Interiors

After the USGBC tour, we spent some time to decorate the interior, most notably with artwork by fellow designer and architect Nerin Kadribegovic. We also made a trip to Germany in May to visit Freiburg, the Route du Vin in Alsace and Basel in Switzerland and brought back 2 Gavina Wassily chairs for the living room (quite a logistical endeavor I have to say)- but they look great in the house. Our PV system has been producing a lot of power from the sun- with about four weeks into energy generation, we banked about 300kWh in surplus energy. The concept of using dimmable fluorescent light fixtures in conjunction with the high insulating properties of the walls, windows and roof (no A/C use this year so far) have reduced our energy consumption dramatically. We also had an energy audit performed and the home now scored 24% better than the California title 24 energy requirements due to improvements made during the construction phase of the project. We are now confident to achieve the high goal of “net-zero” over the course of the year.

USGBC Tour

Last Saturday's USGBC Tour was a full success and over 30 people took the tour of the Haus- It was also the first time we opened the cistern lid and discovered that it was full to the brink with rainwater!
We've been using the water to irrigate the plants, but the low water pressure led us to believe that there was almost nothing in it- well we were wrong. Our solar system continues to produce more than we use at this time (still no AC running) and we hope that we can build up a reserve before the heat of the summer hits us with $$$ in electric bills.
We also had the Solar water heater inspector in house to verify that the installation complies with the CSI requirements and the deck coating installer put on the last coat. We also finally cleaned the garage to a point that we can park the car inside. It's looking more and more like a house now...