... change to this blog

November 2013 update:  This blog is now continued in this link:

http://livingenergieswinsol.blogspot.com


Thanks to everyone who has read and replied back to the stories and experiences related on this blog.

As we move into a fourth generation WinSol with the iLc ++, this blog will be going private and written by multiple authors.

The new blog/network will be by invitation only.  Please comment here or send an email directly to be included on the invite list.

climate? it's weather babeee...

I wish they would start calling it weird weather instead of global weirding or extreme weather or climate change or whatever the current soundbites are... It really is about changing weather patterns.
Here in nord California we are finally experiencing a more 'normal' winter - as in real cold and real snow storms (lots!)  But there is an interesting twist if you look closely at the new weather patterns this year:

A little bit of pineapple express mixed with a little bit of Artic cold waves.  Along with some sharp gradients and weird monsoonal driven (clockwise) flows.  Seems that the normal southern monsoonal and pineapple express flows are coming north on a regular basis and they viciously collide with the Artic fronts that had been our predominant weather systems in the winter.

The anomaly that concerns me and is getting more normal all the time, are the continuous cloudy days.  This pattern started about 2-3 years ago and appears to be the new normal:  1 or 2 days of sunshine followed by 10 cloudy days.  It used to be more like 60/40:  5-6 days of sunshine followed by 3-4 days of cloudy/storm weather.

Why is this important?  Well, a solar house without sun really sucks!  (who's heard that be4?)  The re-charging of WinSol3’s electrical solar PV system and solar thermal hot water systems are really strained since they were designed by the 60/40 pattern which was predominant over the last century. The upside is that all the rainwater storage tanks get filled early and easily. 

Time will tell – stay tuned.  I’m sure there will be more weirder weather coming and we’ll have to adjust.  But our adjustments will be limited by the design of our buildings.  So there is an even stronger need to design in more flexibility and adjustments to accommodate larger weather variations.

Some of these new design inclusions (for the iLc being built) will include:

European type window shutters (roladden)

Rocket mass heater using 80% less firewood.

More geothermal + earth tube type cooling.

more HW storage capacity

I really love this little Buddhist parable:

The ancient fox used to have a beautiful gait.  And then a fox saw a prophet with an even more beautiful gait.  The fox started following the prophet, but couldn’t keep up.  He changed his gait and started hoping and limping to keep up with the prophet.  When the prophet was gone, the fox had forgotten his original gait, and so that’s why you see the weird gait that foxes have today.