All the updating you see in the pictures was done by the previous owners. The house sits on roughly 1.25 acres.

Love the house Daox! I recently laid new ceramic tile on a diagonal like you have in the kitchen. Probably won't do that again! Too many cuts.
How busy is the RailRoad? I live 2 houses from one myself, and it's pretty active. You get used to it though.
Have you checked into the average wind speeds for you area? With no neighbors close by you should look into a VAWT! Check these out:
Pacwind - Products
I personally like the Delta II. I first saw this VAWT on Jay Leno's garage. Popular Mechanics had an article showing the installation. I'd realy like to have one myself but I haven't checked on the local ordenances yet.

If I had to guess, the train comes through 2-3 times a day during the week and much less on the weekends. Its not bad at all. Inside the house if your talking with someone its not real noticable. Outside you can definitly tell, but its not that loud. The train really has to slow down to go through the area which helps. To be honest though, I think its kind of cool.

I love the windmill idea and am quite interested in doing something with them. I've leaned more toward the regular 3 blade windmills as they are more efficient, but we'll see. I have a long ways to go until I am far enough along to start adding things like that to the property. The house still has a lot of buttoning up to do to make it efficient, and I'm sure winter will show some areas that will need work.

hopefully we can learn together. I plan to install some type of alt energy. The 3 blade type of windmill would probably serve you best considering where you live. Me being in an urban area along the beach, I'm looking into the VAWT's because the wind can shift regularly. I have some sites I can send you. I'll have to get them off of my work computer. I've been researching these things for over a year and a half.

That would be great, thanks.

Pretty property.

You have a lot of trees all around the property, this may slow down the wind. You may have to put the wind mill far above the trees to have wind enough.

In France you can build a wind mill without authorization if it's under 12 meter (around 36 feet) (and it doesn't disturb neighborhood, and...). This is the minimal eight advised when the ground is flat and there is no tree.

In city there are special wind mills, with vertical axis, that use at both time vertical and horizontal winds, so it can be put at the top of a building, if it isn't the smallest one in the neighborhood.

Denis.

I just had a crazy idea Daox....if you were to look into the VAWT's, you could erect it near the railroad, so that when the trains went by you would benefit. The VAWT's can spin either direction. What do you think?

I think the train company might have a problem with that haha. It would have to be fairly close to the train. Remember, it does have to slow way down when it comes in. If it was going full speed it would be much more viable.

Daox, since I'm still fairly new to these forums, would you mind helping me with posting some pics I have from my summer projects. You can PM me
Thanks,
Clint

I posted a how to thread in the forum news and feedback section. Check it out here. I have a feeling a few people had the same question.