We just found out about a terrific program through SFEnvironment for energy upgrades to single family homes. They have cobbled together grants from a federal stimulus bill, PG&E and other rebate sources to help put contractors to work and help homeowners improve their home’s performance. The catch is that the money has to be spent before June of 2012, and they are behind in getting the word out about the program.
The basic process is as follows: You have your home audited for energy use by one of their approved contractors. They will look at things such as your insulation, furnace, water heater, etc., do a blower door test to measure your air flow changes per hour as is (to see how leaky your house is now) and give you a list of suggested improvements. The fees for this audit are partially paid by the program – you should be out of pocket no more than $100-200. You then decide on the upgrades you want to do based on expected performance improvement as a percentage. The contractor coordinates the paperwork with the city and based on the amount of energy use reduced, you can earn from $5500 for 15% reduction, up to $8000 for 40% reduction (typical in San Francisco is about 35%). If you earn less than 120% of San Francisco’s median income, ($121,900 for a family of 4) then you can qualify for an additional $3000. In the end many families who have participated have only been out of pocket a few hundred dollars. They not only reduce their gas and electric bills, but also greatly improve the comfort of their homes.
We will embark on the process for our own home with David and Scott of Building Efficiency performing our audit this Friday and we would be happy to share our experience as the project progresses. Keep an eye on our blog for more information!
The video that was attached to Beausoleil Architects latest blog, titled Architectural Magic, recently received the attention of over two and a half million viewers on YouTube. The ‘inside’ story can be seen in their new video, Architectural Magic II, which shows the garage doors from the inside.
Working off of the concept design from Robert Boles of Beausoleil, Rick Dentoni, of Automatic Gate Installations designed and fabricated the steel structural space frame which supports the original wood framed bay window facade and allows it to operate as a door. He also designed and installed the control and safety systems that operate the door safely. Rick’s controls coordinate the timing of the two sides of the door, which have to operate in succession in order to clear each other.
Since the door’s completion earlier this year, the owner, Corey McMills of McMills Construction reports a number of curious and, in some cases angry, passersby. A few people have been upset about not being able to park in front of what looks like a bay window, and ask why there is a curb cut and a no parking sign. Quite a few slack jawed individuals have been noticed as the facade opens up and cars exit onto the road. Since the video went viral, there have even been a few tourists who stop on busy Oak Street to take their own photos in front of the famous façade!
Thank you for all the attention and great feedback! We hope it leads leads to more opportunities for creative architectural solutions that maintain the historical fabric and resources, while allowing buildings to be modernized to the needs of the present.
How do you turn a bay window into gold? Simple, just make it disappear.
Corey and Ben McMills of McMills Construction had a problem. Their investment property on Oak Street, near Ashbury and facing the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park, needed to have a garage built to enhance his tenant’s use of the building and maximize their rent. Parking, as is true in much of San Francisco, is hard to find in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and is almost more valuable than living space. They turned to Beausoleil Architects for help.
The bottom floor of the building, a historic Victorian apartment house, had a hodgepodge of storage rooms, utility spaces and an ancient studio apartment shoehorned between a dozen wood posts. The original brick foundations were underfoot. The project structural engineer, Don David of Double D Engineering determined that as part of upgrading the seismic strength of the structure they could get rid of the columns and the partitions, build new concrete footings, and create a clean open garage space. The problem, as Corey found out when he asked the planning department to review the project, was how to get a car in.
The front wall of the ground floor had a three sided bay window, with windows on each face, matching the bays on the levels above, and the city planning department had recently started enforcing its mandate to limit changes to the character of historic building’s front facades – including conversion of bay windows into garage doors. Their design guidelines require that fronts of buildings, front yards, fencing, and similar relics of historic design be left largely intact, and that changes must be made in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings. Replacement of the bay window with a garage door, a common practice for many years, was no longer an option.
Corey, a mechanical engineer by education and a problem solver by nature, conceived the idea of converting the walls of the bay window into door panels that would fold into the garage space to allow cars to enter, and then fold back into place, keeping the historic appearance intact. The planning department agreed that this concept was provisionally acceptable. To help him realize this concept, Corey hired fellow problem solver Robert Boles of Beausoleil Architects to devise the details and keep the project in-line with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards. One of the goals of the standards is to keep not only the historical appearance, but to keep the ‘historic fabric’ – the original wood and glass building materials – intact wherever possible.
Beausoleil carefully measured the elements of the existing façade and drew them up, then determined how the bay window sides could be split apart from the rest of the building with almost invisible seams. They envisioned a steel framework that would be secured to the back of the walls before they were cut away from the structure – allowing the fabric of the building to remain virtually intact, studs, siding, windows all moving in concert. The front yard, which had a possibly original wrought iron fence, also had to be redesigned to incorporate a driveway and a percentage of planting areas in accordance with the zoning code. Beausoleil prepared a supplementary set of construction drawings to complement the structural set previously approved.
To make the doors work mechanically, there are two floor mounted hydraulic activators, which rotate the doors on pivot hinges. Further details, including control and security hardware, were worked out in the field by the installer, Rick Dentoni of Automatic Gate Installations.
The new garage will provide four parking spaces, while eliminating only ten feet of parking space on the street. While not entirely pleasing to the city planners, who consider cars to be the spawn of the devil, the new parking will no doubt be very useful to the tenants, at least until we can devise our next trick – teleportation!
The project still needs a little finish carpentry and painting, but you can get the idea in the photos and video below.
This is hopefully the first installment of a rags to riches story: how discarded water from your laundry (that’s the rags part) can turn into edible riches.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is launching a new Laundry to Landscape pilot program, the object of which is to install greywater systems that utilize laundry wastewater for irrigating landscaping, thus reducing water and sewer use. The program is aimed at single and duplex home owners, and includes a short training class and subsidised sale of the necessary piping equipment.
For those not familiar with Greywater systems, they involve the use of wastewater from bathroom sinks, showers, bathtubs and laundries to irrigate landscaping (and in some cases for toilet flushing). Wastewater from toilets, utility sinks and kitchen sinks are not included, as they contain much more bacterial and chemical components and need more sophisticated treatment. Bathroom sinks, laundries, showers and tubs, given the use of appropriate cleansers, are considered safe for use in landscaping, as long as some basic precautions are taken with how the water is distributed. The state has even legalized ‘simple’ systems, involving water from a laundry, without needing a permit. More complex systems are also possible, however. Check out the Greywater Alliance or Greywater Action for general information.
The program is being run by the Urban Farmer Store of San Francisco, and they are looking for 150 volunteers for the pilot. The benefits include a $95.00 subsidy on parts and training by experts. This will cover most of the costs for many people.
We intend to irrigate edible plants -- a small fruit orchard and blueberry bushes – with our system. It may take a few years for things to mature (growing edible plants in San Francisco’s climate is always a challenge!) but we have hopes for a cornucopia.
Yippee! Our current monthly electric charges from PG&E are at a record low -$0.34! Keep in mind that we only designed our solar system to offset about 55% of our typical usage. Hooray for that "beau" soleil, and hoorah for the long summer days of June.
Yesterday was our record day so far with 20.41 kilowatts generated by our 2.7kwh system.
After one year of solar generation and data collection, the good news, particularly interesting to you San Franciscans worried about the effects of fog, is that solar does indeed work year round, even in our peculiar climate.
Below is a graph of kilowatt hours generated each month of the year, starting in November 2009 through October 2009. As can be expected, the lowest month of generation is January with 260.59 kwh (not surprising given the short days of winter), the highest month April, with 500.84. In most places on our hemisphere, this number would go up higher as the days lengthen in June, but our fog came a little early this year.
For those of you interested in the bottom line, I have to start by apologizing for an earlier omission to our monthly costs. PG&E has been billing us monthly for the costs of energy distribution and other fees, but not our actual energy use, which accumulates every month until the true up period one year later (some months are positive, others negative). We just paid our true up bill of $196.91, so I owe you a year's accounting.
I am comparing the total costs of pre-solar 2008 and solar 2009, including all payments to PG&E and to Solar City for our monthly lease expense of approximately $30 per month. The comparison is by cost only, and does not compare usage (which to our chagrin, even with our efforts to turn off more lights and replace lightbulbs, has increased by about 300kwh for the year). The cost comparison also does not reflect the increase in PG&E rates for electricity, which are impossible to account for this year as PG&E has just switched to a time of day metering.
Total savings for the year are $616.38 with almost 6,000 pounds of C02 offset!
The award ceremony for the new green certified businesses in San Francisco took place last week in, appropriately, the Green Room at the War Memorial building across from City Hall. Beausoleil was recognized as one of 60 newly certified businesses in the last year. This brings the total to 160 green businesses in a city of over 10,000 total.
We are very proud of our award, seen above, printed with eco friendly soy based inks, using recycled pallets and glass from a hotel demolition for the frame, put together by ecoimprints, another fabulous San Francisco Green Business.
We encourage you business owners out there to check out the green business program in San Francisco or the larger Bay Area. Their process was incredibly helpful in finding new ways to save money and further green our business practices. Besides the immediate environmental benefits, this could prove to be an even more important step in these difficult financial times to set your business apart from the competition!
Forget June gloom, we actually had a nice June this year with over 455 kwh generated and a PG&E electric bill record low of only $3.04!
Now that the fog is really here for our typical cold San Francisco summer, I thought I would post the solar data from two back to back days, one sunny, one foggy.
The first is from this Tuesday, July 14, a glorious clear summer day with 19.42 kilowatts generated.
The second is from Wednesday, July 15, a thick foggy summer day with 8.58 kilowatts generated.
The fog definitely puts a damper on solar generation, but it still generates a respectable amount. We'll let you know how it averages out when the bill comes a the end of the month.
If you haven't yet seen it, pick up a copy of the local paper, the Ingleside Light, with a prominent story on our system, our savings, and our first solar party!
The City of San Francisco has a goal of 10,000 solar photovoltaic installations by 2010. To track these installations and to give businesses, nonprofits and homeowners a place to see what has already been installed in their neighborhood, they have developed a website called the San Francisco Solar Map. Here you can get an idea of the size and annual savings of systems in your own microclimate. To also help you determine if going solar might be right for your property, the website includes an interactive tab "What can solar do for you" that will give you a quick analysis of potential savings based on your address and roof size. Links to local solar installers, tax credits and the fabulously generous San Francisco Solar Initiative, which currently gives immediate credits of $2000-10,000 for installing a system, can be found on their site.
The solar map has just been updated for the first time in over 6 months (sadly budget cuts have affected their ability to keep up to date more regularly with new installations). Our own installation is finally listed on the map, which helps bring the total to 1311 documented installations - a good start, but still very short of the 10,000 goal. We know that not all systems are on the map as we have one neighbor in Westwood Park not listed. We encourage you to contact the organization if you don't find your installation listed, and if you haven't yet considered solar for your property, contact any local installer for a free site specific estimate. They will look at your PG&E bills and your roof layout and give you a much more accurate assessment for no charge. The credits are great right now, but with the budget cuts our governments are facing, there is no guarantee of how long they might be available.
Thank you to everyone who attended our solar party last month. We had over 30 people in attendance throughout the course of the day, including reporters from the local Ingleside Light paper. We'll let you know when the story is published! For those of you who couldn't be there, let us know and we can set up a private tour, or organize a second party if there is enough interest.
Thank you again to Solar City for their presentation on solar photovoltaic systems and for the refreshments. Thank you to Building Solutions for information about home energy testing and solar water heating. I learned that SolarCity is the only company around providing lease options instead of a pure purchase for solar panels. This program is what made solar finally possibly for us as our upfront costs were only $29. Their program is apparently widely popular as they now have an 8 month waiting list for leased systems (direct purchases can be processed and installed much faster). All the more reason to look into solar soon and get on the list! Just announced this week is a partnership with US Bank that creates a tax equity fund that should hopefully speed up leases. Check out the press release.
On a personal note, our PG&E electric bill last month was $12.03, down from $99 the year before. Our total savings to date $615.03 and 3453 pounds of CO2 offset!
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