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