2020 Family Carbon Impact Report

While it's certainly been an eventful year, between COVID-19, raising a toddler, and moving to a new town, I haven't been sharing as much on here, mostly as a way to maintain family privacy.  Reach out if you'd like to see more of us!

I'm happy to share our

2020 Carbon Impact Report;

click here to see it in full!

Drop any comments / questions below, or email me;
I'd love to engage with you on this topic!

2019 Family Carbon Impact Report

I'm happy to share our
2019 Carbon Impact Report;
click here to see it in full!

Drop any comments / questions below, or email me; I'd love to engage with you on this topic!

Solar Thermal + Cheap = Inexpensive Pool Heater!

[UPDATE #3: Check out the newer post / summary here showing some of the improvements, as well as simple schematic, etc.]

[UPDATE: See end of article about materials used and height differential!  Also new pump notes!]

Just wanted to share pics and tidbits on how my roommate and I decided to heat our pool without breaking the bank.  While commercial estimates were coming in at between $5000 and $6000, we managed to heat our pool with a weekend of work and about $300 at Home Depot, and about $100/year in electricity.

I should also note that I didn't come up with this method, and that two good friends, JM and DB, did something very similar before me, and we all learned a bit from various websites, including Solar Pool Heating.

Being in southern California, our pool was about 73 degrees in the afternoons of late June.  This was certainly warm enough to enjoy, but we wanted to prepare for the winter (and to see how hot we could get it this summer!).  I'm happy to report that our temperature is now about 86 in the afternoon, and still rising daily.

We start with a submerged pump in the pool.  Since we happened to have two free, smaller pumps, we hooked them up in series.  They're driven by a 110 VAC outlet, and controlled by a simple daily lamp timer.

Pumps in Series (not req'd if you just get a bigger pump)

Primitive Control & Measurement

Next, the output of the pumps goes up onto the roof via some black drip irrigation tubing, 1/2" diameter, and coiled about 45 times to finish at around 6 or 7 feet in diameter.

2 of the 6 coils, the other four are on the south facing side of the roof for now.

There are a total of 6 coils, 500 feet each.  The pipe comes in rolls of 1000 feet at Home Depot for $80 (we used DIG corp, SKU # 642176), cut in half for more manageable handling.

6 Coils of pipe.  Roughly equal to one third of our pool top surface area.

The construction of each coil is designed to be inexpensive.  Just PVC and some zip ties.  Use a wooden block to space out the PVC as you start, and use zip ties liberally to keep the coils in order.  Get two spinning tables (lazy susans, office chairs, be creative!) and directly spool from the supply to the PVC.  Two people work best, though it is doable with one.

One pretty coil.

Sample coil showing PVC construction

We decided to split the water into two channels, and have each channel run through three coils, from one to the next.  We're still debating what the best speed is for the water, but this seems very reasonable.  I guess we could pump faster, though it is mid-day at mid-summer, so maybe we'll want that slow speed in the winter.

The pipes are held together with simple press compression fittings.  I'm astounded at how they don't leak air at all.  I think they're magic.

Sample joint

 Then the water returns to the pool.   I just measured the water coming out of the hose at 2pm to be 114 degrees F.

UPDATE: We have had an issue lately with the black tubing on the roof collapsing due to the vacuum being pulled by the water wanting to flow down both ends of the tube when the pump is off.  Not sure the solution yet, maybe a more powerful pump to overcome this when it kicks on, or maybe a second pump on the roof?  Maybe the black tubing is just not structural enough.  Thoughts and suggestions?

UPDATE #2:  Thanks for the suggestions in your comments.  We upgraded to a surplus pump that is definitely oversized -- one half horsepower!  The flow rate is high, but we still get excellent thermal transfer; the water comes out nice and hot despite it being fall now.  We followed Dan's suggestion and bought a pump here.  The pump 'inflated' the hoses just fine and we have been running for a few days without incident.  Will re-update here, if we run into trouble!

Electric Vehicle rant

[Click here for the whole cartoon,
Blogger cuts this one off]

Most of you know that I really like the idea of electric vehicles as well as plug-in hybrid vehicles. Thanks to my friend SP for pointing out Mike Adams' (www.NaturalNews.com) great cartoon about "GreenBoasting." Adams writes:

"Why did Ford, GM and most of the American car companies ridicule Toyota over the idea of hybrid cars, and then later jump on the bandwagon with half-hybrid vehicles that don't really qualify as full hybrids in the first place? ... The truth is that auto companies are into GREENBOASTING -- the practice of spouting off environmental-sounding nonsense in order to please customers and increase sales."

While I do think that Tesla Motors have a fantastic vehicle, I think there's a better solution for me. For those that don't know, Tesla can boast some serious numbers (from their website):

• 0-60 in 3.9 seconds
• 135 miles per gallon equivalent
• 220 mile range
• All electric, enabling a cost of 2 cents per mile!
• Currently in production!

[Photo from http://www.teslamotors.com/ (Design Gallery) ]

The "Better Solution" that's out there for someone that needs an everyday car, a daily driver, as opposed to a sports car, is the plug-in hybrid vehicle. This way, you can putz around town going to work and back on all electric power. When you do want to take a road trip, you can still fill up at the gas station.

There are the numbers from Aptera's plug-in hybrid (from their website):

• 40+ miles on electric charge (enough for the great majority of Americans)
• 130 MPG for road trips (anything greater than 120 miles)
• 85+ mph top speed
• a bit sluggish 0-60 in 10 seconds
• $29,900 sticker price ($3k less if you want all electric)
• "Production of the Aptera is slated for late 2008."
  

[Photo from http://oneworldnews.files.wordpress.com ]

Carbon neutrality in the skies

After reading the following in the Singapore Airlines magazine, I had to think some more about what was happening each moment I sat happily cruising around the world:

"Flying in an A380, you are personally creating less carbon dioxide
than you would do driving the average family car. You will also be
using less fuel, at around 2.9litre per passenger per 100km."**

Turns out that I'm not nearly the first to post about my carbon footprint while cruising around the world -- not surprising. These folks have a few articles about the upcoming super jumbo jets that are actually designed to be more fuel-efficient per passenger than any other passenger planes.

Says one carbon-neutral flying blogger: "So, here's one way to reduce your carbon footprint - once it comes along insist on flying with the A380."

Unfortunately, as the Telegraph points out, because of how the jet is configured (with full onboard hotel-suites in place of multiple rows of passengers), the per-passenger footprint goes down. EDIT: The per-passenger footprint goes up; I meant the efficiency goes down! (thanks SP) If we could measure on a per-square-foot scale (which might actually equal one economy class seat!), the numbers might make sense again.

The good news is that Airbus and Boeing aren't the only ones thinking about the impact of cruising through the friendly skies: Virgin Atlantic recently flew a 747-400 jumbo jet on (20%) biofuels. This, in conjunction with Richard Branson's "Virgin Earth Challenge," a $25 million prize (any chance we can get that in Pounds or Euros, Dick?) for removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

===

Oh, and folks, let's just put the Gossamer Albatross (pic below) out of our heads for the moment, cause it's seriously depressing for someone like me who would actually love the chance to cross an ocean under my own leg power.


** Can anyone point me towards a resource to compare this 2.9L/passenger/100km figure to other modes of transportation?

Carbon footprint of my jaunts

Since I'm really not doing much good for the environment by hopping on a plane all over the world, I thought it would be good to balance out my carbon footprint -- enter 2people.org, a cool site that I've contributed content to in the past.

They have a page dedicated to buying carbon credits. Interestingly, one of the biggest companies that does this, TerraPass didn't make the "nice list. " (They're trying to stay off the "naughty list" by writing a rebuttal.) They estimate that my Honda s2000 generated 8,510 lbs carbon dioxide this last year, and that my trips on airplanes coming up 13,546 lbs of CO2 (from 692 gallons of jet fuel -- just for me!). They're asking ~$100 to offset this footprint.

CarbonCounter.org (one of the US offset suppliers on the "nice list") estimates my footprint for the same criteria as 24.5 metric tons of CO2. That's 54,000 lbs. Slight disparity from TerraPass. They're asking ~$300 to offset this footprint.

NativeEnergy.com (also a US solution from "nice list") estimates my footprint as 18.365 tons of CO2. Interesting. They also said my total miles traveled is 1,000,034,798.03, which I kind of doubt. They're asking ~$230 to offset this footprint.

I could go on all day. I'm gonna let it stew some and maybe read te full report on these vendors, pick one, and go with it. Doing something is better than doing nothing.