This type of heating system works by pumping hot water — or water and propylene glycol (antifreeze) — through a system of tubing in the floor. That means houses using this heating system get warmer from the floor up. In the winter, there are no cold floors underfoot — instead the floor is the warmest part of the home.

McIlveen soon discovered an additional benefit — radiant floor heat is a great match with solar hot water. If you already heat your home with hot water, it’s just one more step to heat that water with solar energy. In the spring of 2010, McIlveen hired ReVision Energy, a southern Maine solar company, to install rooftop solar collectors to help heat his home and produce his domestic hot water, thereby cutting his fuel oil consumption by up to 25 percent each year.

The system cost $20,000, so McIlveen chose to finance it through a loan. His exact savings on fuel each year will depend on how much he has to run the heater in the winter, as well as the ever-changing price of fuel oil — but he knows that if he saves just two fuel tanks a year, he can cover his loan payments.

Using solar hot water for space heating won’t supply 100 percent of your heating needs. You’ll still need a supplemental heat source, so you won’t be able to scrap your furnace or boiler. But in new construction, that supplemental heat source can be much less expensive (a smaller system, for example). However, under the right conditions, a solar thermal system can replace a significant portion of conventional energy sources for both space heating and domestic hot water.

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/solar-hot-water-zm0z11zphe.aspx#ixzz1ByEFseL2

You can also see Terry McIlveen’s home when it was featured on WMTW in mid-2010.

As BP continues to struggle to contain the oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, many of us are wondering: how can we help?

We can all take steps to reduce our oil consumption, which we believe is a critical part of the long-term solution to preventing future catastrophes. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels starts with one person, one household at a time.

Save How You Get There

A humbling 80% of petroleum consumed in the United States goes toward transportation. Time to take a bike!

1. Get Efficient – Trade in your gas guzzler for a smaller, more efficient vehicle. Switching from a light-duty SUV that runs at 20mpg to a 50mpg hybrid will save, in the average household, 450 gallons of gasoline a year.

   Soon, electric cars like the Chevy Volt will be available, providing an option to have a “net-zero” car by offsetting your charge time with grid-tied solar power!

2. Drive Less – Even better than driving more efficiently is to drive less altogether. Consolidate shopping trips. See if your employer is willing to switch to a 4-day work week. Telecommute if possible. Could video-conferencing avoid the need to travel out of town for a business meeting?
3. Alternative Commuting – Consider non-motorized options when you do need to get out of the house.  Biking is one of the healthiest things you can do, for yourself and for the environment. Walk. Use public transport if it is available.

Save What You Consume

4. Buy less – Avoid products with excessive plastic packaging – and recycle what you do buy. Bring your own shopping bags and lobby stores you buy from to use biodegradable plastics derived from plant matter. Many of the businesses in the Green Alliance have already made this switch.
5. Buy local – It’s a simple equation: the fewer miles a product has to travel, the fewer gallons of oil burned to bring it to your table. And there are myriad other benefits – see the Portland Buy Local campaign and the Seacoast Local campaign for ideas and inspiration.
6. Buy organic – According to the Sustainable Table, “As much as forty percent of energy used in the food system goes towards the production of artificial fertilizers and pesticides.” Organic food avoids petroleum-derived pesticides and other chemicals, which have adverse environmental effects of their own. MOFGA has a great resource list of local food retailers, farms, and CSAs. In New Hampshire, try the NH Farmer’s Market Association.

Save on Energy

7. Plug the holes – Much of the old housing stock in Maine and New Hampshire is literally losing heat out the window. You can start down the road of weatherization with a professional energy audit, and take advantage of great incentives.  This year, instead of cleaning your boiler, have it optimized to burn less fuel.
8. Save the juice -  Many homes are “leaking” electricity as well as heat, simply by leaving gadgets or other appliances plugged in when they don’t have to be, or running them at non-optimal times.  You can test this theory with a Kill-A-Watt meter, which will help you identify which appliances are using a lot of electricity (you might be surprised how many gadgets use electricity even while they’re “off”).

   For more robust electric use monitoring we recommend installing a TED (The Energy Detective), which provides tracking and graphs of electric use over time. Once you’ve optimized your consumption, off-set the rest with grid-tied solar power!

9. Heat smarter – A properly sized solar hot water system in Maine or New Hampshire can save 300 gallons of oil per year. Want to go even further? Rip out your oil boiler and replace it with a clean-burning wood or pellet boiler, or with a condensing gas boiler.

Everyone can do something to reduce our perilous dependence on oil. Take whatever step you can today and plan for the next step when able.

A solar power project completed this week in New Hampshire – clean energy is ready to go!

In his first official State of the Union address, President Obama offered a rousing challenge to Congress to get to work on a variety of issues – jobs, security, health care, and the transition to a clean energy economy.

With 2009 behind us, but its challenges far from over, Obama took an approach that was urgent, while at times light-hearted, as he analyzed the country’s problems and his suggestions for implementing change.

We were pleased to see “clean energy” make it into the speech some dozen times, though Obama mentioned “solar panels” only once.

Here’s our take on some of the key points raised during the State of the Union address:

• Obama Lauds Success of Recovery Act
  

  “Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. Two hundred thousand work in construction and clean energy”

  Obama put a lot of effort into defending the actions necessary in 2009, both the unpopular bank bailout and the ongoing American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), aka the Stimulus.

  While Obama’s focus on clean energy jobs was on the manufacturing side – he mentioned both “the California business that will put a thousand people to work making solar panels” and a need to create “new factories that manufacture clean energy products,” the Stimulus also has had a big positive effect on those who install those panels thanks to financial incentives that were part of ARRA.

• Obama Sees Clean Energy as the Route to Tomorrow
  

  “We can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow … There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products… I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here’s the thing — even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -– because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”

  Obama seemed very cautious about making the environmental case for a switch to a clean energy economy, instead rooting his argument in the need to create very real clean energy jobs.

  While we couldn’t agree more, and laud Obama for finding common ground, it’s a bit disappointing that the very real crisis facing our planet is still a point of argument.

  The reality is that regardless of the state of the economy, we need to make a move to clean energy now as an act of survival.

  That Obama was cautious to acknowledge this threat points to an even greater challenge of worldview we still have to resolve.

• Getting There – Incentives and Innovations
  

  “We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which supports clean energy jobs. … Next, we need to encourage American innovation. Last year, we made the largest investment in basic research funding in history, an investment that could lead to the world’s cheapest solar cells or treatment that kills cancer cells but leaves healthy ones untouched.”

  Again, Obama mentions investment in research as a major player in the move to a clean economy. While we agree, the reality is that there are plenty of technologies that are already here which are reliable, affordable, and available.

  Both grid-tied photovoltaics and solar hot water are energy investments that make economic and environmental sense.

  We’re eager to see what Obama plans to offer with “rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient,” and wish we’d heard something about a feed-in tariff.

• The Economy of Old – Nuclear, Oil, and Gas?
  

  “But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.”

  After so much invigorating news from Obama, it was disappointing to hear his last word on energy mention nonrenewable sources of energy.

  While it may be necessary to find some common ground with Republicans to move the overall initiatives forward, we still disagree that more power plants and “clean” coal are the best way to build the nation’s infrastructure.

Disappointments aside, it’s encouraging to see how large a role clean energy fits into Obama’s plans to move the country back into recovery.

As Obama acknowledged, we have some mighty challenges ahead of us, but the technology is here to move to a clean economy.

What is difficult is mustering the will to act.

The Tarm Multi-Heat Boiler

Today we continue the narrative of the Rhoda Family, one of the first ReVision customers to install three renewable energy systems: solar hot water, a wood pellet boiler, and solar electric system.

Yesterday we saw how installing a solar hot water system provided nearly immediate payback due to financial incentives and reduced energy costs.

Chris Rhoda today explains how adding an efficient pellet boilet reduced their oil usage dramatically:

It was suggested that installing an outside temperature sensor on our oil boiler would increase our oil savings by 5 to 10% each year. The price for this additional component was relatively inexpensive, making the payback short so we decided to do this along with the solar thermal system. John Luft also suggested at the time a wood boiler to offset the bulk of our oil usage. I’m not able to continually feed cordwood with my full-time job(s), so John suggested we consider a wood pellet boiler.

After much research I found out what the European’s had already discovered, that a lot of money can be saved each year for a relatively small amount of work. For our home’s heating needs we calculated that 8 tons of pellets per year would reduce the 1,300 gallons of oil used to less than 300 gallons a year and cost half the amount. I asked Revision to quote us a pellet boiler and also asked one other company.

It seemed only a few businesses were installing these boilers at the time. As my wife and I were refinancing our home we decided financially it made sense to add the wood pellet boiler at this time. Now the outdoor temperature sensor is saving us 5 to 10% of 300 gallons of oil, the amount we are averaging on an annual basis. The rest of our home’s heating and hot water needs are covered by wood pellets or by the sun. The systems run seamlessly with little maintenance.

The only item that requires regular maintenance so far is the daily ‘scoop of ash and pour of pellets’ for the furnace, a 5 minute job each day, as well as cleaning the boiler every few weeks with a brush/vacuum. (Editor’s Note: today you can install a fully automated pellet boiler that mirrors the convenience of oil, eliminating even this minimal maintenance. See our sister site, ReVision Heat, for more information).

Solar thermal was our first path because of the payback and rebates. Wood was our second; the payback is almost as quick however there are no rebates or tax credits to take advantage of.

Today tere is now a tax credit available up to $1,500 for wood boilers installations, the $2,000 cap for solar hot water installations has been lifted, and the tax credit for solar hot water is 30% the cost of the job.

See our incentives and rebates page for more information, and contact sister company ReVision Heat for more information on a wood boiler system.

This narrative is continued to tomorrow, when we’ll learn how the Rhoda’s completed the “Hat Trick” with a clean solar power system that locks in their energy prices for 20+ years.

UPDATE: Link to Part 1 – Rhoda Family Introduction, Part 2 – solar hot water provides immediate ROI, and Part 4 – installing a solar electric (PV) system