Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The kitchen-dining room. This room has only the two windows shown, but it also has the large Sun Dome in the center of the ceiling which, when the sun is out, makes it the brightest room in the house! We can tell the weather just by looking at the Sun Dome, from the passage of clouds to rain. The house is so well insulated for sound that the only way we can tell it is raining without looking outside is the sound of it beating on the Sun Dome.

This is the last entry on the blog, as the house is now finished (if any house one builds and finishes oneself is ever finished). So far we are very pleased and would do it again. It performs as we hoped, with the average electrical usage for 13 months through the end of June (including a record heat wave last summer and another this summer) of 900 KWH/month. We use propane for hot water and cooking and used about 125 gallons during that period. It appears most of the savings come in the fall and spring as we do not need to run any space conditioning from about October to April, just using the fans to circulate the heat stored in the walls. We will probably need to turn on the AC sometime in early May.

Thanks for your interest. If you wish to ask any questions just post them to the blog and I will answer as soon as I can after I receive notice of the posting.
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3 comments:

underground homes said...

Sorry to hear that this is your last blog post. If you make any additions like adding a solar panel or such please post again.

Green Home in Texas said...

Thanks for your thoughts. I will post new things as they happen, but did not want people to be expecting a lot. Do not have any plans for solar panels yet, the economics in Texas do not encourage them. I will be posting landscaping photos as it matures.

Anonymous said...

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