What's this thriving on low carbon about, anyway?

03/27/2011

What's this thriving on low carbon about, anyway?

I moved to Martha's Vineyard on June 1st, 2010, with my sweetie Jill and a dog. I'm passionate personally and professionally about living well with less throughput of materials and resources (OK, bicycles excepted here...) The focus here will be how I'm thinking about our house, transportation, food, waste, etc. Opinions expressed may be well thought out or not - no warranty express or implied. Please let me know what you think, and feel free to take issue.

Girl and dog

Posted at 01:37 PM | Permalink

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Looks like you've already made good choices with the girl and the dog, which should make the having fun part easy! Looking forward to reading about the rest of the journey...:)

Posted by: Bronwyn | 03/28/2011 at 12:03 AM

I'm really liking the setpoint of your conversation with us. I think you are striking a difficult balance - technical exploration of what makes a building perform effectively that both explains the principles, the practices, and the thinking that is leading you forward - all the while being your nerd self but without leaving us scratching our heads. We're actually lucky you got stuck with the dilemmas you are seeking to resolve.

Thanks for sharing this in this way. Like the dog, we're all ears!

Posted by: Jamie Wolf | 03/28/2011 at 09:12 PM

Thanks for taking us along. I'm predicting oversizing of house photovoltaics sufficient to power the electric car for those 10,000 miles.... unless I'm outdated and there is already a better way.... Let's see: @ .2KW/mile...

Posted by: Don Matheson | 03/29/2011 at 08:10 AM

Let's make that 0.2 kWh/mile, rather than kW - energy rather than power. Geeks and their units!

Posted by: Marc | 03/29/2011 at 09:37 AM

Thanks for the blog Marc, it's educational and inspirational! Inspiration is useful as we continue to push the "envelope" (pun intended) on our carbon footprint here, especially from a fellow cohouser.

Wish you were writing this when we were designing Nubanusit Neighborhood & Farm cohousing - would have made some of the "education" sessions (team meetings) easier to understand!

Posted by: Richard Pendleton | 04/09/2011 at 08:21 AM

Thanks, Marc, it drives me crazy when I have to try to figure out why someone said kW and what they meant in a context where it *really* looks like it ought to mean energy. They do that on the Nissan Leaf site. (No offense, Don! I'm talking about in specs for equipment, not in comments to blog posts!)

My main motivation for trying to "live green" is that I think it's a more pleasant way to live. Or maybe that it's part of a more pleasant way of living. Andrea and I started down the Passive House path (which led to meeting you!) because we wanted a comfortable house--frequent air exchanges without wasting energy, steady temperatures instead of the rapid thermal cycle and dry air of a typical underinsulated home.

I think it's a lot of fun to geek out on the technical details (as you may have noticed), but ultimately I really think it's about being happy. When you're happy doing something like this, it excites peoples' imaginations. I rode my bike to the pharmacy this morning after considering taking the Prius because it seemed stupid to start the car for such a short trip, but in the end it was just a more pleasant experience, and I got a smile from someone at the pharmacy who saw me folding my bike.

Posted by: Ted Lemon | 04/28/2011 at 08:49 PM