In the coming months, we’ll be adding the curtain wall process to the interior of our basement walls and floor, and adding solar-thermal air heaters. We’ll also be finishing off the interior of the addition space with low-impact building materials like local hand-made tile and sustainably harvested, local hardwood floors. And we won’t stop until we’re net-zero for our home and transportation, so we’ll be tweaking our Deep Energy Retrofit for some time to come.
All of this, and we’re helping to combat many of the biggest problems of our time – we put local construction workers to work on the framing, roofing, and drywall work, stimulating our local economy. We also helped manufacturers of green building materials at a time when demand is low due to the housing crisis. We’ve drastically reduced our carbon footprint. And we’ve made our home ready for the plug-in hybrid revolution in the transportation sector, which will help reduce oil imports, strengthening our national security.
And now that we’ve settled in town, what’s happening with the land in the country? We’re holding on to that. Since we no longer plan to move there, we’ve enrolled it in several conservation programs. We spend weekends clearing invasive species and helping to restore the Appalachian woodland and its bio-diversity. I figure it also serves as a good 60-acre carbon sink for what fossil-fuel energy we have to use.
To see more about our DER process, check out www.thegreenedhouseeffect.com. There you’ll find a blog and video series on the project, along with a growing list of DER resources.
With 25 years in the building industry, Jeff Wilson is also the host of nearly 200 episodes on the HGTV and diy networks, and the host of the HGTV Green Home 2011 video series on HGTVPro.com. He’s also the host of how-to and green video series on Buildipedia.com. Learn more about Jeff at www.jeffwilsonregularguy.com. Look for Jeff’s book on his DER project, the Greened House effect, in late spring 2012.
