Prefab Modern Net Zero House Kit: The Temperature Drops

I just love this time of year here. During the drive to the modern passive solar prefab house kit, I look at each repeated scene, field, and farm we pass, over and over through the seasons and years, and I never tire of it, never fail to be amazed again and again by each moment of beauty.

In the pinks and golds of dusk, you really understand O Purple Mountain Majesty / Above The Fields Of Grain...

Ok so maybe I mangled our national anthem a bit, but that's what I see: the brown tinge of autumn, bales of hay still in some fields, the silvery wood of old barns in the slanted winter light... and in the distance, the blue ridge mountains, and they ARE purple.

Being here now means the temperature drops to 30, so we dragged in a propane heater from the shed to help the passive solar prefab during these bitter black nights. And yet, arriving as the last light waned, we found the prefab to be a comfortable 61 before we added the heat!

Oh the stars... the winter stars, so clear and gorgeous no pictures can show you so I don't even try.
When we awoke, the soil was ice.
Inside, it was 57/58. We fired up the heater and quickly it rose to 64.

Thanks to our solar cooker, I served a hot meal to friends without having to stand over a stove.

(Check it out! Passive solar house + passive solar cookin' = I can have more fun!)

It was a good thing we packed a lot of food (we served butternut squash soup made by Handsome Husband, a casserole I made the night before, and homemade bread/butter), because Mrs. Esh had her store closed, which led to lunchtime speculation over a possible Amish wedding this weekend... : ) (November is when Amish wedding season begins.)

Living like this makes you appreciate systems so much, but I admit I savor the edge it brings, just as I remember what it was like to camp here in our 1960s teardrop camper just a year ago.

Speaking of systems, Handsome Husband will guest blog for you technical people this week on Everything You Wondered About The Systems And How The Heck They Are Fitting In The Net Zero Off Grid Prefab. As for myself, I am off to take my first shower in three days.
Yes, I want my net zero prefab systems too. : )

 

Green Modern Kits On Planet Green!

We are so focused on our prefab house kit projects it took me a few months to notice I had been nicely mentioned on Planet Green... oops. : )

Solar cooking is one of my favorite hobbies and I am always happy to share my experiments!
[Not. All. Successful. ]

 

Solo Solar Cookin'

I've been blogging on solar cooking for almost two years. Why, with such a rise in lifestyle changes towards gentler, smaller footprints, are more people not harnessing the sun regularly to cook? It seems sometimes like I'm the only one blogging on this topic, yet it's so frickin' easy and simple to add to one's daily routine!

As I readied my solar cooker just now for dinner, it occurred to me exactly why more people are not utilizing this easy clean energy.

Maybe it's NOT so simple.

In order to regularly incorporate solar cooking into your lifestyle, one must be able to take odd moments out from your day to 1. load the food into and 2. check on / turn the oven according to the sun's position in the sky.

Although our company has been telecommuting for almost ten years, most businesses do not yet offer that in their culture. Picture the average, air-conditioned, cubicle-bound person trying to achieve solar cooking in the workplace.
It ain't gonna happen!

(Although images of

• suit-clad employees hunching over cookers in bland parking lots - instead of a smoking break they venture to the sidewalk to turn their cooker regularly then
• wearing oven mitts, carefully transport their aromatic dinner home on the subway

certainly made me smile and nod to surrealism, and my art history teacher, for providing me super cool mental images!)

Really, to adapt this into a lifestyle, it is imperative to have a flexible work environment (or not work at all, but who are we kidding? That is not a great option!). Delicate, multiple factors must converge to allow an environment where you can successfully solar cook -and- work in the course of a day.

So, now I get it. I understand. And I hope that you enjoy my silly solar posts when I don't feel like writing anything technical. : )

Maybe as more people begin to telecommute, as more companies see that giving their employees more life/culture during the workday and self-determination on how they are productive, we will see more people in this country able to solar cook.

And with that, I am off to make sure my cooker is correctly aligned to best capture the sun, ensuring tonight's dinner will be ready on time!

 

casa ti: The Kitchen, Dining Area, Heat.

I'm ruminating on the kitchen.
Maybe I'm just hungry.

For our kitchen, we decided to move it from David Day's west placement to the center. This really is how our family lives and I see that island being central to breakfast requests, snacks, and pipsqueaks and guests keeping me company while I cook.

We sit down for dinner each night, so it made sense to put the dining table in a nice area by itself where we could linger and recount the exciting adventures of the day. Romantically I envision the sun setting west as we pop open a nice bottle of wine and prepare to enjoy a seasonal meal with friends and family.

But let's get back to the kitchen.

We struggled over honestly asking ourselves how we really would use the stove/oven systems. I imagined balancing out a wood cook stove that would provide a secondary source of heat for the house (solar being primary) yet could be cooked upon in the cool months with the solar cooker in the warm months. But the reality was not so apt- as much as I adore solar cooking, I have yet to successfully make pasta in the solar cooker, and honeychile, we eat a LOT o' pasta. Despite the free wood fallen on the land, burning wood is not the most efficient, green solution.

Scott Kyle of Full Scale Architecture points out that really, "Using raw wood is not desired. Instead, consider propane and solar alternatives for heating. If you must burn, pelletized fuel is more efficient than raw wood. For cooking, I recommend propane for the range, and electric for the oven. Whole house heating off grid can be accomplished of course by solar hot water/radiant heat."

My nimble sailor side asked, "Well why not just reuse a marine stove?" Marine stoves are modernly minimalist, in my mind would be efficient *and* quite stylish in a casa ti. And, dur, being made for a boat, they run off grid.

But free, fallen wood is a hard option to bypass. Plus I was in LOVE, in love with the wood burning Amish-made Baker's Choice cook stoves. So practical, happy, homey, so efficient, so... me, I want it I want it I want it and I want it NOW! I would wear an apron for that stove!

But it seems not to be.

My always-too-sensible husband pointed out that with the efficiency of design and construction materials in our zero energy home, my kitchen dream would easily overheat the house. Kitchen dreams dashed by prefab efficiency! DAG!

So here's a compromise: See that area on the right for a modest but efficient wood stove? Let me tell ya about that stove. Growing up, it was in the rec room of our home, helping to heat but also dry our ice and snow drenched selves, coats, and mittens after a rosy-cheeked day of play. It will be recycled into the casa ti, reused for another generation in our family, and converted to burn pellets.

I guess I shouldn't complain- instead of a choice, I will have it all! The recycled, converted wood stove will be a secondary source of heat on which to simmer stews as I please, the solar oven used seasonally when it's appropriate, and the marine stove to fall back on for quick breakfasts or pasta.

Coming soon: The Kitchen Part 2: The Fridge, Freezer, Philosophy.

 

Solar Cooking: Pork, Grapes & Garlic

It's been awhile since I've posted anything on solar cooking. I guess I just felt I hadn't made anything of note lately... when you solar cook, it IS convenient, but the novelty does wear off - I mean, how many people blog about what they make for dinner each day? (Suddenly a rush of web domains devoted to cooking overwhelms me! Never mind!)

For those of you on myspace, I have a whole album of solar cookin' successes (and failures), as well as posts in the green building group. But lately I've just been making... I don't know... normal stuff?

So today when I decided to "make something out of nothing" by looking through the icebox as I often do, I became a little more creative- and it occurred to me this dish could be photo-worthy. : )

In our family, we buy our meat from two families near us. That means we buy in bulk (I mean, when I buy lamb... I buy A lamb...) so our meat is usually frozen the day it's butchered. So I dug through the freezer and pulled out some beautiful pork chops from the Ault's, and defrosted them overnight. Then I found some grapes that the children were not devouring- they had been a little on the sour side. But if they were cooked? Dee-lish. So I threw in the chops, grapes, added cloves of garlic and a dash o' balsamic... and YUM! Tonight's dinner!

I also added a side o' potatoes. Solar cooked potatoes are frightfully easy and taste more earthy & delicious.

Feel free to try this at home! Cooking was never so easy- I'm off to play instead of hunkering over a hot oven: Let the sun do your work!