So, this IS a "green" house, right?

Beautiful stuff going on at the house today.  We stuttered a little yesterday because of the storm.  But today Teri and the kids painted Rebecca's room.  It's an absolutely gorgeous light purple.  Rebecca worked the whole day with spurts of effort from the boys.
Meanwhile, Poppy and I put together the first garage door and finished everything except the spring system.  We will finish that one and work on the second one tomorrow.

Tim and Chad (electrician and carpenter, respectively) were also here- Tim started putting in all the wall sockets and switches in.  He hung the pendant lights that we bought yesterday and started working on the ceiling fans. Chad almost finished priming/painting. One more bucket will do it.  He will finish tomorrow. 

Jason and Matt J. came and brought under-lay for the tile.  They are coming tomorrow to put the plywood in.  Tile will come in next Tuesday.

Now to the main part and the reason for the title of this post. 

First off, I have noticed that much of my last few months of posting have been pictures or what progress had been made, and not writing about our philosophy.  I suspect this to be expected due to the fact that we are GCing our own house, and have to take care of the small details.  But now that we have an enclosed shell, with the heat on I would like to reflect upon our original ideas, and how close we are coming to them. 

To be perfectly honest with you all I had been worried that all of this "stuff" would work.  By stuff I mean the passive solar aspects of the house.  It all seems like smoke and mirrors, having the sun heat our house.  It sounds good, but really? Although I was confident that the insulation and tight building specs would be helpful in keeping energy costs down, Teri and I really set out to build as close to a zero carbon footprint as possible. 

Today our concept really hit home for me.  I spent the entire day in/around the house today.  When Jim and I got to the site, it was about 10am and very cold (about 30 degrees).  I had set the house temperature at 58 degrees, but when I got into the house it was 62!  Our passive solar design truly worked!  Tim the electrician, was amazed- he called me in from the garage at one point in the afternoon and asked me to explain what was going on.  I explained about the special windows that I had put in, and that we had situated the house towards true north/south.  He was standing in the light and couldn't believe how warm it was.  During the course of the day our geothermal heat only came on twice, for about 5 minutes each time. This while four kids (not to mention seven adults) were coming in and out of the house constantly, leaving doors open to load and unload equipment.  I was thrilled.  I suspect that when we install our wood stove, our heat might not go on at all.

Today was a real morale booster.

Thanks for reading.