Tag: homeowners

Greenovation: Low-Flow Toilets

  • Rudy Wilfong, on the left, distributes Coroma toilets. Matt Grocoff, right, is with Greenovation TV. (Photo by Thore Bergman)

The Environmental Protection Agency has
a new water saving program called Water
Sense. It’s similar to the Energy Star label
for electronics. To get the Water Sense
program’s endorsement, toilets must use less
water. But, people have been complaining
about the old style low-flow toilets since they
were first required in the mid-1990s. Lester
Graham reports on what’s changed since then:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency has
a new water saving program called Water
Sense. It’s similar to the Energy Star label
for electronics. To get the Water Sense
program’s endorsement, toilets must use less
water. But, people have been complaining
about the old style low-flow toilets since they
were first required in the mid-1990s. Lester
Graham reports on what’s changed since then:

The problem with those old low-flow toilets is the companies didn’t really re-design them – they just made the tank smaller. Some of them just didn’t do the job.

Hugh Maquire has one in his home. He’s had a bad experience with his.

Maquire: “I had to flush my low-flow toilet six or seven times. What is that saving you?”

Graham: “ Doesn’t save you much water that way does it?”

Maquire Doesn’t save you much water at all. Plus it’s annoying. It’s embarrassing, ‘cause everybody’s hearing you flush the toilet six or seven times, wondering what the heck’s going on in there.”

So, we asked Matt Grocoff with Greenovation TV to set up a demonstration for us. Behind the Bgreen Retail Store in Ann Arbor, Michigan three different models of these new Water Sense low flow toilets are set up on five-gallon buckets so we can see what gets flushed… and what comes out.

Grocoff: “I always joke there were three things that set back the environmental movement: there was the original low-flow shower head, the original low-flush toilet and Jimmy Carter’s sweater. ‘Cause what that said to everybody was ‘You’re going to pay more for it; it was going to be less comfortable and you were going to have to sacrifice and it wasn’t going to perform as well.’ And with these new generations of redesigned toilets, you’re getting a higher quality product than even the existing one-point-six gallon or even a three gallon per flush toilet”

Graham: “Let’s see it.”

These toilets all have dual flush capabilities. A full flush is 1.28 gallons. A half flush – just 0.8. To prove how well they work, he’s just using the point-eight gallon flush. Matt’s got tennis balls, potatoes, and little rubber duckies.

Grocoff: “We got three duckies.” (flush sound)

Graham: “ Well, that seemed to work. No duckies. What’d you think of that, Hugh?”

Maquire: “I felt sorry for that ducky, but it was a great demonstration.”

And, again, that was the half-flush at 0.8 gallons, half of what the old low-flow standard was. Matt upped the ante.

Grocoff: “Two tennis balls and two potatoes. This is going to be the real challenge.” (flush sound)

Then more potatoes.
(flush)

And more duckies.
(flush)

Now, Matt’s demonstration is hardly scientific, but of the three brands we tested – a Kohler, a Toto and a Coroma – it appeared to me the Coroma worked best, at flushing duckies and potatoes anyway.

Rudy Wilfong is a dealer for Coroma. The toilet is made in Australia. He says Australia has had one-gallon-per-flush restrictions for 30 years, so they’ve designed them to work.

Wilfong: “And they don’t plug. They flush better than the 1.6 gallon toilets with half the water.”

And compared to the old low-flow toilets, you can expect to save about 1,000 gallons, per person, per year. They do cost more, but the pay back compared to a regular low-flow is about 2 to 2.5 years. If you’ve got one of those three-gallon-per-flush models, or even an old 6 gallon model, your payback will be a lot faster.

Graham: “Alright, Matt, I’m going to give you one more chance to impress me. What have you got here?”

Grocoff: “Alright. So, here we’ve got a full t-shirt. (flush) Very nice.”

Maquire: “Hey, Matt. I had a black t-shirt. Do you see it anywhere?” (laugh)

Graham: “Well, this was pretty impressive. Where can I get some more information about this?”

Grocoff: “Of course, you can go to Greenovation-dot-TV and you can see a video and some photographs of some of these toilets.”

Graham: “ Alright. Matt Grocoff of Greenovation-dot-TV. Thanks very much.”

Grocoff: “Alright. Thanks, Lester.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

The Future of McMansions (Part Two)

  • The study found that differences in architectural style stuck out most, but after that, height. (Photo source: Brendel at Wikimedia Commons)

There are some ugly terms used
to describe big, grandiose homes.
Critics call them “Garage Mahals,”
“starter castles,” or “McMansions.”
These insults are flung around
in towns where people worry big
houses are sapping the character
out of neighborhoods full of smaller,
older homes. Shawn Allee
met a researcher who hopes to tamp
down the heated rhetoric:

Transcript

There are some ugly terms used
to describe big, grandiose homes.
Critics call them “Garage Mahals,”
“starter castles,” or “McMansions.”
These insults are flung around
in towns where people worry big
houses are sapping the character
out of neighborhoods full of smaller,
older homes. Shawn Allee
met a researcher who hopes to tamp
down the heated rhetoric:

Jack Nasar studies city planning at Ohio State University.

He got interested in the term “McMansion” because it was used in his own neighorhood in Columbus.

“A realestate agent was befriending older people so that when they died she’d be able to get their properties, tear down the house, and then build a much larger house. I started to wonder whether this was happening elsewhere.”

Nasar says teardowns, and the insults used to describe them, are common in many towns. And some local governments are restricting how big these homes get or even what they look like.

Nasar says, with governments stepping in to the debate, there’s more at stake than just name-calling.

“You’re talking about controlling what goes on on somebody’s private property. So, you would want to have good evidence to use as a basis for that decision.”

Nasar recently studied just what it takes for a house to get big enough or different enough for people to say, “yuck” or hurl an insult like “McMansion.” Nasar and a research partner created computer models of streets with rows of houses.

For each test, they made most houses normal, but changed up something about one of them – stuff like the architectural style, the height, or maybe distance between the house and the street. Then, they showed these models to people.

“We had them rate these streets in terms of compatibility, we had them rate them in terms of visual quality or preference.”

Differences in architectural style stuck out most, but after that, height.

“The effect started to be most noticeable when the in-fill house was twice as large as the stuff around it. So, in terms of regulations, it suggests maybe a community could get by saying, ‘you could do a tear-down replacement that’s twice as big as what’s around it,’ but you wouldn’t let it get any larger than that.”

This is a controversial finding.

Some communities keep height range much lower than “twice as big” figure and sometimes they restrict width, too – something Nasar found doesn’t matter so much.

I thought I’d bounce some of his findings off someone involved in the teardown issue.

“This also was a demolition of a small home.”

Catherine Czerniak drives me around Lake Forest, a Chicago suburb. She’s the community development director, and she gets the praise or blame about how teardowns get done.

Czerniak says Nasar’s findings make sense, especially the idea that style matters most.

“We often say height and size aren’t necessarily the key roles -it’s how the design is done.”

But for Czerniak, there’s a hot-button issue Nasar did not measure.

Lake Forest has lots of tree-lined streets and people like how the trees obscure the houses.

“And really, the landscaping really defines the character of the community. Even the estates on the east side, were not there to shout from the street, here I am, look at me.”

To make the point she drives past a mix of old homes and replacements.

I can hardly tell which is which.

“As we go down the street, take note that even though there are some big homes back here, you still feel you’re in a country lane.”

Czerniak says Nasar’s research might quiet down some debates but people will always fight over specific details. After all, Nasar’s test subjects gave quick judgements on computer models.

She says, in the real world, critics spend years nit-picking every little thing they hate about a teardown replacement home and whether it’s going to ruin their neighborhood.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

The Future of McMansions (Part One)

  • Brian Hickey runs Teardowns.com, a real-estate marketplace for teardown properties. Some communities complain that the teardown market encourages the growth of so-called 'McMansion' replacement homes that are seen as too large and out-of-place for their neighborhoods. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Your home may be your castle,
but, for some people, too many
homes are as big and grand as
castles. Critics call these homes
‘McMansions,’ and they complain
they’ve ruined neighborhoods
filled with older, smaller houses.
The McMansion fad fizzled during
the real-estate bust. Shawn Allee looks at whether it could
return:

Transcript

Your home may be your castle,
but, for some people, too many
homes are as big and grand as
castles. Critics call these homes
‘McMansions,’ and they complain
they’ve ruined neighborhoods
filled with older, smaller houses.
The McMansion fad fizzled during
the real-estate bust. Shawn Allee looks at whether it could
return:

I head to a Chicago suburb called Hinsdale to understand the hub-ub about McMansions. Over the past twenty years, one in three Hinsdale homes got torn down to make room for mostly bigger ones.

Brian Hickey drives me past one-story brick and wood houses.

Then there’s a huge one, with stucco and Spanish tile.

Hickey: “This is an example of something where someone would go, this is more Florida-like.”

Allee: “It looks like it walked off the set of Miami Vice or something like that.”

Hickey: “Yeah.”

Bigger, mis-matched homes sprouted up in Hinsdale during the real-estate boom, and for some, Brian Hickey’s partly to blame.

He runs tear-downs dot com. Hickey finds and sells homes to tear down, and maybe replace with McMansions … or ‘replacement homes’ as he calls them.

Anyway, during the housing bubble, teardowns increased … and so did complaints.

Allee: “Some of the arguments I’ve heard against the teardown phenomenon is that we’re basically tossing perfectly good houses into landfills.”

Hickey: “See, that’s not accurate. To take some of these homes and bring it up to what people in this community would expect in terms of housing amenities, it doesn’t make sense to renovate when you can build new for less.”

The big-home trend faded recently, but if the soft real-estate market improves, you gotta wonder: will people build big again, or will they keep smaller, older homes?

Hickey thinks old homes might lose.

Hickey: “At some point a buyer simply won’t pay that price to live there.”

Allee: “In that one story …”

Hickey: “In that one story, two-bedroom, small kitchen – that the land will be where the value is.”

Some real-estate pros say Hickey’s right: people want big, and they’ll build what they want, where they want.

Others say, the game has changed.

Local governments in Dallas, Denver, and other cities are starting to regulate teardowns, like Hinsdale did.

(sound of a printer)

Robert McGinnis prints me 60 pages of Hinsdale’s zoning codes.

“Hot off the press, it’s still warm.”

McGinnis runs Hinsdale’s building commission. He says the code got up to sixty pages partly because of teardown complaints.

McGinnis: “Pollution issues, the loss of sunlight in some cases.”

Allee: “Loss of sunlight? What do you mean by that?”

McGinnis: “Some of these houses are so tall they end up physically blocking out some of the sunlight.”

McGinnis says it’s hard to stop teardowns – you can just delay or improve them.

“I would like to think, at some point, Joe Q. Public says, ‘I’d really like to live in Hinsdale, but I can’t afford to heat and cool a McMansion,’ so they’re going to look at building a smaller home.”

But McGinnis says this could be wishful thinking.

So, I thought I’d ask some Hinsdale homeowners about the small-home idea.

Just outside McGinnis’ office, I find Greta Filmanaviciute. She’s stuffing official demolition signs into her car.

Filmanaviciute: “I was getting permits. We’re going to tear down old house and building the new house.”

Allee: “Are you guys looking at a house that’s bigger than what you have now?”

Filmanaviciute: “No, actually, we are sizing down, but that’s because we’re a three-person family and I don’t want to have a huge house and then we have high utility bills. This is perfection for us, actually.”

Filmanaviciute says preservationists might not like that she’s tearing down her place, but her neighbors are glad she’s keeping things modest.

She says she’d be proud to start a small-home trend.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Greenovation: Whole House Fan

  • Matthew Grocoff says a whole house fan gives the same comfort as you would have with an air conditioning system. (Photo courtesy of Greenovation TV)

Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:

Transcript

Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:

For some people, air-conditioning just feels a little unnatural. I mean, it’s a refrigerated room, right?

There are older ways of cooling a house that are cheaper and use a lot less electricity.

Matthew Grocoff is with Greenovation TV. His website suggests all kinds of ways to make homes more green.

We met at a house in a tree-lined neighborhood of century-old homes in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

(sounds of house and stairs)

He wanted to show me an idea that’s like throwing open the windows and pulling in a cool summer breeze.

It’s called a whole house fan.

Grocoff: “We’re at the home of Jacinta Beehner and Thore Bergman. Thore actually installed this fan himself. It cost about $250 – about $9500 less than the quote that they got to install an air conditioning system in their house. And, this summer, they have not had to turn on their window units at all.”

Now Thore is not a carpenter. He’s a university researcher who studies monkey vocalizations. But, he decided he’d try to install the big fan in his ceiling on his own.

Bergman: “It was fairly easy. It took a couple hours. The tricky thing was – we have an older house that had layers of plaster and wood in the ceiling. So, cutting through that to make the hole took a little more work that it might in some houses. But it wasn’t too bad.”

Beehner: “I have to admit, I didn’t really believe that maybe he could install it himself. And yet, he did a great job. And I am the biggest fan of the whole house fan.”

Grocoff: “So, you’ve got the Beehner-Bergman fan club here. And this is interesting, because the goal, for most homeowners, is to get the house to a comfortable 72 degree temperature. And, it’s kind of strange that when it’s 65 degrees outside, and it’s 80 degrees inside your house, that we’re turning on an air conditioning unit when the air outside is actually colder than the air conditioning unit.”

(sound of fan turning on)

Bergman: “One drawback is the noise. Which, we’ve gotten used to. We kind of like it for sleeping – it blocks some of the street noise. We’re standing right underneath it, and it’s kind of hard to talk.”

Beehner: “But, we also have a baby. So the whole house fan serves as white noise, which really helps us move around upstairs while he’s asleep.”

Grocoff: “Those people who are not looking for that white noise sound, like Jacinta and Thore are for their baby, they’re going to be able to get something that’s quieter, more efficient, more insulated, that’s going to be virtually silent, at the higher price points.”

There have been some surprises along the way.

Jacinta says, you have to keep in mind – anything in the night air will be drawn into the house.

Beehner: “One night, we actually did turn it on, and within about one minute, our entire house was filled with the smell of skunk.

Grocoff: “So, if you’ve got really good, deep skunk smell, you know the fan is working. Another possible drawback is, with the air, you’re bringing in any kind of dust, pollen, anything else like that.”

But, Grocoff says, overall, this big sorta-box fan in the ceiling really pulls the hot air out of the house and pulls the cool air from outdoors into the house.

Now, these fans don’t work everywhere.

If you live in an extremely humid area, or a region where it never really cools down at night or in the morning, it might not be a good fit.

But for areas that enjoy cooler mornings and evenings in the summer, Grocoff says this is a good alternative.

Grocoff: “With a whole house attic fan, you’re going to get the same comfort as you would with an air conditioning system. But, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the cost for running an air conditioning system is 20 cents to 30 cents every hour that you have that turned on. For a whole house attic fan, you’re talking about a penny to a nickel an hour.”

There are all kinds of designs besides the big box fan types.

You can go to a home improvement store, your heating and cooling installer, or do some research online at greenovation.TV or just type in whole house fan in Google. You’ll find plenty of places wanting to sell you there version of a newly popular old idea.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Legislation to Make More Efficient Homes

  • The bill would require new homes to immediately be 30% more energy efficient. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

This session of Congress has pledged to take on
the issue of climate change. A bill in the Senate
is already awaiting action. But the House has
already passed the sweeping Clean Energy And
Security Act. One piece of that bill could change
the way homes are built in this country. In short,
they’d use a lot less energy. Tamara Keith has more:

Transcript

This session of Congress has pledged to take on
the issue of climate change. A bill in the Senate
is already awaiting action. But the House has
already passed the sweeping Clean Energy And
Security Act. One piece of that bill could change
the way homes are built in this country. In short,
they’d use a lot less energy. Tamara Keith has more:

The bill would require a re-write of building codes. New homes would immediately have to be 30% more energy efficient. And the requirements would keep getting tougher from there.

The idea is controversial. But for Alex Dean, building efficiently is just the way he does business.

“It’s building to a higher standard. And we really enjoy building fine projects for people who want it done right.”

Dean is the CEO of the Alexander Group, a home design, build and renovation firm in Maryland. He’s showing me around a green remodel.

(sound of key in door)

“This is the entry from the garage into the new addition.”

Dean and his team are putting an addition on a home in an upscale Washington, DC suburb.

He’s designed every detail with an eye to energy efficiency, starting with the insulation. He used a spray foam. It costs about twice as much as the insulation required by current building codes.

“You know, it’s worth it, and in the overall scheme of building the house, it’s not that much money.”

On this hot humid day, you can feel the difference the fancy insulation makes.

Keith: “It’s cooler than it is outside.

Dean: “Yeah, yeah.”

Keith: “And there’s no AC running in here right now.”

Dean: “No, not at all. And this building is directly in the sun. But that’s how effective this is. This is keeping some of the coolness from last night when it was in the 60s.”

That means he can install smaller heating and air conditioning units that use less energy.

The windows are double paned. The lights, all compact fluorescents or super efficient LEDs.

It’s projects like this one that make Bill Fay confident home builders will be able to handle greener building codes. Fay is the executive director of the Building Energy Efficient Codes Network.

“We know it’s achievable. And we know it’s achievable using affordable technologies. It’s just now a matter to have the resolve to do it.”

Past efforts at greening the building codes met with stiff opposition from home builders and failed to make it through congress.

Koteri Callahan is president of the Alliance to Save Energy and she says the stakes are high. Buildings are huge energy wasters.

“Every house and every office building that goes in the ground today is going to be around for decades and decades and in some cases centuries.”

But these days, the ground isn’t being broken on very many homes. The industry is in a serious slump.

Bill Kilmer is the head of advocacy for the National Association of Home Builders and he doesn’t want members of congress to forget about the industry’s struggles.

“Consumers certainly in the last year are stepping back and said, ‘what can we afford.’ And so we’re trying to take a mainstream, if you will, that says, ‘people want this.’ How can we get to that point, and how can we get there reasonably, and take afford-ability into account.”

Kilmer says the building industry is taking environmental issues seriously, and recently created a voluntary green building certification program.

But, he says the House bill moves too far too fast. He says builders would like until 2012 to meet the 30% efficiency goal.

“You really don’t have the equipment or the materials that are ready and ramped up to make the adjustments in the marketplace to bring those things to bear, without a tremendous cost burden that’ll be added on to the production of the housing and that obviously is going to be passed on to someone, and that’ll be the consumer.”

This question of affordability is a big one. And it seems like everyone has a statistic to make their point.


For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Whose Grass Is Really Greener?

  • Molly Aubuchon and Stefan Meyer survey their lawn. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Many Americans love full, lush
lawns. Fertilizers and herbicides
might help. But there’s concern
about water pollution from lawn
chemicals. Julie Grant reports
that some experts say you can use
them, just don’t over-use them:

Transcript

Many Americans love full, lush
lawns. Fertilizers and herbicides
might help. But there’s concern
about water pollution from lawn
chemicals. Julie Grant reports
that some experts say you can use
them, just don’t over-use them:

Molly Aubuchon and her husband Stefan Meyer aren’t sure
what they’re going to do. Their two little kids are running
around the yard. Stefan wants a lawn of thick, soft grass for
them to play on. But that’s not what he’s got.

Stefan: “As you can see, there’s no grass here.
I don’t know what some of this stuff is. Some kind of moss.
I think even the moss died, so now we have dead moss
that’s like yellow and brown.”

Molly: “It’s not attractive dead.”

Stefan: “No. I just think, when I’m out here cutting my grass,
I’m like, man, if I lived across the street, I’d be like, ‘hey look,
they’re cutting absolutely nothing again. They’re just running
that lawn mower over bare spots.’”

They see their neighbors, with those thick, green lawns,
spreading chemicals a few times a year. Molly and Stefan
don’t want to do that.

Molly: “Well, the fact that I’ve got kids running around here
all day. And the fact that it seeps into the water supply and
the rivers, that’s a concern to me.”

There are lots of people who are concerned about lawn
pollution. Lawns have gotten a bad wrap in some places –
because of the fertilizers and other chemicals people use on
them. In much of Canada, lawn chemicals have actually
been banned.

Lou DiGeranimo is General Manager of Water in Toronto.
He says lawn chemicals were damaging the water quality.

“People were over-fertilizing, they were using commercial
pesticides. That chemical ended up in the rivers and ended
up in the lake. We passed a bylaw that prohibited that.”

But some experts say the chemical bans in Canada are
extreme.

David Gardner is professor of turf grass at the Ohio State
University. He doesn’t think banning lawn chemical will do
anything to improve the environment.

“Based on the work that I have seen, based on the research
that has been conducted, I believe that if there is a unilateral
ban on the use of pesticides it will make absolutely no
impact on our environmental footprint.”

Gardner says compared to
other sources of pollution, like cars and over-use of
chemicals on farms, the impact of lawn care is miniscule.

Still, Gardner says people like Molly and Stefan can keep
nice lawns – without using a lot of chemicals.

He says you’ve got to cut the grass and water regularly.
He also recommends fertilizing lightly in the spring and more
heavily in the fall.

That’s what Gardner does at his house – and he uses only 6
to 8 ounces of herbicide a year.

“Putting it another way, if I were to go to a store and buy one
of those gallon jugs of ready-made herbicide, that would be
enough to last me for about 16 years.”

Gardner says the herbicide will hit its expiration date before
he has a chance to use it all.

But Molly and Stefan just aren’t sold. They don’t want to use
lawn chemicals just to appease the neighbors.

Stefan: “I just want to feel good about the way my yard
looks for my own satisfaction. I would like to cultivate some
grass that looks good, you know, with my hands.”

Besides, Stefan says, they don’t have the worst looking lawn
on the street and they’d just rather not add unnecessary
chemicals into the environment.

Stefan: “We don’t have the worst lawn on the street. Our
street is not that long. It’s only four blocks, five blocks long –
there’s a house down there and their yard looks worse than
ours.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Predicting Wildfires in a Warmer World

  • This wildfire ignited along Idaho Highway 55 and was started by people. Scientists say as the climate warms, fires like this one will become common place in many parts of the world. (Photo by Sadie Babits)

Climate change has already brought
warmer temperatures, rising sea
levels and melting glaciers. Now,
researchers believe global warming
will cause major shifts in wildfire
patterns around the world. As Sadie
Babits reports, scientists hope to
predict where future wildfires will
light up:

Transcript

Climate change has already brought
warmer temperatures, rising sea
levels and melting glaciers. Now,
researchers believe global warming
will cause major shifts in wildfire
patterns around the world. As Sadie
Babits reports, scientists hope to
predict where future wildfires will
light up:

Trying to predict where wildfires are likely to start decades from now, is
kind of like getting a full body scan.

(sound of medical scanner)

Except instead of a medical scanner, scientists scanned the earth using
satellite data, climate models and the history of present day wildfires to
map out global wildfire patterns.

“The impacts of climate change on wildfires are expected to be widespread
around the world.”

Katherine Hayhoe is a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. She’s part
of a group of scientists that has for the first time, tried to project where fire
hotspots will crop up around the world. She says they found that climate
change will affect wildfire patterns.

Hotter temperatures and rain and snow coming at different times in the
year or perhaps not at all, will mean forests and grasslands will dry out
quicker – becoming tinder boxes for fire.

In the next 30 years, scientists believe that the Western U.S. will continue
to see catastrophic fires like the recent blaze in Santa Barbara, which
destroyed 80 homes.

In the next 60 years, they predict wildfires will increase in the Corn Belt and
spread into the East Coast.

Hayhoe says having an idea of how wildfire patterns will shift will help
communities better prepare.

“We can never eliminate the risk of climate change entirely but by making
wise choices and planning strategically we can minimize those risks.”

Some communities are already taking steps to prevent wildfire. The city of
Bend, Oregon was one of the first in the country to launch a public
education campaign to get homeowners to fire proof their homes. The
program, called FireFree, started more than a decade ago, after a massive
wildfire burned nineteen homes and scorched thousands of acres.

“It was something that scarred our community.”

Gary Marshall is the deputy chief of Bend’s Fire Department.

“We have this history of people wanting to live outside the urban area and
live out in rural areas, where they can see the deer and be out in the trees
and live that lifestyle that most Americans who move out to the West want
to be a part of that.”

Bend lies in what’s known as wildfire alley. Every year there are dozens of
fires that crop up either from lightning strikes or from people. The flames
are fed by dried out grasses and forests so dense you can’t see through
them. Add homes to the mix and you have a recipe for disaster not just
here but throughout the West.

But Marshall says the Fire Free program is working.

(sound of a truck driving on a dirt road)

County forester Joe Stutler and Gary Marshall drive me through
neighborhoods outside Bend. We stop first at an upscale suburb called
Coldera Springs. Everyone here has volunteered to fire proof their new
homes.

But just down the road, there’s a much older suburb and a lot of trees that
have been thinned out.

Sadie: “You can’t see through the trees it’s so dense.”

Joe: “You can’t walk through.”

Gary: “And a firefighter won’t go in there. You’d write that off. So if you
don’t take care of it, the fire will.”

That’s a picture that climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe hopes to avoid.
She says having a long term view of where wildfires might pop up could
help communities to start now and follow Bend’s lead.

It took Bend years to get most of the homeowners here to take
responsibility, and give their homes a fighting change to survive a
devastating blaze.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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Tax Incentives Put Solar Within Reach

  • Eric Lindstrom, Vice President of Cannon Design, stands next to the building's 140 new solar panels (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)

Buying a solar system for your home still is not as simple or inexpensive as say picking up a new water heater. But solar energy advocates argue that the systems are affordable and obtainable for just about everyone – right now. Joyce Kryszak checked out that claim:

Transcript

Buying a solar system for your home still is not as simple or inexpensive as say picking up a new water heater. But solar energy advocates argue that the systems are affordable and obtainable for just about everyone – right now. Joyce Kryszak checked out that claim:

You might say that sunlight is a trade mark for Cannon Design. The Western New York based firm designs some of the most solar friendly buildings in the world. But only now is Cannon using the sun for its own building.

Eric Lindstrom is Vice President of the company. He says it’s what their environmentally savvy clients expect.

“You know there’s a huge P.R. factor here that we can bring our clients in and say, you know, this is what we’re recommending to you, but we’ve done it ourselves and it works. That we didn’t just read it in a magazine somewhere and say this is what you should be doing.”

Lindstrom takes us up on the roof of the company’s building to have a look at the new system.

Up here we find solar panels. 140 of them. They’re stretched out from edge to edge, soaking up the rays.

Lindstrom says they generate about 5% of the energy the building needs. But he says even at that small percentage the company will recoup the roughly $17,000 investment in about three years.

The system’s total price tag is actually about $170,000. But Cannon Design got corporate tax credits and incentives that covered roughly 90%. After the pay-back period, Linstrom says the company will actually pocket money.

Back in the building they can watch the savings add up on the inverter meters inside. That got Lindstrom thinking. He got a bid on a system for his home. He’s decided against it for now because the payback would take about eight years. You see, businesses get more tax breaks than homeowners.

But some people say the payback time can be less. And sometimes it just doesn’t’ matter to them.

Joan Bozer was at the American Solar Energy Society Conference held in Buffalo, New York. Bozer was showing off pictures of her home’s $30,000 solar system. It cost her half that after incentives. The payback will take a while—about eight years. But Bozer says that’s okay.

“Because it doesn’t make any difference to me if it’s five years or ten years what the payback period is. I want the solar panels, like people in their house they put on the roof they want, or they put on what they want and this is what we want – solar panels on the roof. That’s how we want to do it.”

But as green-minded as she is, Bozer admits that federal and state incentives gave her the final push.

While everybody can take advantage of recent federal tax credits, state incentives vary. Some are generous, and some offer homeowners nothing. Some local governments are offering low-interest loans on top of the federal and state incentives.

Neal Lurie is with the Solar Society. Lurie says incentives are creating demand and that’s driving down the cost of solar systems.
He says systems cost about 30% less than last year.

Lurie says with lower prices and tax incentives, some homeowners can have solar without much – or no – money out of pocket.

But how soon will solar catch on with the masses? Lurie predicts in less than six years.

“We’ll see solar technology a low-cost provider of electricity, even lower priced than fossil fuels without incentives. I think that when that happens we’re going to see it go from being something that people are looking at and starting to do to something that is truly common-place, much more than people may actually expect today.”

Others think solar will really take off in just three years. Solar installers are already gearing up. Some say they’ll double their workforce by the end of this year.

For The Environment Report – I’m Joyce Kryszak.

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Stopping Septic Seepage

  • Dan Jacin stands by his newly landscaped sewage tanks (Photo by Julie Grant)

There’s an underground threat to water that’s making it harder to clean up for drinking. Julie Grant reports – it all
depends on where you live and whether the people who live nearby are maintaining their septic systems:

Transcript

There’s an underground threat to water that’s making it harder to clean up for drinking. Julie Grant reports – it all
depends on where you live and whether the people who live nearby are maintaining their septic systems:

More than one of every four homes uses its own septic
system.

That means it’s not hooked up to a city sewer line. When a
toilet is flushed, the water doesn’t go to a central treatment
plant. Instead, it drains into a septic system buried in the
yard. It’s supposed to decompose using a natural process to
clean it up before going back to the environment.

The problem is – those septics don’t get enough attention.

When they fail, as about one-in-five does, that untreated
toilet water winds up in rivers, lakes and wells. In a lot of
places, that untreated sewage drains into our sources of
drinking water.

“Well obviously, there’s potential health risks, that’s the
number one.”

Nate McConoughey is the sewage program manager with
the Board of Health in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. He spends
a lot of his time inspecting home septics to see if they’re
working.

“We don’t want these pathogens getting out into the
environment and getting into the creeks and streams and
rivers that people come in contact with.”

Or get their drinking water from.

Even though he’s trying to protect water quality,
McConoughey is not a popular guy with homeowners.

“Nobody really wants to see you come out and take a look at
their system. Because most people with 40-plus year old
systems realize that they’re probably not working as good as
they should.”

It’s McConoughey’s job – and the other inspectors he works
with – to tell people when their system is leaking sewage,
and when it’s time to put in a new system.

“We’ve all seen people with different reactions. Whether it
be crying or very irate.”

People get so upset because replacing a septic system
costs big bucks.

Just ask Dan Jacin. Last summer he had to dig up his front
lawn and put in a new set of sewage treatment tanks.

“Oh yeah, it tears up your yard for a year and hits your wallet
pretty hard.”

But Jacin says he didn’t have a choice. His 43-year old
system was backing up atrocious-smelling sewage into his
basement.

“I wanted relief from sewage coming into my house, because
that’s just not a fun deal at all.”

Jacin also had sewage burping up in his yard.

If a septic is working right, sewage drains from the house
into a tank. And it’s slowly sent from the tank into an
underground absorption area – where it filters through the
soil.

But Jacin’s septic wasn’t working anymore. The sewage
was draining off his property into a nearby stream.

(sound of a stream)

This stream runs into the Cuyahoga River, which runs into
Lake Erie – a major source of drinking water. Jacin felt
badly about causing that pollution.

But he felt even worse about paying for his new septic
system. It cost more than $20,000!

“And just fortunately I had enough money to replace it at the
time. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have the
money. Who’s going to give you a loan to replace your
septic tank?”

Now Jacin’s lawn has grown back, he’s landscaped to hide
the treatment tanks. And he’s glad he’s no longer polluting
the waterways.

But he still isn’t happy about spending all that money.

Inspector Nate McConoughey understands. But he says
there are low-interest loans available for new septics – and
they’ve got to be maintained – so the water is clean for
drinking and other uses.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Heat Leak Detecting Raygun

  • The light beam changes to blue when it hits a spot of colder temperature (Photo courtesy of Black & Decker)

Soon, you’ll be able to buy
a sort of raygun to detect heating
leaks in your home. Jessi Ziegler reports on a Thermal Leak
Detector:

Transcript

Soon, you’ll be able to buy
a sort of raygun to detect heating
leaks in your home. Jessi Ziegler reports on a Thermal Leak
Detector:

This tool looks like a little toy raygun, and it shines beams of light
that read the temperature around your house.

Scott Pollard is the Senior Product Manager at Black and
Decker, which makes the tool. He says it’s really easy to use.

“Shine it on the wall, it starts off with a green light, and as they
move it from their wall to their window, or door, or around pipes,
or floor, or ceiling, the color will change to red if it hits a hot spot,
or blue if it hits a cold spot.”

And, if you think you the little leaks don’t really matter, well,
Pollard’s research shows that if you add up all the little cracks
and leaks in a typical home, it equals a hole the size of a
basketball.

The EPA says that homeowners can save 20% on their heating
and cooling costs if they seal air leaks and insulate their houses.

For The Environment Report, this is Jessi Ziegler.

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