NJ School of Architecture professor indicates how to build an environmental-friendly residence on a tight budget.

Author – Cynthia Booth.

Did you know that two NYC-based designers designed an asymmetrical home with a fixed budget of $250,000?

Architects and Jersey City residents Richard Garber (assistant professor at NJ Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture and Design in Newark) and Nicole Robertson of GRO Architects in NY rose to the difficult task of creating and overseeing the building of a single-family house that’s a genuine evidence of both revolutionary design and environmental-friendly technologies.

Not too long ago, Denis Carpenter purchased a compact vacant lot to attempt his interest for the environment – a house that was environment friendly and very easy to maintain.

What’s so exceptional about this home?

• Inside the home, on the ground level, radiant heating beneath the exposed concrete floor warms the full bathroom and two bedrooms.
• In the loft-like 2nd level, sleek aluminum and stainless steel railings accent the bamboo stairway to the mezzanine, family room and an artfully designed kitchen, outfitted with restored devices and cabinetry.
• Passive a/c strategies like ceiling fans and clerestory windows make it possible for occupants to be cool during summer and warm during winter months.
• The roof consists of 260 sq. ft. of photovoltaic panels that supply about 2,000 kilowatts of energy every year to a battery stored in the basement.
• The root have a 2-foot-square area planted with drought-resist to collect rain.

This single family 1,600-square-foot home was constructed in 6 months and won a 2009 American Institute of Architects merit award and the 2010 Green Building of the Year Award from the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency.

How can you transform your home into an eco-friendly home without spending too much money?

If you’re redesigning a home, conduct an energy audit first to help you identify what energy efficiency changes should and can be made to your home. In this way you’ll calculate how much energy your home needs.

My personal favorite eco-friendly technique is the passive solar cooling/heating design.

Passive solar usually means that your home’s windows, walls, and floors can be made to collect, store, and distribute power from the sun in the form of heat in the wintertime and reject solar heat in the summer.

Existing structures can be adapted or “retrofitted” to passively collect and store solar heat too.

The following five elements constitute a comprehensive passive solar home design:

1. The Collector – The area through which sunlight enters the building (usually windows).
2. The Absorber – The hard, darkened surface of the storage element – sunlight hits the surface and is absorbed as heat.
3. The Thermal Mass – The materials that retain or store the heat generated by sunlight below or behind the absorber surface.
4. The Distributor – The technique by which solar heat circulates from the collection and storage points to different areas of the house.
5. The Controller – Roof overhangs may be used to shade the aperture area during summer months or thermostats that signal a fan to turn on.

About Author – Cynthia Booth writes for the architecture careers blog. It’s a nonprofit web-site dedicated to offer help for beginning architects who need resources for their careers. With this she would like to raise the attention on eco-friendly home design and change the general public perception of energy efficiency.

Slowly people and manufacturers are becoming aware of the need for solar energy.

The cars powered by solar are just electric cars that do not need to be plugged in to be charged. Why? They have solar panels installed on the top of them to generate power. These panels collect the sun’s energy and transform it into electricity to power the cars. At present time these cars cannot go far on their solar power.

When the panels collect the sun’s energy, they will then send the energy directly to the batteries for whatever power the car needs to drive down the road right then. The excess power is stored to be used as needed. Right now the batteries will not store that much extra electricity, so these cars can only operate in a limited range.

So right now there is a lot of room for improvement on these cars. They are not as effective as they should be yet. These cars are very promising for the future as the solar technology improves. Solar cars can be our answer to using so many fossil fuels and the carbon footprint we are leaving at present time.

Traditional vehicles are among the top sources for the greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. In fact they are only beat out by power plants that run by burning coal. What country do you think leads in both of these statistics? You guessed it right, the United States. With pouring carbon dioxide into the air at a rate of over a billion tons a year from cars, and the plants burning coal giving off over 2 billion, the USA is not seen as environmentally conscience to some other countries across the world.

With the way the people of USA use power progress has been slow to adopt alternative sources such as solar energy. However, slowly people and manufacturers are becoming aware of the need for it. The energy companies and car manufacturers though have politicked to an extreme amount for more incentives and legislation. The large vehicles that suck up so much gas are still too loved by the American people and the market.

The cars powered by solar in the USA are small cars and very exclusive. The solar panels alone run over a-hundred-thousand dollars. However, these are extremely advanced in their technology and are the way of the future. These do not give off any greenhouse gases and are very quiet while they work at storing energy.

In other countries some solar cars have made for the general consumer, however, the electricity may not be completely generated in the vehicle though. They are called solar powered electric vehicles or SPEVs. These are used for short-distance jaunts like back and forth to the store or office.

More research needs to be done, but these cars do hold promise because they do not use any fossil fuels. They also take less maintenance as far as tune ups and oil changes. There are no emissions so you do not need to get that checked either. As time goes on better cars powered by solar will become available that will go longer distances.

I happen to know a couple, Pam and Phil, who are both teachers. One is a principal and the other happens to be a really smart English teacher. Of course, they don’t make a ton of money, and they have a baby on the way. Instead of just throwing the idea of solar power right out the window, they sat down, did the numbers, and did a lot of research too. One option they had was to put an entire system on their house and get rid of using coal and the other option allowed them to get rid of coal while paying nothing. Take a guess which option they decided to go with.

The option available is known as solar leasing. If you can’t afford to pay for a system outright, this option allows you to lease the system you need and it makes a great alternative that you won’t want to pass up. Not sure how it works? Here is a closer look.

First of all, you make the decision to go with solar power, which is definitely a great decision for the environment. Then you take measures to contact a company that leases out these systems, such as SolarCity, which works in states including Texas, California, Colorado, Oregon, and Arizona. Then you can ask them if your home is going to be a good fit for solar power. If you end up being a good candidate, then you sign all the paper work and they show up and put in a photovoltaic system on the house and you don’t have to pay. You can monitor it wirelessly and it also has a good warranty. What you pay is a fee on the setup and this fee usually ends up begin less than the electric bill you are paying. The amount stays the same as well for the entire lease life, which can save you money too.

Basically, this is a great option if you want to choose greener solar energy for your home but you don’t have the money. You don’t have to pay anything up front, they install the system for you, and you pay a fee that is less than your electric bill. You are able to kick the cola habit and you cut down on what you pay for energy each month, which is a great benefit. Of course, there are a variety of options to consider when you are considering the transition to solar energy. However, this one is one of the best options and can allow you to have the solar energy you need without the up front huge expense of paying to have the photovoltaic system put in by yourself.

The components of a solar home power system are fairly standard, but there are some variations, depending upon the type of system you install. Typically the components of a home solar electrical generation system consist of solar panels, an inverter, batteries, charge controller, safety disconnect and system monitors. Other components like a grounding circuit and special electric meter may additionally be needed or desired.

The solar panel is the heart of a home solar power system. This device collects the sun’s energy and converts it into electricity. The solar collector, or array, is usually located on the structure’s roof, facing south. Some solar arrays have tracking devices which allow them to follow the sun across the sky. These tracking systems can greatly increase the cost of the system and can be a source of maintenance problems. Most solar arrays don’t use trackers and are fixed in position at an angle which is determined by your geographic location to provide optimum solar exposure.

Since a solar cell produces DC current and the appliances in the home use AC current, an inverter is needed to convert the electricity generated by the solar cell to AC. The inverter is installed in the circuit so that power is fed from the solar cells and battery through it and into the homes electrical circuit.

The batteries used in solar home power systems are different types than those used for automobiles. Automobile batteries are termed shallow-cycle batteries. This means that they aren’t capable of discharging more than twenty percent of their charge regularly without being damaged. Batteries used in solar and wind power systems are “deep-cycle batteries, which means that they can regularly discharge up to eighty percent of their stored electricity. You will need batteries installed in your system if you plan on having a stand alone power system, or want back up storage in case utility power fails at night or during cloudy periods when the solar cells are not active..

A charge controller is needed in systems using batteries. A charge controller prevents the solar cells overcharging the batteries and damaging them. If the controller senses that batteries are fully charged, and the excess electricity is not needed for use, it will send the excess power to a shunt load. The controller will also sense when a battery has discharged its capacity and shuts it down before damage occurs.

If your system is connected to the utility electrical grid, they will probably require that you install a safety disconnect. The disconnect allows your solar home power system to be disconnected from the grid in the event of a power outage. This keeps electricity from your system from entering the grid and harming utility workers doing repairs. The safety disconnect will also help protect your system from power surges in the grid.

You will want to protect the home solar power system from damage from lightning strikes, power surges, and equipment failures. A grounding circuit does this by providing a low resistance path for the electricity to the ground.

A back up generator may be desired if you have installed a stand alone solar home power system, or if you want to have a backup for utility power outages during the night or low sun periods when the solar cells are inactive. A generator may be desired instead of using batteries for backup for grid connected systems.

The electric meter installed by the utility keeps track of the power entering your home. If a net metering policy has been instituted by the utility company, then the meter will spin backward when your solar home power system is feeding power into the grid, and forward when you are using the utility company’s power.

A solar home power system requires specialized equipment for safe and reliable use. Proper batteries, disconnects, inverters and meters should always be installed. A well designed system should provide sun generated electrical power to your home for many years.

Reduce your power bill by 80% or even eliminate it completely!