Hola Mi Amigos y Amigas!
Today I bring you the second house on the solar tour I took this weekend. This house was a renovation of an older home. It was converted to use a 5kW solar power system, and has a couple neat features inside to help heat the house in wintertime.
I believe the frame of the house may go back as far as the pioneering times when folks were moving west. The main house was originally 2 separate houses connected by a breezeway. They started their improvements by insulating the walls with a spray in foam insulation, and connecting the houses together under one roof. All the windows were replaced with newer double pane glass from what I gathered.
This was a separate house on the land which house the solar array which provides power to the home. This home is not entirely off grid and its power system does not interact with the power grid but runs in parallel to it. The homeowners use solar as much as possible for their daily functions, but use the grid for power for things like air conditioning from what I gathered.
They were collecting some rainwater using a unique pvc system that separated any solids that may have come off the roof of their barn. They filled 2 ibc totes that are used to supply water to their garden.
This is a hibiscus plant which they use for making tea. Everyone was really blown away on how big the plant had gotten.
The battery bank was another sealed lead acid bank. The system was designed by one of the community member and built by the homeowners and other volunteers from the community in Blount county.
They are using a more user friendly and modern charge controller and inverter system than the previous straw bale house. I wasn't able to get the total specifics on this system, but this house was somewhat of a demonstration on how you will incur significant extra costs on a retrofit house that is not designed to take advantage of passive solar design. The homeowners had to run an expensive 2-400' run of wire from their solar panel array to the garage battery bank and inverter.
The home also incorporated this electric water furnace as a way to supplement winter heating. The cooling for the house was a zone system run by mini split air Conditioning. Their is a new type of variable compressor mini split systems that use little power and are very efficient that these folks employed.
Thank you for your time!
Share around with anyone who may be interested in this tour. I'll be covering the other 3 homes in the coming days.
Let me know what you think about this house in the comments.
Yours in liberty toward a brighter future,
Greg Doud @makinstuff