"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...
wrote:
http://gizmodo.com/5104016/dean-kame...y-off-the-grid
Well, yeah. His home is typical of folks who invent the Segway or the
Pop-Tart. Bill Gates probably saves bags of money on air-conditioning by
living inside a mountain.
Yeah, not to mention that you rarely get the "real story" on these things,
just the sexy news bytes.
Proly this kamen guy's got a diesel generator tucked away somewhere.
And, most of this stuff is much more effectively done on new construction.
Assuming Salty is not confabulating (again), his eyeballs will likely
explode once he gets all those conversion bills -- not to mention his hissy
fits when the skies are cloudy for weeks.
7 year ROI??? Try 30.
Minimal maintenance???? Heh, but another eyeball explosion.
Take something a simple as thermal windows. I've read summaries of studies
that showed that most often these windows are at best a break even
proposition, because the energy they save just about equals their
replacement cost at the end of their lifetime.
Unless you go the way of Anderson/Pella/Marvin, and then your breakeven
point will proly be 40 years.
Take in-floor radiant heating. Great idear, right? Indeed, it is.
Heh, what happens when one pops a leak?? Or if electric, a shorted element.
Holy Bananas, your ROI on DAT repair bill will proly be 150 years!
Kinda like tryna beat a parking meter:
It wasn't really free parking, as yer "cost" of that free park is actually
the expected probability of a ticket multiplied by the value of the ticket.
Over the long term, the house always wins.
In NYC, if you avoid meters or garage parking, the alternative is hauling
around someone just to watch the car/truck -- which is in fact what
commercial vehicles often do, as one ticket essentially pays for that
person.
Iow, there is no escape from effing NYC parking costs, there is likely no
escape from effing energy costs, with rare exceptions in the case of
talented knowledgeable DIYers. And THEN the cost is likely boucou
time/labor.
Which is likely moot, as proly few municipalities would even allow such a
DIY effort -- sheeit, many places require a licensed plumber to change yer
goddamm water heater -- and worse.
Not badmouthing solar/geo/Green-ness, or the nobility of such efforts, just
saying that a lot has been mis-represented -- mostly via HGTV, whose often
stunning presentations on this stuff omit some nitty-gritty realities, like
the fact that many of these stunning installations are the playthings of
wealthy architects et al, which are proly write-offs way beyond energy tax
credits, ito professional displays of their work. Iow, written off as a
marketing/bidniss expense, etc.
Salty does, miraculously, make a very good point, which was my point in the
Solar/40 hp thread:
This stuff will only be viable if we re-think our lifestyles : endless A/C,
4 kW clothes driers, 250++ hp cars -- and our whole "disposable" zeitgeist.
And the folly of running on a 2 hp treadmill -- goodgawd.....
All of which, given the momentum of our current cultural bent and the
economic corners we have been painted into, will never cease -- until we
wind up in work barracks -- solar powered, of course.
--
EA