My Future Net Zero Home Master Thread
 

Well, I've closed on my new house, and all moved in now, it's been incredibly busy month juggling everything that needs to be done with my new home (3 Family ~3600 sf located in upstate NY).

My goal is to get the house to net zero in under five years. No green tech will be off limits and most will be considered at some point. This initial post will hopefully be edited frequently with updates on various projects to achieve this goal.

About the project house:

http://i680.photobucket.com/albums/v...rMan/image.jpg

The image is a satellite view with up being ~due north. The large dirt spot no longer exists, I believe it is from the previous owner doing work on the septic system (which does not work and I am in the process of replacing)

Major Projects:

Mini Projects:


http://ecorenovator.org/forum/other-...ent-attic.html

Various Improvements:
Electric water insulation blanket
6 LED Bulbs (Utilitech 60 watt equivalent from Lowes)


{Posting now to save, will be editing frequently this week..... I want this to have nice polish ;) }

Net zero = ?

A zero energy building. It produces as much power as it uses basically.

Zero-energy building - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Very cool stuff. I can't wait to see the plans for it. :)

Heating, electricity and curent water all together from individual instalation?

Bold, but nice.

I plan to eventually put a nice PV array on the main roof, probably solar heating on the south walls (and a small ammount on the roof for summer domestic water), however my friend might convince me to do geothermal (he runs a geothermal company) or may couple a heat pump with thermal storage and solar heating.

However currently my major project for this year is replacing my septic system, will likely cost around $10-15k and will put a huge damper on what I had hoped to do this year.

My first small project is insulating a wall adjacent to my master bedroom and the attic. For whatever reason it has zero insulation. I'll start a thread for that in the next few days, should go quickly as I have already purchased the insulation
(2x4 R-13 batts, held in place by 2" R-12.2 metallic sheathed poly board)

Good luck with that septic. Remember that Federal incentives on several different technologies expire on 12/31/2016, so get your hand in the pot before the lid gets put on. :thumbup:

What different technologies are allowed to replace a septic? Grey water should be a standard but what about black water?

As far as Ive been able to find on grey vs black water NY allows for a grey water reuse, however when I talked to my counties inspector (happens to be my neighbor) he said grey water reuse was not allowed in NY.

Regarding septic treatment in general, only leach field based systems are allowed (including something like an algae matt setup)

I have a septic engineer coming this week to consult/design a replacement setup and will pick his brain about some of the code stuff. I believe I'll need a pump mound system, but will know more shortly.

Inspector as a neighbour makes it hard to cheat and put in "not so approved" technology, haha. That said, I think I would still try to separate out the grey and black water within the house so you can do different things with it in the future.

For solar, my preference would be do as much PV as I could on the roof and try to have as much south wall area as possible for thermal.

If you were thinking Geo thermal you could install the field loop down first and the leach-bed on top. The geo loop would be 6 ft and the leach system would be at 2-3 ft. The wet ground coupled with any additional heat will help with the efficiency. I wish I had the opportunity when I had constructed my place. The size of leach-bed the engineers had specified on my site would have covered 1/3 of my geo-loop. I would have made only one mess to fix-up.

Randen