Home improvement

The other day we did a bit of home improvement and tried to do it with a green twist.

Our garden has several beds for growing various organic vegetables but the walkway in between the beds needed some attention.

YIKES!

We used to lay Decorative Bark in the walkway every year. There's nothing particularly un-green about Decorative Bark, in fact it usually comes from left overs made during lumber production (that's a- whole- nother post post!). Or here is Visalia, you can get some what we call "rustic" bark from the city yard. It'schopped up yard waste and is very cheap if you have your own truck to pick it up.....but who can afford a big truck these days.

Unfortunately, since the bark is an organic plant material it decomposes rather quickly causing us to replace it every year or so. This has been a cost of about $200 every year and at least half a day of back breaking labor to lay it all out.

Enter this year's new walkway cover---Decomposed Granite.


Often referred to as DG this provides a far longer lasting walkway than the bark and even looks better to boot. DG is just old granite rock that has weathered into smaller particles over millions of years. It is simply mined from the ground and sold to us. This will likely be the last time we ever have to deal with the walkway issue since the DG will take thousands of years to decompose further....we plan to sell the house before then. That HUGE pile was enough to do the garden with 3 inches of coverage plus we made a little side area for our trash cans AND still had left overs we gave away to family. Total cost was just over $200....the same as bark for 1 year. This had better work!!

much better

If you look closely you can see we were able to place stepping stones in the walkway to enhance the appearance.

If you look even closer, you'll notice those aren't really stepping stones. They're roofing tiles.

We knew we saved these for something!

When the solar panels were installed on the roof several tiles had to be removed in the process. We stacked them up knowing they would have another purpose someday. Sometimes being green can save cash too!

Real patriots drive hybrids

We're addicted, there's no use denying it we are. In fact most of you are addicts too. We're all addicted to oil. While the debate rages over whether Global Warming is actually real or not, one thing can not be argued, gas guzzling cars and trucks are ruining our air. This is especially true here in the Central Valley.

Because of the geography of the valley, whatever pollutants we put into the air tend to stay right here and build up until a big storm comes in to freshen the air. Since big, air clearing storms are not all that common around here it makes more sense to decrease pollutants to improve our air and quality of life.

But hey, we gotta get around town so what are we supposed to do? Bike or walk to work? The summer time temperatures around here hover near 100 so that's tough, unless arriving to work smelly and sweaty is OK with your boss, or your fortunate to have access to a shower and for you girls out there, don't care what you look like. Oh, and did I mention the bad air? Some folks have a hard time being outdoors during the 100+ temps and horrible, thick air.

Carpool? Great idea, but we don't know anyone who has a similar schedule. Public Transportation? The nearest bus stop is almost a mile away from our house. We did try the bus for a short time, but it's schedule is.....lets just say "loose". If you actually have a job that requires you to be at work at a specific time and you don't want to arrive at work a full hour before you have to.......the bus will not work for you. Are town could do a WAYYYYYY better job with it's public transportation.....just sayin.

We were already driving a compact, 2 door Saturn but could we do more? After all, our Saturn was putting out about 30 miles per gallon around town which is pretty good by anyone's standards. It became time to replace the good ol Saturn so we did our research. We found that a Hybrid Vehicle gets better gas mileage than even our little compact car. There are lots of Hybrids to choose from but we eventually settled on the Ford Escape Hybrid.

It has all convenience of an SUV and puts out 35-40 MPG in our real world test. The little bitty 4 cylinder engine does not run at all at low speeds or stop signs, saving a ton of gas. No, you don't have to plug it in or anything. It's really just like any other car when you drive it except it uses a lot less gas and pollutes our air a lot less. In fact, its rated as an "Ultra Low Emission Vehicle".

Sure the Hybrid cost about $3000 more than the traditional Escape but there was a $1500 tax credit at the end of the year from the Federal Government that helped ease the pain a bit. Plus, with gas running over $4.00 per gallon it's becoming well worth the extra cost.


Like we said, there are lots of hybrid options out there, and more are coming onto the market everyday. The rebates can be different according to which one you chose. There are "strong hybrids" , "semi-strong hybrids" and "weak hybrids". Most of this verbiage has to do with how the gas engine and batteries are used together.

For instance the Ford Escape is a "strong hybrid". The engine only kicks in when speeds exceed the battery power, usually at about 20-30mph and the engine turns off when the vehicle is stopped. Also the brakes charge the battery.

In contrast the weaker hybrids only turn off the engine when the vehicle is stopped, but does not use electric power to move the car a all.

This is a pretty good website for more information if anyone is interested. It has lots of specifics about gas mileages for the hybrids out there right now and what is in our future.

For us, it has been a good decision and when it's time to replace our second car, we will definitely be looking at alternative vehicles.....maybe even a full electric vehicle like this one.......

Cool site

We found this really cool site......check it out. Lots of green products reviewed.

The Alternative Consumer

Solar energy

Before we begin our first topic of Solar energy, let's add a disclaimer.

We are in no way, shape or form getting kick backs from any companies and have no vested interest in anything we talk about, other than giving you folks some (we hope) useful information.

We will talk lots about specific products and perhaps even companies......good and bad. The goal here is to give you information based on the research we've done for your own home/lifestyle.

Now with that said.........


Solar panels.

The Central Valley of California has about 267 days of sun a year, so solar seemed like a good choice for some free power as well as a way to live more sustainable.

The first thing we had to do was determine how big of a system to get. There are lots of ways to determine this based on your total number of electricity used each month. The total number of kilowatts used (listed on your electric bill) will give an estimate of the size of system to obtain. This was a bit confusing since we use thousands of kilowatts per month and the two most popular solar power systems available were 3 Kw and 5 Kw.

Three and five Kw...what is that supposed to mean? Is that per hour? per day? We still don't know. What we did know is that we wanted to talk to a professional, so we made some calls.

Unlimited engery in Fresno was the only local company that would send someone out to talk to us in person. They sent out their sales rep to the house who looked at our possible installation areas then sat down at the kitchen table to answer all our questions. He eventually asked us if we wanted to put a dent in our electric bill or "murder" it. We chose to "murder" our electric bill, which the sales rep estimated would mean an average monthly bill of around $30

We did contact several (like all) the other solar companies in the area and everyone else wanted to just give a phone estimate and kind of acted like we were bugging them.

We settled on a 5 Kw system that would be hooked up to the power company's main grid. That means we made power during sunny days but at night/cloudy days we would still draw power from the electric company. No batteries, no living by candle light if the panels couldn't keep up. The goal here was to live green, not live "Amish".

So on days that we have lots of sun and don't use a lot of energy, the power meter really does run backwards because we are giving electricity to the grid. At night or cloudy days we pull electricity just like anyone else.

Of course this begs the question.....can we generate enough power to actually get paid by the electric company? The answer is, no (for us). We use Southern California Edison and their policy prohibits the "sale" of electricity by people like ourselves. We can generate enough power to have a huge credit on our bill, but they will never send us a check. This is why you aim for a low monthly bill, not a negative bill.

Inverters at the side of the house

The actual cost of the panels was right around $45,000, but it's not all that bad. The State of California at the time gave us a 40% rebate. Unlimited Energy took care of all the rebate paperwork so the approximately $22,000 basically came right off the top of the cost. Now all we had to worry about was the rest. We opted to refinance our home for this cash.

The female half of this couple was very worried about the way the panels would look. Not wanting to have an albatross on our new home, this was a concern. The panels sit about 3 inch off the roof and are very symmetrical in their placement. You don't even really notice them, but if you do, they are well placed.

Southern California Edison has our bill set up to just keep revolving so we can pay as we go, or wait until the end of the year and pay all at once. To tell you the truth, the way SCE does their billing would take a astrophysicists with a degree in public accounting to figure out. We get a statement every month, but since we're on an annual billing cycle, the meter only gets updated every so often. We have months of $1-5 (service charges, taxes etc), then have a $400 month.This is not depended on the season either. We had $1-$2 bills in July and August with the AC running, but a $300 charge in March, when we were using hardly any energy.

In 2007, our entire year's bill was around $1600. What we do is just send SCE a set amount each month to offset the end of year payment. A smart thing to do would be to save that money in our own bank account to earn our own interest, but we're not that disciplined......maybe someday.

So if your keeping track, the original estimation was $30 a month and we pay about $130 a month. No, not what we thought, but still much better than no solar would be. Our bill before was about $300 a month in the winter and up to $600 in the summer.

The only maintenance is to occasionally rinse the panels off. This is not necessary, but does increase their efficiency. Our panels came with a 29 year warranty!!

We do wish we had a few more panels to get our bill closer to ZERO. With the system we have, it is totally possible to add on. Each additional panel is about $1000, so the next time we win the lottery, we will add on.

We hope some of you are thinking of getting solar energy for your homes, it has been well worth it for us.

The best part is when you get to sit out on your lawn chair, drinking a beverage of your choice and watching your meter run backwards......Ah, the taste of glory.

In the beginning....

Hello there. This is the first post for the Jolly Green Blog. Lets start with an introduction.

We are a happily married couple living in the Central San Joaquin Valley of California, Visalia to be exact, trying to live as green as possible. Our plan is to live as "green" as we can. We have no children, so our only reason behind this is because we both feel it's just the right thing to do.

Now, with that said, we are only human and get smacked down by reality on a routine basis. We want to live both comfortably as well as environmentally, like we feel many folks do. Our little town is just coming into the environmental age, and has lots of room to progress as do we.

Our goal of this blog is to share the things we learn along the way. We hope anyone living in our area, or anywhere on planet Earth joins us for our adventure.

Stay tuned for our first adventure..........Solar Panels