Transcript
John Garlow: My name is John Garlow and I am president of the Post-and-Beam Factory, which is a timber frame company and we've been in business do that, selling kit homes, pre-cut timber frame homes for 30 years.
This is the first year we've started Eco-Structures LLC. Our focus is going to be on building modular off-the-grid or zero-energy type green, and by green I mean ecologically sound, and these homes are going to try to utilize energy conservation techniques to cut he waste of energy and to conserve as much energy as possible.
They're also going to use green materials which create a healthy interior environment and create less of a carbon footprint in the environment, such as sustainable harvesters wood, recycled materials, or any material that is recyclable.
In addition we are going to use the latest technology in energy producing material like solar photovoltaic, wind energy and a geothermal linked air conditioning.
In the process of designing the house, we designed the heating and cooling to use the least possible energy and to fit in with the solar. For instance, solar hot water is pretty easy to get, you can get it all year round. We're going to use it all year round. We're going to use solar heated radiant heat in the floors of this house. In this particular house the solar hot water system, it is more of a thermal mass I have in this house -- more of a fly wheel effect.
Any solar heat that enters this house, any solar heat that hits the skin of this house is going to be sucked up and used in some way or another. Same way with wind. We are going to try to use that to power our electricity needs.
I just got the idea, I never have seen anybody do this before. To put this kind of black pipe right underneath these metal shingles, the reasoning is that my hot water reservoir is right over there in the third floor and I can use a pump. Pump it up through this roof and back down in there when the roof gets hot. In a sense it helps to cool the roof in the summertime but it also gives me my hot water. It's what they call a building integrated solar collector. You can't really tell that there is hot water in this roof from the outside but it's there.
Part of this all is the science of building. Where you have to know what's coming into your house and what you need for health. And you need a certain amount of fresh air, not too much. And it's best not to replace the outgoing air with totally unheated incoming air. All these are part of building science. How your heating and ventilation system works, how the insulation works. It's all part creating this controllable environment.
It’s sort of like an SUV vs a Honda Civic. I'm building a house although it's maybe the same size as the bigger house but because of the building technique, we're using the energy of a compact car. Every stick of wood in the house is either recycled, reused, reclaimed wood or FSC wood.
FSC is for Forest Stewart Council. It is a group that was established by the Untied States green building Council which was sent up in the early 90s. And it's a public private partnership. They have made an attempt to set standards for what is a green building technique.
It's a house now. We can go in there. It needs a few windows and doors.
I think that this could cut way back on the energy required for shelter and could create a comfortable live space that you could feel good about living in.
Hey everybody that grew up in West Virginia knew the phrase "waste not, want not" and my grandmother, she had a phrase, "Eat it up, wear it out, make do, or do without." It's this kind West Virginia mentality has always been present in my family.
My mentor for all this is my brother Charlie who is a big environmentalist and always has been. He was called MR. ENERGY in Time magazine when he was working for Ralph Nader because that was his focus: energy.
Charlie Garlow: My name is Charlie Garlow. I have a day job working for the federal government with the United States Environmental Protection Agency. I'm a clean air enforcement attorney. That means I sue polluters who violate the law. So you can call me a prosecutor if you will. And I enjoy my job. It's great to to be involved in some of these issues. I'm personally interested in make the air cleaner and the world a better place to live in.
Well, John is a guy who is interested in quality. He always has had a way of talking: if this not done right, I'm going to rip it out and do it again the right way, which a lot of people would just leave it be.
He has always been interested in super-insulation to save people money and to save the earth because of the environmental impact of wasting energy. And he has always been interested in affordable homes. And this an opportunity for him to build those homes for people who might have to put up with something that was run down. And they can move into a new home and not have to pay $500,000 to get into a new home.
With a modular home, John can move these homes on the back of an eighteen wheeler, drive to a site, it's already got a foundation to put these things. And whatever the design is, it could be U with a courtyard or stacked up, whatever design the home owner and John decide together. But it could be down within the course of a day to put this home together. Kind of nice.
Well, I think he has the solar hot water which goes for heating the interior home but also heating water for domestic use or cooking or taking a shower, stuff like that. He also is going to have solar passive energy coming through the big solar double pass windows which will bring in more heat in the wintertime. He is going to be able to shade in the summertime.
He is also going to use the solar cell panel to make the electricity for the home. He's got his heat, he got his electricity. He will use ground source heat pumps to make cooling in the summer. And the super insulation is one of the most important parts.
John Garlow: Yeah, we just put the three units on top of one another, and this is the south-facing side. You can see we have a lot of glass. We're trying to get a lot of passive solar gain on this side. This is the side where the five decks go to give us shade in the summer. But in the winter we are hoping to suck up a lot of solar heat on this side. And it's kind of neat to have it put together with a crane. Saves us a lot of time and money on the ground.
This is the first one I'm excited. It is great cost-wise. We are within budget. Some of these new solar homes out there are 300 dollars a square foot. This one is going to be competitive with normal construction.
Charlie Garlow: We have enough solar power hitting America and other countries that there is enough solar power right now without having to use any coal or nuclear or any other power that carries great risks. We got enough solar power striking us in a couple minutes to provide power for our whole country for a year.
So it's an amazing amount of solar power. It is just how do we capture it? Right, we are capturing very little of... we have all these roofs and houses, none of them have any solar panels. And we are, as they say, the Saudi Arabia of wind. We have enough wind from the Dakota to Kansas -- remember the Wizard of Oz?
Got plenty of wind out there. And we even have wind in the mountains of West Virginia and other places as well. At good strength. So you can convert that to electricity in a cost effective manner. Solar energy and wind power: clean renewable energy, all the good stuff.
John Garlow: Something that goes along with this house is to figure out ways to keep from using any more electricity then you really have to. So I've gone with everything I could think of that goes with energy saving. But I want to see and log how much electricity I'm using. There is a group out there called the 2000 Watts Society and they are trying to get people to use only 2kw at home. In this country the average use per person is 12000kws a day.
In Europe 6kw per day, and in Bangladesh 350 per day. The energy efficient stuff is where we started with this house, to make a tight shell so it would need very little heating or cooling. To be conservative, and then what little energy I'm thing I'm going to need in here. And some things have been expensive learning lessons. But it's going to take me a while to get use to it I think. I'm going to live in it. I'm happy about that because living your own little dish, I get to see if everything is working out here.
If I can help people be in a nice house that is easier on the environment, that would be my goal.
I like provide good housing for people but also want to be a responsible part of the planet.