It’s the middle of summer so we don’t use much gas anyway, but I thought I’d give you an indication of how efficient our tankless hot water heaters are.  Our gas bill for the billing month that straddles July & August was $20.60.  We did/do a few things that help with the efficiency:

• Wash clothes mostly in cold water
• Have three tankless hot water heaters (one for each side of the house, and a small, on-demand one for the studio)
• Have very short runs between heater and faucet
• Bar with no hot water, only cold

In looking back at the rental house with a conventional hot water heater, our gas bill for last July/August was almost $30.00.   While that’s not a huge savings on gas in the middle of summer, it gives you an indication of how much you’re saving based totally on hot water usage….about 1/3 of your bill if you still have a tank heater.  And by the way, we rarely cooked at the rental house beyond a regular pot of oatmeal on Sunday mornings.  We’ve cooked more in the new house than we’ve cooked in our prior 6 years together.

Click here to see a newspaper article about the house.

I have a couple of things to say about the article:

• I’ve expressed my disappointment to the author of the article that the focus of the first half ended up being on the lack of available regulations for the use of rainwater in our washing machine.
• The Dallas Chief Plumbing Inspector has been extremely cooperative and attentive to the discussion, and has informed us that sometime in August or September regulations will be created that will address our situation.
• The lack of interior use of rainwater should not put our Platinum rating at risk.

Having said all that, there are some very good points in the article.  And it otherwise sheds a positive, informative light on our project.  On a side note, the print version has a great photo of the home’s living/kitchen space.

I’ve been having some conversations with our Home Provider about permeability. 

Because stormwater runoff is a bad thing (moving water with pesticides, fertilizer and general trash into the sewer system, local lakes and streams), LEED SS4.2 values permeability – meaning it’s a good thing for the rainwater falling on your property to soak into your property and not run into your neighbors yard or into the street.

LEED provides a graduated point system that ends with 4 points for 100% permeability.  Keep in mind that 100% permeability doesn’t mean you can have -0- concrete.  Rather the Rating System states that you have to have features that direct water falling on the impermeable areas to features designed to capture the water and direct it to an area where the water will be absorbed.

With this post I provide a photo of our back patio – designed to direct water to the spaces between the concrete pads (versus having a solid slab).  Also, next to the patio (and difficult to see in this photo) is a swale that keeps the water from running downhill into our neighbor’s yard. 

The key question that I’m discussing with our Home Provider is the driveway ribbons.  We specifically designed this drive for permeability purposes.  The current question is whether the space between the ribbons is sufficient to support the amount of runoff from the ribbons…our Landscape Designer is working on the calculations.

Sean Garman has been our Green Consultant for well over a year now.  Sean has been a LEED Accredited Professional* for quite some time.  As of a few weeks ago, Sean has also become an AIA licensed Architect…a huge accomplishment!

So, congratulations, Sean!

*I used to introduce Sean as a “LEED certified professional”.  But Sean has finally got it into my head that “buildings are certified, people are accredited.”

Today we hosted about 25 folks from the Emerging Green Builders group.  The EGB is an adjunct to the USGBC made up of:

“students and young professionals dedicated to becoming and recruiting the future leaders of the green building movement.”

You can read more about Emerging Green Builders here.

The yard was a little unkempt due to 7 inches of rain in 12 hours just a day and a half ago, but inside was fine.  The hot topic was our bathroom floor tile.  It is fantastic-looking, and people really notice.  But it’s not some exotic tile.  In fact it’s a Dal-Tile product, produced locally.  It’s called Fabrique..everyone loves it!

In the photo, that’s Kelly Mitchell, our architect.  She’s on the right, explaining our house’s green features to a couple of the folks on tour.

We’ve posted many new photos of our house on our website.  Go here and click on the Gallery link.

      We often have folks assuming that for them to become more Green, they need to make huge changes or build a whole house like we did to positively impact the Environment.  This link from Dwell suggests changes in your living space zone-by-zone that can be impactful to the Environment.  Take a few minutes to look through it and implement a change or two!

PS:  the tone of the article is very funny…it’s enjoyable to read through!  Two thumbs up!

We hosted the North Texas Chapter of the USGBC this morning in spite of what turned into an all-day rain storm.  About 60 folks showed up to hear a short talk from our architect, Kelly Mitchell, and our Landscape Designer, Jim Martinez.  I added a few words of my own.

There were lots and lots of questions ranging from how often we should seal our ipe wood deck to how much more did building a LEED home cost us.  I didn’t now the answer to the first question, but am all too keenly aware of the second.  Fortunately the guy we bought our ipe from was there and he told me that we should clean and re-seal the ipe every two years….good to know.

Robert will be posting photos from the event to the website gallery soon (I hope).

This coming Saturday ours is one of three homes being toured by the North Texas Chapter of the US Green Building Council.  We moved in 3 weeks ago and are hustling fast and furious to get the house presentable.  We’ve given our builder this Thursday as their deadline to be done and out (we’ll finish anything remaining undone after that).

The tour is featuring one LEED for Home certified Platinum house, and 2 LEED for Homes registered Platinum house.    Sign up quickly!  They’re limiting the tour to 60 participants!

See this article posted on cnn.com today.