The Morris Addition Neighborhood

We now have at least five houses in the neighborhood that have gone solar — one on Wilton, two on West, one on Pitt and now ours on Strout. Others are interested, but haven’t made the leap yet.

A crew from Westcoast Solar Energy arrived early Monday morning to install a 1.4 KW system on our house and by Monday afternoon, the power was back on and the meter running in reverse. We also have a new line in from the power pole and a new service panel, since our old one was too old to handle the system (or anything other changes either). Our new array passed the City’s inspection with flying colors and the electrician who supervised the installation dropped off the system monitor, which will allow us to monitor performance and status via the Web, as well as on the monitor’s own display.

With the PV installation, we have completed another phase of our energy upgrades, starting with new windows  (though not for the entire house — just the aluminum windows that had been badly installed some number of years ago) and underfloor insulation (as part of our radiant heating installation) in 2005; additional attic insulation in 2006; blown-in wall insulation in 2009; and this year, a cool roof (with additional insulation in several locations) and PV. Still on tap for this year will be replacement exterior doors and a solar hot water system with a tankless heater. Although I may construct storm windows for the historic windows since they are definitely big heat holes, that pretty much takes care of upgrades.  And of course we’d already installed compact florescent where possible — I wouldn’t mind going with LED lights, but on the other hand, with our PV system at 150%, the incentive has somewhat diminished…

Although we considered getting a standing-seam metal roof so we could harvest rainwater, we opted for a cool-roof composition shingle because of the cost — even though our house is relatively tiny, a metal roof would have cost nearly $20,000 and we couldn’t justify the cost. While the cool roof from Owens-Corning was somewhat pricier, the current tax credit of $1500 made it competitive with conventional composition shingles and the house stayed noticeably cooler in a recent heatwave.