When I bought my house, it was an upside-down T, with the stem facing southwest. In last week’s post, I talked about installing sunny windows in the southeast and southwest walls for passive solar daytime heating. Now I was trying to decide how to further remodel for more solar gain.

I could have added a greenhouse on the southeast corner adjacent to the kitchen. This was very appealing as far as harvesting food and herbs. I’d also envisioned it as a sitting area, the breakfast nook, I suppose. But I enjoyed the new windows, and one was in my bedroom. I’d have missed that if it went into a greenhouse instead of to the moon, trees and coyotes.

The warmest winter sun hit the southwest corner, so I decided to add something there. I wasn’t sure what, but many pencils and eraser goobers later, I came up with this plan. Craig Simmons of Eco Builders fleshed out the details for me.

I was content enough with the heat produced through the new windows that I put these drawings away. I was also a working single mom of two young girls, and my time constraints prevented me from doing a lot of research into this project, never mind starting and completing it! I rolled up the drawings and propped them up on my desk.

In 1997, I lived in an old block home on an irrigated acre of land in Ojo Caliente – almost the adobe dream home! I was more interested in the land than the house, and we cultivated half of it with beans, corn, tomatoes, squash, herbs and flowers that we sold to friends and co-workers.

Out near the garden, there was a small frame greenhouse with translucent polycarbonate walls. I checked the overnight temperature in early spring to see if I could start my seeds in it. It was too cold, since it was not heated or insulated. It was essentially a cold frame with an 8-foot ceiling and roof.

I started researching greenhouses and was disappointed to find all standard greenhouses need supplemental heat. This is usually generated with electric heaters for something as small as I was looking at. Aside from growing food to eat healthy, cost needs to be taken into consideration. Heating a non-insulated building of plastic walls with electricity was not cost-effective.

I came across the Growing DomeR Greenhouse in a gardening magazine. It is still available, and I see them popping up across the landscape as food and energy costs rise. This is a passive solar, geodesic design with glazing on the south side and insulated solid walls on the north side. Planting beds and the concrete slab floor are the thermal mass, along with a pond. Do you remember the 55-gallon drums in the solar pods? Poisson knew water is one of the best materials for thermal mass. It must be sized properly so it can radiate heat effectively. The pond can hold fish or water plants, or boards can be placed across it to make more room for container plants.

The combination of masses in this greenhouse meant no supplemental heat. It was an environment that took care of itself – an ecosystem of sorts. I was sold on it immediately!

For a variety of reasons, though, I didn’t purchase one at the time, but this is the only greenhouse I recommend to anyone. It needs no extra heat, and the larger ones double as a small living space as well.

Ten years later, it is spring 2007, and I want to start my vegetables from seed. I am toying with the idea of buying a 12′ diameter dome greenhouse and putting it about 100′ from the house down the hill on my property. This is a sweet, quiet, sunny spot with completely different views and feel than the house. A few cottonwoods along the irrigation ditch give the space a cozy feel and summer shade. A passive solar greenhouse here would be an excellent get-away.

As I walked the land, I began to picture it. I imagined bringing in electricity and water, and building a path of crusher fines between the greenhouse, the house and the garden. I considered views, sun, neighbors and the heat the greenhouse would produce. I wanted to somehow move the extra heat back up to the house in winter. I thought of underground ductwork, insulation, fans….. My little greenhouse project was getting complicated, the kind a contractor would balk at.

In a split second, like the cartoon cliche of a light bulb going off over your head, my face went from bewilderment to wonderment and glee! I decided to build an attached passive solar greenhouse for heat and food. Remember the mention of this book??

I dusted off my original vision and the drawings Craig and I had worked on a few years before.

More info about:

Growing DomeR Greenhouse http://www.geodesic-greenhouse-kits.com/

Craig Simmons, Eco Builders http://www.ecobuilderstaos.com/

As winter fast approaches, so does the cold, and with it rising energy usage, taking a toll on the environment and your wallet. As a child, I used to love winters for those days at home when I could curl up on the couch with a book, a heavy blanket, and a hot cup of hot chocolate or tea. It didn?t bother me that the air was colder.

So steam heat up some tea or chocolate and start using these basic tips to keep energy consumption low when upgrading your home is not possible.

The Air – A lot of your energy consumption comes from heating costs. Install a programmable thermostat to maintain different temperatures when you are home and when you are away. When running heaters with automatic control, close doors leading to empty rooms. Open curtains facing the sun when it is shining to take advantage of passive solar heating, and at nighttime or on cloudy days keep them drawn to hold in the heat, especially if you don?t have energy-saving windows.

Also, keep your furnace nice and tuned. Replace or clean furnace filters once a month. You can save up to 5 percent on heating costs by keeping your furnace lubricated and stocked with a clean filter. Turn your central heating down by 1 degree and you can save up to 10 percent on heating costs. Replace weather stripping on windows and caulk drafty air leaks to make sure you?re keeping warm air in and cold air out.

The Water – I know…I know. The last thing anyone wants is give up hot showers when the air is chilly. Still, most people keep their water too hot. Keep your hot water heater set at 120 degrees. Many manufacturers set their heaters at 140 before sending them from the factory, but this is completely unnecessary in the average home. You can also insulate your hot water heater to keep the heat from dissipating. Click here for some tips.

Another great way to make your heated water usage as efficient as possible is to install a hot water heater timer so you it is only warm at the times of day when it is needed. It is crucial to most of us to have hot water flowing in the winter, but it is it really necessary 24 hours a day? Here are some great tips on insulating.

Your Body – When it comes to warmth in the home, you’re really worried about yourself. Make the most of your body heat and bundle up. Get comfortable when hanging around the house – no one is going to see you. Wear a beanie, nice warm pajamas, and wool socks. Keep some down comforters near the couch for when you’re watching television.

Keep in mind that layering provides more warmth than thick clothing. The first time I went to Europe I found this out and made it through a month of backpacking in snowed-over German cities without a jacket. And where I?m from it doesn?t even snow.

Also, there is a common misconception that people sleep better when they crank up the heat, but research shows reasonably cool temperatures to be more conducive to healthy REM. If you?ve ever tossed and turned in sweaty blankets in the summer heat or the tropics, this makes perfect sense. Don?t go too extreme though?really cold temperatures can be disruptive?and keep your socks on because having cold feet will not make you sleep better.

Most importantly, stay active. When you?re home, work around the house. Get involved with the community when you?re not working. Play sports or join a club. When you?re constantly on the move, you don?t have time to get cold, and it is a lot healthier in many ways than sitting around all day in a heated home watching television.

By employing these simple tips, you can have a comfortable winter without cranking up the energy costs. You will find that you don?t even notice the differences in the water temperature, and even if you drastically reduce the air temperatures you will soon get used to it. Staying warm as the weather fouls doesn?t have to mean Neanderthals hunched around a fire in a small cave – just use your brain.

When everyone moves to Taos, they want to buy an old adobe home on an acre of irrigated land. I was no different. I searched for a house for three years. Some homes were perfect, but just out of my price range, some transactions fell through, and the perfect three-acre piece of land needed an expensive 1/4 mile long driveway through a swamp.

I stumbled across my current home in the newspaper in December 1998. It was nothing what I was looking for – 1800 sq ft of frame ranch on .87 acres of sagebrush – but it had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a studio space and incredible mountain views. The biggest selling points, though, were the two covered porches (north and south) and the established flower gardens, strawberry patch and apple tree. It was in my price range, and the transaction did not fall through, so it was mine in January of 1999.

Do you remember my advice from last week? Don’t move in until the work is done! I hadn’t forgotten, so I shelled out one more months’ rent and upgraded my new home from afar.

I painted the walls with BioShield natural paint. I bought five gallon buckets of white and tinted them. The price was comparable to five gallons of toxic paint, so money could not keep me from creating a healthy home. I replaced the dark brown, cat-smelly carpet in the living room and bedroom with an oak Upofloor brand floating floor with a non-toxic finish.

While the contractors and I beautified my new digs, I watched the winter sun.

My observations showed that the winter sun drenched windowless walls. I was so in love with the porches, gardens and views that I hadn’t noticed! Common to Taos, picture windows face north and northeast to the mountain views. Very beautiful, but very cold! I knew then that my next project would be installing windows on the sunny side.

The house was oriented SE to SW, with the sunny side facing southwest. In a perfect solar world, a home should have an east-west orientation with the long wall facing south. This collects the most sun for maximum heat collection. You can have a variation of 15 degrees from true south, but up to 45 is acceptable. My orientation was ‘acceptable.’

That summer, I found a local warehouse of hundreds of wood windows recycled from a company that had gone out of business. I had measured my interior walls for available space and chose windows as close to the maximum size as possible.

In early October, just in time for winter, my new southwest facing windows were installed! While we had the walls open, we beefed up the insulation where it was thinning and sagging.

Over the following winter, I continued to watch the sun bathe the house inside and out.

The huge room my daughters shared was a two-car garage now enclosed in a previous remodel. The sunny side was mostly blank wall with two narrow windows across the top. I hired a builder friend to put in a glass door, and a large window on one side and a trombe wall on the other side.

A trombe wall is a window installed over a wall of thermal mass (concrete, adobe, water). Vents into the house are placed at top and bottom. As the sun heats the wall, warm air moves into the house through the top vent, and cooler air replaces it to be heated and moved back inside via convection currents.It is an effective way to use solar energy without having the sun directly in the house, if you don’t want to place a window to unwanted views, or if you want privacy.

The large window materialized, and the trombe wall did not (long, irrelevant story), but the solar energy I did harvest warmed the room during the day. It also hit the concrete slab and radiated a bit at night. This was not high-tech, but it served its purpose to cut the daytime heating down for that dark room.

Meanwhile, I observed the sun for several years. Plans for a major remodel percolated slowly and deliciously like fine coffee, and my restless, latent architect went to work with pencil, eraser and graph paper.

(Click for more information on trombe walls, Bioshield paint and Upofloor.)

As you gear up for the harvest season, you are no doubt getting excited to taste the fruits of your labor, especially if you are new to organic gardening. But you need to start thinking about what you are going to do with all that produce. It just isn’t feasible to plan on eating it all the first week, and letting it all go to waste is a waste of your time. You need to start thinking about preservation. Knowing how to make your fruits and vegetables last is a crucial skill for any home gardener.

But where to start? Well, you have quite a few options and many gardeners find ways to make their harvest last throughout the year.

One of the simplest ways to stretch out your harvest is to know how long you can wait to harvest particular crops. Root vegetables are really resistant to a frost and some can be left in the ground all the way to the following spring and dug up as they are needed. Some, such as carrots, brussel sprouts, and cabbage, will even taste better after some exposure to the colder weather.

This is referred to as wintering over, and it is very location specific. In particularly cold climates where freezing occurs in the winter, you can apply thick layers of mulch to keep the crops from being damaged. Usually seed packets give some idea of when it is best to harvest, but by talking to more experienced organic gardeners in your area you can get a better idea about what is realistic for your climate.

Freezing is a great, simple method of preservation that takes very little know-how. Bag up fruits and berries and you can blend them with organic juices later to make delicious smoothies without the ice. Better for you and better tasting. Keep in mind what you will be doing with the items later. You might want to chop up bulkier vegetables and fruits first depending on what you need them for. Bigger fruits, for instance, are a lot easier to blend later if you chop them into smaller pieces.

Also, a lot of vegetables will need to undergo a quick process called blanching before you throw them in the freezer. Blanching is a cooking technique in which you scald the vegetables in a pot of boiling water and then put it in cold water immediately after. This stops the production of enzymes which might otherwise cause the produce to continue growing and develop a strange taste in the freezer. The National Center for Home Food Preservation has a list of blanching times for different vegetables of different sizes.

Canning is perhaps the most well known method of preservation, but many amateur gardeners are overwhelmed by what they see as a very complicated process. It really is not too complex, and people have been doing this for years so it is easy to find information.

Canned produce can last for years. This is particularly a great idea for prepared products, such as pasta sauces or jams. It is nice to just grab a jar of sauce out of the pantry when you want to make some dinner rather than running to the store or preparing something from scratch. The HomeCanning.com offers some great advice for getting started. (homecanning.com)

Drying, or dehydration, is another well known form of preservation that works especially well for herbs and fruits. Dried fruits make an excellent snack. The process of dehydration, whether using a fancy dehydrating machine or more traditional methods, removes the moisture from fruits and vegetables so bacteria can?t grow and cause the produce to spoil. It is usually best to use special recipes on the fruits to preserve a more high quality product and add more flavor. Click here for a simple guide to drying and dehydrating foods.

Another effective preservation tool is a root cellar. These have been used for a long time as well, and you don?t necessarily have to have a big elaborate cellar built for the purpose. You just need to create a similar environment with high humidity and very cool temperatures. Earth-House.com has a great list of resources about root cellaring.

We all know fruits and veggies are best when you pluck them straight from the vine and dice them up, but unfortunately we have no say about what is in season and when. So make the most of your harvest. Stretch it out and turn it into the resource it is supposed to be. The information is out there, you just have to put in a little effort and put it all to use.

My first home purchase in 1985 was a summer ‘camp.’ A retired couple from Florida spent their summers in Lee, NH on a wooded acre on the Lamprey River. Their camp was a 22′ travel trailer with a 12′x18′ living room added onto the south side. They were tired of traveling back and forth, and decided to settle in Florida year-round, so they sold, and I bought, their camp.

We finalized our transaction in early October, and I desperately and quickly needed to winterize it. This was my first experience with remodeling, but I got to put into play some of the carpentry I had learned the year before.

I hired a carpenter friend to take care of the rotting roof decking and build a frame for insulation on the north side of the trailer. Then I hired a less expensive high school kid to help me insulate the frameand crawl underneath to insulate the floor, tacking chicken wire over it to hold it in place. Now I was ready for winter, but I knew I was not going to live in this summer set-up forever.

While I was working on the roof, I caught the view of the lazy Lamprey River. I decided I’d have to build a second story on my dream home to catch the view. Just then I realized an unseen bonus of the property. The river was to the south, so I had solar orientation and views! Not many people can say that!

Over the winter, I watched the sun carefully. I charted its course through my living room windows, and as naturally as your heart beats, I designed a passive solar home.

I tried various floor plans, but came back to the same design over and over, because the principles of solar energy do not change. The winter weather patterns of northern New England do not change, either, unfortunately. I caught the most sun and retained the most heat with large south facing windows, small east and west windows, and a fairly closed in north wall. I took advantage of the cooling breezes off the river by placing casement windows opening south in east and west walls, and adding north and south doors to move that cool air through the house.

When I felt I had a good design, I talked to several contractors and finally hired a man who trained at The Shelter Institute in Bath, Maine. We built a post and beam house of native materials. It was super insulated with double framing and Tyvek, but today, Shelter uses SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels, ‘a high performance panelized building system. SIPs create an extremely well insulated and air tight building envelope. An efficient building envelope is a critical component in an effectively integrated green building.’)

We started in September, and in January, it was complete enough to move in (advice: don’t ever move into a home before it’s done!). It was well-insulated and sported top-notch double pane windows, and my first impression was, ‘There’s no air in here! It’s too tight!’ I’d achieved my goal of not letting heat get out, but fresh air could not get in, either. Since then, I have learned about air exchangers, and this was the perfect situation for one. More about that later.

The following winter, I took a road trip out west. As I was driving across southern California and Arizona, I was amazed and thrilled with the endless sun! The idealist in me wondered why there were no solar power plants. This was unheard of back then (1987) unlike talk of it today. Just as that question crossed my mind, I came upon the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station fifty miles west of Phoenix on I-10. In my naivete, I was appalled and angered.?

I was determined to solarize the world!

Fast forward to 1999, and I was raising two girls in Taos in a rambling 1964 ranch house.

(Click for more info on The Shelter Institute and SIPs)

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Before you dismiss this article and insist there is no way you could live without your vehicle, hear me out. I was back in America holding down a job, running a business, and excelling at the university when I sold my truck to use a bicycle for transport. It was the best decision I ever made. There are a lot of reasons getting rid of your car is an awesome lifestyle choice. Even where I lived at the time, where nowhere worth going is less than a fifteen minute drive and the city transport system begs for an upgrade, I immediately saw improvements in my quality of life.

Here are some reasons why ditching the automobile is a good decision:

Your Social Life – Without a car, you now have to depend on others more often. Depending on other people for rides makes you associate with others more often. Your socials skills get better and you end up getting invited to a lot more social events.

Even if you’re walking, riding a bike, or taking the bus, you are forced to talk to people more. I often got off the bus and before my bike ride home I’d pop in to see a friend who lived nearby or stop at my favorite brewery for a quick beer and some hot wings. On the bus, I found myself talking and associating with amazing people I never would have met sitting in my air-conditioned truck with the windows rolled up.

This constant companionship is great for your health – humans need this kind of social interaction. As with anything, a balance is good, and being around people so often can be a test in patience, but patience is a skill many people need to cultivate.

Good for your Health – Possibly the most obvious of benefits to not having a car are to your health. Being forced to walk or ride a bike gets you outside in the fresh air and all that pedaling is great exercise. You will soon find there is no need for going to the gym.

Good for your mind – Using the older forms of transportation slows you down. You get a completely different sense of time and place. You see the world in differently. You see the plight of people less fortunate than you and develop a new sense of how your community functions – what it would be like without it. Moving along in a fast-paced world at a slower pace gives you a perspective you would not otherwise have.

Good for your Spirit - Now that you have put new challenges upon yourself, you have to rise and meet them. As you pedal everywhere you go or sometimes struggle to juggle a ride, you find you often earn every small step of your life. This may not seem attractive to some, but it is great for the human spirit.

When I would get back from an exhausting day of school or get off work at two o’ clock in the morning and face the uphill ride home in the rain, I would sometimes doubt my decision, but as soon as I walked in the door to my house I felt a sense of triumph, accented by the fact that I was finally living in line with my beliefs. Which brings up the last point?

Good for Your Soul – Not having a car is better for the environment, of course, and you are participating in the act of change. People around you will see the changes in your life. Some may resist those changes, but others will admire you and eventually follow suit. Living out your principles gives you a sense of purpose.

Adjusting to a car-free lifestyle is not an easy process, but for those who live in cities, this kind of living can even be easier than the former option. With a new emphasis on sustainable city planning, we will see more and more cities and towns built around the idea that living without wheels is a healthier choice.

In my own experience, giving up the my limiting vehicle and all the chains that came with it gave me the freedom and courage to throw some of my things into a backpack, move out of my home, and take off to see the world. Not everyone’s decision will lead to such a drastic change, but I assure you, with a little patience, a little effort, and a little lateral thinking, a car-free lifestyle will change your life. For the better.

After graduating from UNH, I worked on a couple of vegetable farms and a u-pick fruit farm and did some landscaping. What I really wanted to do, though, was build solar greenhouses. I called a local company that retrofitted them onto existing homes. The owner was excited about my enthusiasm. Remember, this was the early 80s, solar was not an everyday word yet, and not many women were carpenters.

In our initial phone call, he asked if I had any carpentry experience, or if I at least knew the terminology. Although I’d wanted to be an architect my whole life, I didn’t have the knowledge he needed. He suggested I work in a cabinet shop for six months to a year to learn carpentry basics. He recommended a shop to me, where I got a job right away. I was excited to get started on this new path!

I built cabinet doors for several months. I played with pine, oak, cherry, maple and birch studying their grains and the differences in how they looked and felt, how each acted with a saw and a sander, and how each responded to stain and varnish. It was quite an education, and I loved it!

I spent a lot of my day sanding those beautiful raw woods. The orbital sander was my pal. I came home covered in and throughout with sawdust every night. It was exhausting, physical work, and the conditions were far from ideal, but I never lost sight of my plan to build solar greenhouses.

After six months of radial arm saws, table saws, circular saws and joiners, the lesson I learned was that I didn’t like power tools. The orbital sander remained my friend, but the rest were bigger and scarier than me.?

There went my carpentry career!

When I left the cabinet shop, I took my newly acquired knowledge of building, terminology and woods along with the few hand tools I had to buy. Little did I know the following year would bring me my first energy efficient remodel.

Green industries are changing faster than ever, and with change comes a vast array of new technologies. We need experts who know who understand the bigger picture and how to incorporate these new technologies into our lives. For you aspiring college students considering majors, you’re facing one of the biggest decisions of your life. Green is the way to go. Here are some emerging fields of study revolutionizing the way we live:

Sustainable City Planning – The future requires innovative city planners who know how to can organize our lives to live with the environment rather than against it. What may have once come across as a drab field has now become very exciting as concepts we have never even considered are being factored into planning out living spaces. Portland State University, located in the only U.S. City qualified as in the world’s stop ten sustainable cities, offers a minor.

For those with long-range goals, you can get a Master of Science in Sustainable Urban Design at Lund University in Switzerland.

Human Ecology – A one of a kind university with a unique approach, The College of the Atlantic in Maine has only one degree – Human Ecology. Students are free to focus on resource areas, designing their own degree from a wide spectrum of disciplines, but the main focus is how humans interact with natural ecology. This has been dubbed as the greenest college on Earth.

Environmental Law – Radical new paradigms shifts require new laws, regulations, and civic responsibilities. Smart lawyers need to bring big corporations who think only of profit to justice. The Vermont Law School offers one of the best programs available.

Conservation Biology – Learning to live better with the land requires a deeper understanding of how the environment functions. We need to conserve what we have not already destroyed for generations to come. The University of Minnesota offers an in-depth graduate program for those with ambitious goals.

Green MBA Program – Entrepreneurs have finally come to the realization that not only can making money and saving the world mix, but economics is one of the most powerful motivators of social change. If you want to mix your entrepreneurial spirit with your social responsibility, check out the green MBA program at the University of California, Berkeley: Haas School of Business.

Energy and Environmental Engineering – Obviously, energy development is a huge field as well and sharp scientific brains are needed to unlock Nature’s mysteries. Opportunities abound in solar, wind, hydro, biofuels, and many more emerging technologies especially at programs offered by Illinois State University and Texas Tech University Wind Science and Engineering Research Center.

Sustainable Architecture – One of the most vital ways we can change our environmental impact is by rethinking the way we build our homes. Creative new innovations implement new techniques based on biomimicry and other concepts to achieve in our homes what Nature often already does perfectly.

Arizona State University School of Architecture

Sustainable Agriculture – Our agricultural systems are wasteful, inefficient, and take a big toll on the water and land. This field alone raises very challenging questions about the way we live. Warren Wilson College in North Carolina with offers hands-on training in a 300 acre farm and a 600 acre forest for hands on learning.

This list is far from complete in terms of both available degrees and universities offering them, but it is a good start to get you thinking. Be at the forefront of change. Make your living doing what?s right. For perhaps the first time in America?s history, that is where the money will be.