Earth Day 2011: An Invited Article For Building Moxie

Recently, I was invited by my good friend Jb Bartkowiak to contribute an article to his community-oriented Building Moxie: The Do Together Daily commemorating Earth Day 2011. Needless to say, it was a great honor and privilege to have been asked.

The article, entitled Earth Day 2011: Three Simple Acts That Can Make A Difference, highlights relatively low-cost practices almost anyone can undertake to help achieve a greener, more sustainable world, in keeping with the Earth Day 2011 theme of A Billion Acts of Green. Please give it a read, and post any comments directly to the article itself. And I hope everyone is having a great weekend and holiday!

On Sustainability, Old Home Renovation, Smart Grids, and Kitchen Gardens

Staying On-Grid, Part I: A Hybrid Approach to Sustainability is an article I recently published on Building Moxie: The Do Together Daily that illustrates my philosophy of old home renovation with regard to sustainable energy and conservation. This applies, of course, to the Hawkins house, which is my preeminent project in this area. A companion article, Staying On-Grid, Part II: A Call to Arms to the Citizen Farmer, completes my vision of a greener world by building a case for wide-spread, sustainable food production at the door-yard scale. Check 'em out!

Geothermal Heat Pump on a Friday Afternoon

Given the very recent rise in temperatures around here, I thought it would be a good idea to go outside and inspect my geothermal heating system. At the heart of the system is the geothermal heat pump, and a critical component of that heat pump is the core element:



Well, yes, it does look like a patch of old snow, doesn't it? That might very well be the case, but today, it's been re-purposed as a geothermal heat pump, the nature of which is to provide a sustainable source of thermal energy for heating and cooling (in this case, cooling). You can see the delicate core element right in the very center in the photo above.

Next, I firmly, but gently, grasped the core element with my hand, and slowly extracted it from the geothermal pump. It seems like, overall, it's in pretty good condition:



I then brought it inside the house and sat it down at my desk while I continued to blog (about this very same topic, no less). Then removed the end cap and inspected the core's contents. I am happy to report that this experiment in sustainable energy use has gone remarkably well: My goals for adequate refrigeration have been achieved, with negligible (near-zero) impact on the earth's resources.



And now, it's time for a poem:

A Patch of Old Snow

There's a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I've forgotten --
If I ever read it.

-- Robert Frost

Have a great weekend, and Happy Valentines Day to all my sweethearts out there! :-)