Alviston Blog

I thought that maybe the conference in Copenhagen would be like the Olympics, where all the countries in the world would get together and have a big energy party. Maybe it would be like a huge teach-in and be covered by all the media, as they did for the Olympics in China. That was something. I am thinking that the fate of the world is at least as important as the pommel horse.

Imagine all the countries learning from one another ways to stop global warming. Denmark could show off its wind turbines. Germany could teach everyone about solar tech, and Japan could show off their hybrid cars. There are houses now, called net-zero houses, that make as much power as they use. What if everyone had one of those?

It was known going in that it would be a struggle to get 192 countries to agree on something as complex as what to do about global warming, but at least it was happening, and all of the countries attending know something has to change, and soon. The countries that make up the Organization of Small Island States were there to plea for the very existence of their land, as rising sea levels will have them underwater very soon.

I thought that bringing people together from all over the world might help the various cultures understand each other better, from rich countries that have only begun to feel the effects, to poor countries who have been feeling the effects of global warming for a long time as their water supplies dry up and their villages flood. I think we are all now feeling the pain of the Earth.

I thought the Copenhagen Conference was going to be a good chance for unity.

However, as it progressed, none of this seemed to be happening. It was as if they were waiting for a leader that never showed up. For the first time, I realized that while we have world leaders, we do not have a leader of the world. Our leaders are not leading the world at all; they are only leading their own countries.

What needs to happen is already happening: the people of the world will have to unite, create the changes needed to survive, despite what their governments are doing. There will be countries that take leadership roles, some have already committed to being carbon-neutral by 2020. We need to look to them for inspiration and examples of how it can be done, instead of pointing fingers at the other countries.

The issue of global warming is overwhelming. However, ignoring the issue will only make things worse.

I suggest we have the Energy Olympics in the same spirit as the regular Olympics. Each country brings their energy-efficient technologies, ideas, and plans. Then, they go in front of the judges to make sure they are viable. Instead of giving out medals, new technologies are given to the countries that need them. And for the countries that have the technologies, the rest of the world can teach them the value of a healthy Earth.

We are not going to solve global warming until we all pitch in to save our common home.

–Mark Alvis

After some debate, we chose a Caroma dual-flush toilet for the guest bathroom at my brother’s house in Clovis. They picked an ADA-approved toilet since they often have guests who would appreciate the extra height.

If you have never seen a dual-flush toilet, you should. They have really worked on the hydraulics in designing this thing. On the top of the lid are two buttons, a full circle, and a half circle. The full circle is 1.6 gallons and the half is 0.8 gallons. Since, on average, the half circle is used six times more often than the full, the average flush turns out to be 1.28 which is the criteria for a high-efficiency toilet, aka HET.

I have only installed one other ADA toilet, which was not hard. It was different because it required the use of an offset flange that attached the bowl to the toilet flange. Not too bad.

You may think that changing your toilets to low-flow (HET) could not possibly save that much water. Nevertheless, this is a volume issue. As you can imagine, there are many toilets in this country. Let us say you have a family of four and everyone flushes an average of five times per day. That is 20 flushes. If you still have older toilets, they could be 3.5 gallon per flush (or even higher). That equates to 70 gallons a day to flush the toilet. A dual-flush would average 1.28 gallons per flush, or 25 gallons per day, a 45-gallon savings, which adds up to 16,500 gallons per year. That is just one family! Take a city the size of Fresno, say 600,000, and let us say that half of the toilets are still 3.5 gallons (I have not done the research). The math is easy: 300,000  X 16,500 = 4,950,000,000 gallons saved each year just by changing all our toilets.

See what I mean by volume? Considering that many cities offer rebates to change your old guzzler to a new low-flow toilet (HET), this is something we should all be doing. It not only takes a lot of energy to move and treat all that water, it takes a lot of money too.

–Mark Alvis

We get calls sometimes from people wanting to know if they can add more panels to their existing photovoltaic (solar) systems. Well, in fact we did just that last week down in Kingsburg, adding an additional 2.7kW (kilowatts) to an existing 7.4 kW system. My first take was that the house was around 2,400 square feet and a 10K system was big. I thought we might find the reason while we were working on the installation.

The roof slopes were mainly east and west, and the existing system was facing east. OK, but not ideal. The system we are doing is split into two strings, one on the east slope and the other facing south. This time of year, the production from PV panels goes down because of the short days and the sun being so low, making the shadows from neighboring trees much longer.

The house was built, I would guess, in the 1940s, and in very good condition. They had put in new, dual pane windows recently. Still, I wondered how they were using so much power. They had a marvelous koi pond in the back, with a pump that was always running. Although it wasn’t very big, running all the time takes some juice. I never went in the house to see if they had good energy-efficient lighting, but I’m guessing they did.

While we were in the attic running the wire for the solar array, Sean, our insulation expert, noticed that while at first it looked liked there was a lot of insulation, it was all matted down, and probably not very efficient. This could account for both the AC unit in the summer and the furnace in the winter having to work extra hard. So we are going to check with the owner to see if they want to add some more. It is common to find more ways to make a house more energy efficient when you are working on a job.

Fortunately, there are rebates for many of the energy-saving systems for your home. They include insulation, solar PV, appliances, and more. You can find more info at pge.com.

As we already have the technology to make our homes power themselves, it is really just a matter of doing the work, work which could lift us out of the current economic slump. While I understand the importance of a strong economy, we must remember, “There is no economy without ecology.”

–Mark Alvis

For those of you who watch Bill Moyers, I do not need tell you.  He had Jane Goodall on the show to talk about her experiences and life. They showed film of when she was just 26 working with the Chimps in Africa. She talked about some of the programs she has set up and what she is working on now.

What impressed me about Jane was her elloquence. She talked about the environment in a way and with an authority that no one can question. If you missed the show please watch it. I’m sure your can see it on pbs.org. 

Jane gave a much needed sense of urgency to the issues of global warming and how it is affecting all the species on the planet, including us. But she also said: “Don’t give up.” She described how the condor was brought back from the edge of extinction.

Jane Goodall is a powerful voice of reason, in a world that often holds in disregard many of the animals that also call this planet home.

–Mark Alvis

I do not think there is anything more effective at transforming a house than natural light. It seems obvious, but for some reason, many homes have hallways, bathrooms, and even kitchens that are dark in the middle of the day. I call them “light-locked” because for one reason or another, they were built without access to sunlight.

A kitchen may have a small, sink window, but often all the walls are used for cabinets. Therefore, in an area where you really need lots of light, there is often not enough. Therefore, we put skylights in kitchens a lot.

Depending on the roof, the light shaft can be very interesting itself, even sculptural. We have also put skylights in showers, pantries, offices and, of course, garages. I put one in the upstairs bathroom at my parent’s and the glow it gives to the room brings life back into the eighty-year-old house.

Yesterday, we installed a tube-type skylight over a vanity, which was “light-locked.” The new source of light really made the new granite vanity top look great.

On Tuesday, we installed two skylights in a large kitchen here in Fresno. They were dual pane and clear so you can look up and see the sky and the birch leaves turning yellow in the fall. While I am certain that natural light is much healthier than artificial light, I think it is because you can look up at heaven while you are making your morning coffee that makes a skylight in your kitchen so special.

–Mark Alvis

When you’re in a particular industry, you get to know the language, whether it’s medicine, education, plumbing or computers. You learn to speak this particular language partly out of convenience, but also with a bit of “I’m in the club” kind of feel to it.

While I am not certain of the intent, the effect of this “club building” is to keep outsiders out. You do not get to use “lawyer speak” if you are not a lawyer. But who would want to anyway?

This arrangement has pretty much worked for us for a long time. Most of us are really quite content with only having to deal with our own stuff. We have not had the need to talk much about where electricity comes from or what by-products its manufacturing creates. All we needed to know was that it was there and what it cost. We did not need to know the language of energy.

Now, we see that this language is one we all need to learn, because it connects us all in ways we cannot imagine. We have put energy on a pedestal higher than air and water, higher than food, and often, higher than human life. At best, this seems counter intuitive. After all, we started using fossil fuels to make our lives easier, not to have it rule them.

It seems to me there are three things we can all do: learn the language of energy, learn to use less energy, and learn how to make renewable energy. After all, we are all a part of the “energy club” whether we signed up or not.

–Mark Alvis

I had the pleasure of listening to a talk by Mas Masumoto last night in Reedley. Mas is a farmer in Del Rey, in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Mas is also a very successful writer as has written numerous books about life on a family farm. He tells stories about working with his father for many years, growing peaches, nectarines, and grapes.

He also talked about the day his father had a stroke.

At one point during his presentation, Mas asked how many people in the audience had grown up or worked on a farm. I turned around and looked while nearly the entire audience raised their hands.

Farming puts you in direct contact with the Earth. You learn to adapt. When things go wrong, you figure out ways to deal with it. Farming is hard work. When you work closely with the Earth, you understand in a very direct way how intimately connected we are to it. Mas talked about this and about the connections of generations. In talking about his father, Mas spoke about the hard work in farming, and the lessons about the transitions of life.

In listening to Mas talk, I thought a lot about what we are trying to do on this website, and I think one of the most important things is to get people to feel these connections, both to the Earth and to each other. If we lose sight of where our food comes from and the work it takes to make it, we risk losing this sense of connection.

City folks, as Mas might say, may find these connections difficult to comprehend, while farmers have an innate understanding how nature works, how good soil, clean water and clean air are essential to growing a good tasty peach.

Mas celebrates the life of the small family farmer, and with his books, allows the rest of us to celebrate too.

Thank you Mas.

–Mark Alvis

Mon: Remediation of contaminated soil at old dry cleaners in Merced.

Tues: R-38, blown-in, cellulose insulation job in Reedley.

Wednesday: Training class for USGBC Green Associate in Clovis.

Thurs: First concrete pour at the Buchanan Energy Center project.

Fri: Confirmation of ICF project at resort in Three Rivers, new insulation job in Merced, research on tankless vs. high-efficiency tank-type water heaters.

It has been quite a week.

For a while there, I was concerned about a report I heard that people were starting to lose interest in “green,” that they had become fixated only on the economy. However, after this week, I have regained my confidence that people are hungrier than ever to “go green.”

In addition to individuals, entire cities, school districts, and companies are realizing that making long-term and sustainable decisions are not only cost-effective, but also feel-good. Because deep down, we all know we are part of nature, and when we do something that harms it, we have to lie to ourselves to cover it up.

For me, this Thursday was an affirmation of how people, en masse, are waking up not only to the value of energy-efficient buildings, but how buildings affect our air, water, land and ourselves.

When I was in Merced, I was amazed at the effort that is going into cleaning up the Earth. I really got the feeling that the people working on this project were not doing it just to get a paycheck. They were doing it because they actually love the planet. It may seem hokey, but that is what I felt.

On Wednesday, I was in a classroom full of teachers learning about green building, and I felt the same thing. Yes, the people in the class were there to learn how to pass a test so they could get some letters behind their names. However, none of them would have been there in the first place if they did not really care about the planet and their children.

While watching the insulated concrete forms being filled with concrete at the new Buchanan High School Energy Center, I felt what I could only describe as relief, that here, in the heart of one of the most conservative parts of California, was a building coming out of the ground that is a virtual testament to the virtues of green. Relief, because as this building takes shape, I can feel the brains stretching, expanding to take in what the future is handing us, children who will think differently than we have in the past: that the Earth is something we need to care for and nurture, as we draw our life from it.

The people who have made the Buchanan Energy Building a reality have taken a huge risk in turning away from the norm. Not just five or six degrees, but more like one hundred and eighty. You can feel the current beginning to shift. The great thing is, the ones who have not quite bought into it are not being cast aside; they are being pulled along with it, as the strength of the “rightness” of this building acts like a magnet to the thing inside of us all that really wants to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

That something is nature.

-–Mark Alvis

Marlin and I took a ride out to visit my friend Steve who works on a huge orange farm east of Fresno. It took us a while to find but it turned out to be the quintessential California home. Spanish tile roof, huge back yard with a pool nestled amongst the orange groves on the gently rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

We met with Steve to discuss doing a photovoltaic system on the roof of the barn, a 40’ X 60’ metal building adjacent to the house. The roof had plenty of space with only a portion of it shaded by trees. We took some measurements and Steve gave us the electric usage of the house and barn for the past year.

Even for a large home and barn/shop, the average was quite high. Marlin and I asked if we could look around a bit.

First, we noticed that the eave vents on the house had been partially obstructed by stucco. There were large, gable-end vents but without proper attic venting, the attic space temperature could soar during the Valley’s hot summers. This accumulating heat will eventually move through the insulation and warm the house. This could certainly account for part of the high electric bill. A powered gable vent would help a lot and something as simple as clearing the vents would have a dramatic effect.

Next, we looked at the pool, which was gorgeous. (We are always suspicious of pool pumps because they can use a lot of electricity.) Sure enough, this one was an older model, 1 ½ horse. It was working great but using excessive power than necessary to do the job.

Knowing there were several energy efficiency measures they could do to reduce their usage was very helpful, as it allows us to reduce the size of the solar system. Buying fewer panels means the system would be less expensive from the beginning and way more likely to happen. Furthermore, the payback time-the time it takes to recover the cost of the system-is shortened as well.

When it comes to energy efficiency, a little detective work can really pay off.

The key here is to make sure all energy-saving measures are done first; otherwise, when you put up your solar power system, (the PV system,) you are simply spending money to pay for wasted electricity.

–Mark Alvis

I tell people to go outside and walk into their front door as if it were for the first time. When you come in, think, “What can I do to make this more energy efficient and sustainable?” By “this,” I mean pretty much everything you see: the floor, walls, paint, carpet, lights, refrigerator, and toilet. Everything. Furthermore, the things you cannot see, i.e. the air. Heating and cooling the air in our homes takes a whopping amount of energy.

When I first walk into a home of a client, I think not only what can be done to make it more energy efficient and healthier, however, which of these things should be done first. Every home is different because every family is unique. Sometimes, they have already done some “efficiency upgrades,” like putting in low-e, dual-pane windows, or installing high-efficiency toilets.

We did an assessment for our friend Don in Reedley last week, who wants to do solar power. He is also considering solar water heating or a tankless type water heater. All of these things are good, but obviously cost money. So how do you decide which to do first?

The house was built in the early ‘70s. Well built, but during a time when energy was not much of a concern. I poked my head up in the attic and measured the depth of the insulation. It was a nice attic, very open with evenly applied insulation. However, there was not very much by today’s standards, less than five inches, R-15 at best.

The R-value is the resistance to the flow of heat. Since 80% of heat lost from a house goes right through the ceiling, good insulation will pay for itself very quickly. Heat always wants to move from hot to cold, so more insulation is good for the summer, as well as the winter, because you want to keep the heat in the attic from coming into your cool house.

Adding all this, we told Don that insulation would be the first thing to do. If he does decide to go ahead with the photovoltaic system, it will allow us to downsize the system, saving even more money.

A seemingly less significant item was a back door that had a single-pane slider and was very thin. It may seem like a small thing, but imagine if the window was not there at all? Most homes are so leaky, it is as if they have basketball size hole in their front door. So changing this door to a more efficient one that is well sealed will have a very positive effect and not cost much.

Don also wanted us to check out pricing on a new water heater since the one he had was very old. We are looking into a tankless and a high-efficiency tank-style heater. This will not lower his electric bill, but will lower his overall energy consumption. Hence, this will probably be the next step.

Don has already installed dual-pane, low-e windows and energy-efficient washer and dryer.

Putting in solar power is a great idea, but you do not want to buy solar to offset waste. That is very expensive and unnecessary.

–Mark Alvis