(Transcript from video):

Courtney Brooke: Good morning Zev.

Zev: Good morning.

Courtney Brooke: What are you doing?

Zev: I just took the cover off our solar hot water panel. It was covered for the winter and now the sun is hitting it. I let water in and that’s going to be heating water up so that we have nice piping hot water in our sink throughout the warm season.

Courtney Brooke: So that water gets hot in there and then where does the water go?

Zev: Then it gets pushed by the gravity from our high spring cistern which is about 60 vertical feet above the house pipe down here. It gets pushed by that pressure back through that cover pipe and into our hot water tank which is on the second floor of the house . Then it just is stored there by gravity to feed down into our sink in the kitchen and the sink in the in the other bedroom

Courtney Brooke: So there’s no pump?

Zev: No pumps.

Courtney Brooke: no electricity?

Zev: Yeah that’s right. It’s not quite passive because water is moving but yeah it’s a solar panel called a pt50 which has these four inch diameter metal  tubes inside that have enough water that they can resist some freezing in the spring and fall  but also have enough surface area that they can get enough surface area to volume ratio from the sun to heat the water up to like 140 degrees or something.

Courtney Brooke: And is the water like hot all the time?

Zev: Not when the sun’s not shining.

Courtney Brooke:  Ohhh.

Zev: Yeah, but it’s there. Our hot water tank stores the hot water for a good 12 or 18 hours hot enough for washing dishes. So, it’s only if we run into two or three days of rain that we have to worry about having enough hot water. Yay!

Courtney Brooke: Happy spring.

Zev:  Happy spring.

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Transcript from video:

Courtney Brooke: Here’s our new ride, the club car. It’s a golf cart for cruising around Earthaven, but the news about it is that it’s got a solar panel on top so you can charge it with electricity.   But that’s pretty challenging to do when you live off the grid. So, Brandon, who’s over there digging around in the cover crop seeds, rigged up this solar panel to the top of it.  Let’s try to see the solar panel …. There, it’s like that!

So does that mean that means that you can basically drive it around and you don’t have to charge it at all?

Brandon: We’re hoping that it’ll just charge itself off of the it solar panel off the top. I got a charge controller hooked up. It’s is specially made for the golf cart. It’s is down there in the back seat box. Yeah, working it out.

Courtney Brooke: The toolbox? That’s not the charge controller.  Oh, that box. There it is. That’s the charge controller.
So you just got a solar panel. You got the charge controller. You need to hook it up.

Brandon: I got a fuse in my pocket. I just need a few more wires.

Courtney Brooke: Got a fuse in your pocket…

Brandon: Yeah. Then we just got to put the golf cart where it’ll be in the Sun, and then it’ll charge it, hopefully keep itself charged all the time.

Courtney Brooke: Awesome.

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Village Terraces Cohousing Neighborhood just completed a multi-faceted upgrade to their power, heating, and domestic hot water (DHW) systems and the neighborhood is now enjoying the results. Domestic hot water for the main building had been provided by a wood-burning stove. The system lost one of its three water heating coils three years ago due to an unrepairable leak, which has made providing hot water quite challenging.

Several designs were considered over the last 2 or 3 years with none of them really being all that workable. Then one day Chris Farmer came along and suggested that we use solar-generated electricity to heat water in an ELECTRIC hot water heater. This sounds pretty silly until one remembers that electricity is 100% efficient at producing heat. Farmer had read an article 10 years ago that said when solar PV panels come down in price to $1 per watt then it would make sense to heat water with solar electricity. Well that day has come. And that is the approach that VT decided to take.

2007 view of the same building with the 1st generation of solar panels.

The final design allows VT’s existing wood-fired boiler system to provide ample domestic hot water during the cooler months at which time the new solar PV panels will keep their batteries more fully charged and their heating systems running. During the warmer months the solar electric power will be diverted to the new electric hot water heater.

For the short time this new system has been running, VT has cut its summer wood burning in half–if not more. Their hydro use and their gasoline generator use have also been significantly reduced. And their batteries are healthier than they have ever been. For a more thorough description of the system, including a tour, see Bob Lienhart.

Earthaven member and bookkeeper since 2008, musician and computer expert.  BS in Computer Science.  Treasurer for two homeowners associations and the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society–also CBMS president, 1998-2000.

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Johnny McLeod is our resident tree climber. He loves hanging out high in the canopies, often overlooking some amazing vistas here in our Blue Ridge Mountains.

He started his climbing career in Arkansas some ten years ago and brought his skills to our ecovillage. These skills are much needed around here where trees and houses sprout out of the ground side by side.

We need trees cut for so many reasons. The biggest reason is solar access. Most of our buildings have a passive solar design as well as a large photovoltaic system to support  electricity needs. Another reason to cut trees for sunlight is ever growing gardens. South facing slopes have been chosen for houses, photovoltaic systems and gardens. Of course we use wood to build structures; we aim to use as much of it from our land as we can.

Johnny also loves to cut firewood. It’s his obsession really. After a long day cutting trees he comes home in the evening to work at his hobby of cutting firewood! Luckily he got himself a hydraulic splitter some years ago and that makes it all go much faster.

The community has already been hard at work through this spring and summer to get enough firewood split and put up for our long and recently snowy winters.

So the next time you come to visit us, keep your eye out for a tree-climber. He has our one-year-old with him on some of these woodsy adventures. If only they made baby ear protection and little chainsaws!

Mana Vermeulen-Mcleod and her husband, Johnny, the Tree Climber, are raising a family at Earthaven. Mana says “Right now I’m a stay-in-the-woods mom and I’m so glad to raise my boy surrounded by all this natural beauty. When my kid(s) are a little older I’ll get back to what I love doing—creative carpentry.”

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