It has a been a while since my last post and that’s because I’ve been super busy in mostly good ways. Late September we welcomed a new addition to our family, Quillan, and it’s just been crazy since then.
Between the having a new born and being at work 7 days a week I haven’t had a chance to come up for air. Which is why I was smart/lucky/dumb enough to organize and schedule our home upgrades before the craziness began.
Even before we bought our home we were interested in limiting our impact on the environment, however owning a home has made it easier for us to be able to do a wider range of upgrades. We live in southern California in a house that gets direct sunlight most of the day so solar was at the top of our list. And because of the drought we wanted to limit our water usage so removing our turf and possibly getting a greywater system also intrigued us. And then PACE financing came to Los Angeles and the timing worked perfectly.
“Property assessed clean energy (PACE) is a means of financingenergy efficiency upgrades or renewable energy installations for buildings. Examples of upgrades range from adding more attic insulation to installing rooftop solar panels.”
-Wikipedia
So with PACE financing through CaliforniaFIRST we were able to fund our solar system as well as our artificial turf installation as one complete package. Had we decided to install a greywater system that would have been included too.
Here’s what we did…
-We installed a solar system that will cover 85% of our yearly usage through Green Convergence/Sunpower. After researching a variety of different companies using Google and Energy Sage (LINK) we found that Green Convergence made the most sense for us. The time has never been better for solar if it makes sense for your house and electric bill.
-The greywater system, through Greywater Corps, was going to be great but we decided to put it off at this point. We just don’t have the gardening needs for it with our current setup, however once we do there is no doubt that we will use the Greywater Corps. They were great and very accommodating.
-Our lawn was a tricky issue. If we didn’t have children we probably would have gone for drought resistant landscaping but we could not happier with the artificial grass that we had installed by Hunny Do Artificial Turf. It meets all of the environmental standards, looks great, and, most importantly, the kids love it.
This post is a bit longer than most but I feel that it made sense to group all of these changes together. We are so happy to be doing our part to limit our impact on the earth. These are small gestures in the grand scheme of things but I believe that every bit helps. Plus I’m really enjoying stealing energy from the sun!