Re-animation

I'm going to reactivate this blog. I had intended to document our house building project last year in detail on this blog both as a record and hopefully to provide tips on our experience. I didn't keep it up both due to time constraints and that the project became so difficult and frustrating. The last thing I felt like doing was to write about it (short of a few vents/forewarnings). However, we're over the hump with a great weekend house.

I'm going to transition to documenting our experience in our net zero energy house. I've come to realize we are a bit more pioneering in this than I'd realized. While there's been a lot of talk about renewables, energy independence and the like, the reality is that few people are doing much beyond talk and buying CFLs. Some of this I understand as heading into this new world order is daunting both in education and cost. I hope to share my experiences with both to help others move in this direction. Many of the choices we made I'm happy with and they are performing. Some were unnecessary or disappointing.

I'm staying active in the renewable community and always looking at new technologies either that I could incorporate or just to understand developments. There are a ton of promising things in the lab but, as with most of these breakthroughs, the engineering work to bring it to market at scale are more challenging than the fundamental science. That's why there was a Manhattan Project far after nuclear fusion had been discovered.