The premier showed up with his entourage at around 4:00 pm and upon stepping foot in the driveway announced that he had finally made it to the EcoPlusHome. You see the Premier definitely knew about the EcoPlusHome project as we won the Premiers Efficiency award a few weeks ago…not to mention “the other” Brian Kenny, who is our local MLA and is also now the Minister of Tourism, (congrats again Brian from all of us here at EcoPlusHome) has been trying to get the premier to visit the EcoPlusHome for quite some time, but we know how crazy the premiers schedule is…anyhow…The premier had said he knew all about the project but was finally here to see it for himself…and we’re so glad he did.

We began the tour outside in the backyard of course to show the Premier our photovoltaic and solar thermal panels supplied by Bosch and installed by local electrical company Novolux, which is what is essentially allowing us to power the house and heat the domestic water by using the sun’s rays. He seemed quite impressed by the sheer size of the system…He even commented on my new green Old Town canoe on the way inside…

When you first enter the EcoPlusHome, the kitchen is directly off to the left and being true maritimers we were drawn straight into it…As we stood around in the kitchen checking out the Bosch appliances, the premier asked me what it was like living in the EcoPlusHome and I quickly explained that other than having the premier drop by and hang out in my kitchen it was no different than living in any other house.

We ventured downstairs where the mechanical room is. At this point of the tour our project manager Scott took over and gave a detailed explanation about  the system and how it all works together.

Once Scott finished explaining the technology we had a short conference call with Bosch representative Mario Gross where pleasantries were exchanged. The premier welcomed Bosch to the province and said that the next time Mr Gross was in the province that they should sit down and meet face to face…I look forward to that day…

The visit lasted about half an hour, as we all snapped a few more pictures before the premier was quickly whisked away for his next  engagement…quite a hectic lifestyle…

Thanks again Mr Graham for visiting the EcoPlusHome. Our doors are always open to you and look forward to your next visit.

From Left: Hon. Brian Kennylocal MLA and Minister of Tourism, Premier of New Brunswick, Shawn Graham, Bryan Kenny EcoPlusHome Resident,Stéphane Haché owner of Novolux, Scott Tidd EcoPlusHome Project manager, Jean Allain Principal of the CCNB in Bathurst, Dave Kenny real estate developer. Back Row: Axel Lerche EcoPlusHome Team Leader

]]> http://ecoplushome.com/shawn-graham-visits-ecoplushome/feed/ 0 http://ecoplushome.com/video-press-conference-with-bosch/ http://ecoplushome.com/video-press-conference-with-bosch/#comments Fri, 14 May 2010 13:05:06 +0000 Bryan http://ecoplushome.com/?p=723 I just got the video of our press conference with Bosch from last Wednesday morning and figured I would post it here to share it with you…

Let me know what you think by posting your comments below…

EcoPlusHome Video Conference With Bosch from BD Kenny on Vimeo.

http://ecoplushome.com/blog is where you can see more information about the EcoPlushome

Mother’s Day is once again upon us and this year my mom only wanted one thing, to spend time with me and my family. So this year for Mother’s Day, I decided to make my mother a special supper.  I told Renée of my plans for supper for my mom and told her that she should invite her mother as well.

For those of you who know me, you know that my true passion is definitely in cooking.  I find the planning, the preparation and then of course the cooking is very relaxing for me. So for today’s meal I planned a salad in homemade bread bowls, panseared scallops, bacon wrapped steaks and of course baked potatoes topped with cheese and chives. I gotta say…it was really good…unfortunately I overcooked the steaks…I got caught up in our conversation…

During supper, we had a really great conversation about, of course the EcoPlusHome and the future of this type of technology.  While I have become quite accustomed to answering questions, it really surprised me how knowledgeable Renée has become about the technology inside EcoPlusHome. (Perhaps I should have let her field the questions and I could have focused more on my steaks…) Anyway, we began with the most asked question I get…how long will it take to pay off the technology…what’s the payback timeframe?  My answer is always the same… I can’t tell you…and the reason I can’t tell you is because everyone is different. This system is designed on a per person basis.

I explained to my guests that I have family of six, so the technology that I have on the EcoPlusHome is way more than what my mother and her boyfriend or what my in-laws would need…let’s say we have two families of four. The first family, we’ll call them family A, has a 6 month old and a 2 year old and the mother is a stay at home mom. The second family, we’ll call them family B, has an 8 year old and a 10 year old, both mother and father work. So as you can imagine there energy consumption would be quite different. Family A would probably be doing more laundry having two younger kids…especially one still in diapers…I can remember changing my kids only to have them throw up or poop through the clean outfit I just put them in… I remember having piles of laundry…whoa, flashbacked there…I can still see the piles of laundry…glad my kids are past that diaper stage…so getting back to my example…another factor is the fact the Family A has an at home mom…so unless she sits in the corner and doesn’t do anything all day, she would be using more electricity than Family B. So the point I am trying to make is that purchasing this technology is not only based on a few different variables like consumption or new or home existing.

What I can tell you about purchasing this technology is this…you’re going to have a payment either way…you’re either going to pay your local power company or you’re going to pay a loan to pay back the technology. I see it like renting an apartment or buying a house… You could rent an apartment for 10 years but in 10 years you’ve got nothing…sure you didn’t have to shovel the driveway or fix that leaky toilet, however, If you were to have bought a house instead, then you would have 10 years of equity built up in your home…Purchasing this technology is basically the same…You’re either going to pay your power company every month forever…or you’re going to pay the loan on the technology. The biggest difference is this…in X years the person who invested in this technology will have paid off the loan and will no longer be paying for power…while the person who did not invest in this technology will still be paying for power.

…Will you still be paying for power?

The video of the presentation is below the picture.

I would say the only downside to the entire event was the fact that our presentation was slotted for noon German time…that’s 6 am for us over here in Bathurst NB. I gotta say I am pretty tired now having been up since 4:30 am…but it turned out to be a huge success…now I think I am gonna try and catch a nap before Olivia gets home…

Jean-Lou, who is one of the multimedia technicians at the CCNB told me he would have the video for me soon…so as soon as I get it I’ll post it.

I met and had a great meeting with Mr. Vorsteveld when I attended the tradeshow in Toronto. We discussed the importance of the EcoPlusHome project to Bosch and more importantly how this technology would change the home building industry.

Mr. Vorsteveld had told me that he would be up in our neck of the woods in May as he was attending a tradeshow in Moncton and that he would try and drop in…Well to my surprise he did. I gave him the tour of our mechanical room and had a great conversation.

He is actually going to take part in our press conference slated for 6am tomorrow morning…that’s right I said 6 am…

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention…We were invited to present the EcoPlusHome to a huge room full of journalists in Germany…and no I am not going to Germany…We’re actually doing a live video conference from the CCNB. Bosch has invited us to present the EcoPlusHome at their annual general press conference in Germany. We were super excited to have been asked as it shows that Bosch fully supports and wants to showcase our project. We developed a video and will actually be doing a live press conference from the CCNB…

…not looking forward to being up that early though!

THE ENERGY DETECTIVE

I gotta be honest here and tell ya that I usually hate trade shows. Standing for hours, saying the same thing over and over again…arg!!! But I gotta say that since I’ve become involved with the EcoPlusHome, tradeshows have become pretty cool for me.

Maybe it’s about passion…I just start talking about the house and my role within the project and time seems to fly. I am truly passionate about the EcoPlusHome project and believe we’re really going to change the world…am I delusional??? Maybe…but the way I look at it were pioneers, pioneers for change. The future isn’t that far away folks…I am proving that everyday. As I sit in my home office I glimpse over at my TED Energy Monitor and laugh at the fact that my province is raising the rates again…I am currently generating over 10000 watts of electricity. That’s right…ten thousand watts are cooking through my EcoPlusHome system…

Well I gotta get off my soap box and go pick up Renée… Listen you may not have the system I’ve got but if your interested in learning how to manage your energy consumption you should definitely check out The Energy Detective . It monitors your energy consumption and could really save you some bucks…

For example, with heating, water is made to course through the pipes underground which collects warmth from the surrounding earth. A heat pump is then used to extract the heat and either distribute the heat throughout the house, or convert that heat to electricity. When the heat has been given up from this water, the cycle continues and the water is pumped back through the underground pipes to transfer more heat again. This type of circulation can also be used to cool the house during the hot summer months of the year.

Passive heating and cooling can also be done in the home through convection of solar heat, and/or the ventilation thereof. Passive cooling of a home – any home – can be done with the greatest of ease in the hot summer weather… simply by keeping the window curtains drawn during daylight hours. This keeps the house from heating up by the sun, which is far more cost effective than to use an air-conditioner.

An air conditioner uses far more electricity than artificial lighting uses, so for this reason, it is best to keep the air-conditioner off in the summer, and just flip on your light switch instead of opening the curtains to light the rooms with sunlight that could overheat your home as well. This is one time that having your lights on during the day can actually save you money. When you think about it, it’s kind of almost counter-intuitive, but it actually makes sense.

As far as using this technique for passive heating and cooling in the winter months, keeping the window curtains open not only lets in natural light to save on artificial light energy costs, it can also heat up a room considerably, particularly if your home is well insulated and sealed against heat leakage. Showers heat well in a passive way – instead of having the vent fan on and sucking all that good, steamy heat out into the sky, leave it off, and leave your door open to let all that warm goodness spread out to the rest of the house.

Cooking with a vent fan on when we’re boiling water for pasta for example lets off quite a bit of heat to distribute throughout your kitchen as well. It might sound silly and miniscule to some, but there’s a lot of warmth to be had in a busy kitchen. From high-tech geo-thermal systems to low-tech steam, there are many ways to utilize passive heating and cooling in the home.

Here’s where we discover some very simple and easy ways to achieve a sizable amount of energy saving. Green-minded people as well, might not realize the full impact on cutting down on latent energy consumption, so do keep these things in mind; any and all appliances which use a remote control (televisions, stereo systems, even some home computers), a digital readout display (such as microwave ovens, for example), or indicator LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes, such as those on cell phone chargers, battery chargers, etc.), all continue to use electricity as long as they remain plugged into the wall. Think about that for a bit, and you can see where the following information can lead to a lot of energy saving, “green living” practices acquired or not.

Energy Saving Green Idea #1;

Start to use power strips – you know, they’re like electrical extension cords, with a panel supplying an array of plug outlets, also equipped with a power switch, and often with surge and spike protection. Set up “stations” around your home… for instance, have an “entertainment station” – this is where you would plug in your TV, VCR, DVD player, stereo, and so on, into one of these power strips – this way, you can simply flip the power switch on the power strip panel, and all of the appliances plugged into it will cease consuming electricity at once. Another “station” might be for food – microwave ovens, coffee makers, anything which has a digital display – you can shut off all at once, and turn it all on again later. Do this for chargers of various types as well.

Energy Saving Green Idea #2;

Get to know which of your appliances suck the most electricity, and use them less, or if possible, not at all. These can be things like your vacuum cleaner, your iron, etc. If you have these running and watch your kilowatt-hour meter while they are, it might just make your hair turn white… these consume cast amounts of electricity in very little time. Some of us out there actually use a vacuum on linoleum or hardwood flooring – why? A broom does just as well, and uses no electricity. These days, as far as ironing goes, many fabrics are wrinkle-free, and thankfully, we aren’t just confined to polyester like back in the seventies.

Energy Saving Green Idea #3;

Heat consumption is another thing – we can turn down our home’s thermostat to a cooler temperature while we sleep under warm covers and turn it back up in the mornings. Also, during times when no-one is home, such as during work and school hours, who are we heating the house up for? For more convenience, we can install timer mechanisms to our thermostats, so that the heat can be shut of within moments before leaving the house or going to sleep, and turned back on at about a half-hour before returning in the afternoon/evening, or waking up in the morning. This alone can save tons of your hard-earned money, representing a considerable amount of saved expenses.

Energy Saving Green Idea #4;

Use the previous idea applied to another part of your house – your hot water heater. This is something that is on constantly, but really needn’t be. You can switch it on and off at opportune times, such as those mentioned above, in order to save huge amounts of energy expense which would otherwise be wasted. This too can be fitted with a timing mechanism in order to set it to shut itself off and turn itself back on again at the most proper and convenient times. This is also a large consumer of energy expenses, and using this technique to cut down on wasteful energy consumption for both heating and hot water will save you quite a bit enough to surprise you, seriously.

Energy Saving Green Idea #5;

For this last little tip, let’s talk about lighting and its relationship with heating and air conditioning. If you keep all your window curtains open to let natural light in, you’ll obviously save on lighting expenses, as well as heating in the wintertime, but in the summer, few people realize, it may be best to do this to a lesser degree and use artificial lighting when needed. Why? Because the sunlight that pours into your windows will also heat up your house in the hot summer, causing you to turn on the air conditioner – this takes up more electricity than the lighting does. Keeping the curtains shut also has a cooling effect on the house, so artificial lighting actually helps cut down on air conditioning expenses. Use these 5 energy saving green ideas to cut down on energy expenditure in your home, and you may find that your bills will be surprisingly cut down by more than half the cost.