Transcriber: Ian Brown Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Larry Fulton: Yesterday.
That was the very best day to start reducing our environmental impact
on society and on ourselves.
Today is the second best option.
Over a decade ago, my wife and I decided to build a sustainable home.
We wanted to build one that was both green for the environment,
and also green for the pocketbook.
This is a part of our story.
(Video) Steve Browne: More and more people are moving toward sustainable homes
that conserve resources and preserve the environment.
It’s called “going green.”
We found out that the greenest home in all of America is right here in South Texas.
LF: My ROI is the biggest thing, I did this because one: I believe in it.
Number two: I’m independent, highly, fiercely independent.
SB: Larry Fulton and his wife built this super green home in Bulverde,
and guarantees this is the greenest home in America.
LF: It is the highest scoring house that has ever been verified.
SB: Of course, it has solar panels.
LF: It’s positive energy, it returns power to the grid.
SB: No aquifer draining well,
rainwater harvesting supplies all this home’s water needs.
Three inches of rain last night, fresh, clean, pure rainwater.
It’s good.
The clincher is a geothermal heat pump system
that uses the temperature of the earth 300 feet down
to heat and cool the home, and supply hot water.
LF: So to heat it up, you only have to heat it a few degrees.
Darrel McMaster: Maybe 15, 16 degrees.
LF: And to cool it off?
DM: We’re about the same either way.
LF: You’re pretty much there.
SB: The Fulton’s installed enough solar panels
to charge an all-electric Nissan Leaf.
The folks at Ancira Nissan let me take a test ride.
I don't know if you can hear, but there is a slight purr.
They had to add the noise to the engine because it’s totally quiet.
Let’s give it a whirl, see how it goes, here we go.
(Car tires on dirt)
This car is not a toy, it’s highly engineered.
It’s a tight car that’s a blast to drive.
I wish I could build my house again.
(Laughter off-screen)
Imagine being totally independent.
You’re driving past all the gas stations on my way to work
with a big solar smile on my face.
That’d be cool.
Newscaster: Right up your alley, what an amazing home.
SB: It is nice. (Video ends)
Okay, obviously, that’s a very old video,
over a decade old because I still had hair.
(Laughter)
Before. I give you the good, the bad, and the ugly of living in this home,
I'd like to ask you a question.
How much extra would you be willing to spend for sustainable construction?
Ten percent more?
Twenty percent more?
Would you be willing if there was a five year return on investment?
A 15 year return on investment?
You see, these are the questions we have to ask,
because Americans will always do the right thing
after they’ve tried everything else first.
(Laughter)
So we have to incentivize people to do the right thing
sometimes either via policy, or better yet,
let's make it economically beneficial to them at some point.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Our idea, my wife and I, mostly my wife:
(Laughter)
build a house that has point source efficiency for electric and water first.
In other words, we get it all on site.
Have no electric bill, that’s always a good thing.
No water bill.
No gasoline bill for our primary car, if we could make that work,
and then use it for research.
And that’s what we did.
Unfortunately, in the next four hours, I won’t be able to discuss all that.
(Laughter)
So I’ve narrowed down to a few things.
We’ll talk power, water,
a couple other facts, and a little bit of policy.
I could go on and on about policy.
One of the most irritating expenses for many homeowners is the electric bill.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about first,
because it’s a large, large bill for a lot of people.
When we were looking at it, we were saying,
well, if we want sustainable energy, point source energy,
we could try wind turbines, right?
Residential wind turbines.
But over a decade ago, the technology wasn’t mature.
It would take a lot of them, high expense,
and if you look at that map of Texas,
there’s really light green in the center where we are.
Light green is bad, poor wind production here.
And so we moved right on, of course, to solar, which was a great option.
There is a map of the United States, orange and darker orange is good.
So it was obvious for us that we were definitely going to use solar.
We initially installed a seven kilowatt system,
and then in 2018 we added another 10 kilowatt system.
Seven kilowatts is enough to power the average consumer in our area
for a month, because it’s about 1100 kilowatt hours produced.
So, we knew we had energy efficient appliances, energy efficient everything,
a tight house envelope, meaning it was really insulated well.
We knew that we could do it with seven KW,
and power a car as well as our home.
So that’s what we did.
But the question became, what are we going to do with the power?
We need power at night, can we totally get off-grid?
Can we literally separate from the utility company?
A decade ago, they didn’t have any lithium-ion batteries
known as the Tesla Powerwall, or Powerwall Plus.
And now I wouldn’t buy them because it’s $30,000, really,
to put them installed, for what we need.
And oh, by the way, after ten years, they’re at 70% power.
Okay?
Deep cycle batteries are dirty,
and they make an environmental mess when you get rid of them,
plus take a lot of storage space.
So we went to a grid-tied solution.
What does that mean?
It means we simply run the meter backwards
when we’re giving power more than we’re taking,
and we run the meter forward when we’re taking more than we’re giving.
That’s all it is.
This is my actual electric bill from October 2020 through September 2021.
I've summed it for you, but the picture is from the utility company.
The electric usage -
zeros nearly all the way across except the winter storm.
Utilities stopped taking power for red management.
And in September, we had an interesting event in September.
Actual energy cost is $162.
The rest of the cost?
The privilege to be tied to a grid.
So was the seven kilowatt system, the initial system that powered the car,
was that actually green for the pocketbook?
Well, we saved on average $1,500 a year.
We paid $24,000 after the 30% tax credit that was existing then.
So it was about a 16 year break-even.
Wow, that’s a long time, you may not even be in the house that long.
But wait, you get a set of Ginsu knives,
(Laughter)
we purchased an electric car.
We offset the maintenance, we offset the gasoline,
we were really saving $4,500 a year.
Our break-even was 5.33 years.
Doable for many.
Okay?
Okay, I told you I was going to tell you the good, the bad and the ugly.
The bad: range anxiety is the thing.
Am I going to make it on that charge?
That was a true thing.
We did not have the infrastructure design to support recharge at the time.
It’s better now, still not great.
We required secondary transportation thus.
And just keep in mind electric cars, are a good option for low emissions,
but the lithium ion mining and disposal is nasty.
We have to keep that in mind.
Still, I would buy a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle
or even a fully electric vehicle again tomorrow.
The new panels we added, the 10 kilowatt panels,
I’m just going to talk a little bit about this, just to let you know.
From 2011 when we bought the first panels, to 2018,
the price dropped to $22,000 after tax credit,
for three kilowatt more capacity.
So we went from seven to 10, price dropped, power increased.
It's going in the right direction.
Unfortunately, we’ve dropped the tax credits
from 30% to 26%, and that’s a bad deal.
I’ll talk about that in a minute.
Okay, overall, solar can be green for the environment,
and green for the pocketbook.
But what about water?
Water is not a problem in central Texas, is it?
We never have drought restrictions.
We never have any issues with having to boil water, right?
Nobody, okay?
(Laughter)
That’s a problem in Texas, it just is.
So we were a little bit out, we’re on a hill.
They couldn’t get us local water, which was good.
So we had two options: a well, or rainwater harvesting.
Well: not good.
They drain the aquifers.
If a neighbor comes in, they can drill and suck it all dry for you,
and you have no rights in the state of Texas to fight them.
It was about $20,000 installed, but so was the rainwater harvesting system.
Further, it takes three gallons of rainfall, at least,
to get one gallon into the aquifer, right?
Unlike rainwater harvesting.
It’s also on site, it was the same cost, but it’s super efficient.
1.25 gallons of water from rainfall produces one gallon for the system.
So it was a no-brainer: rainwater harvesting.
Your grandparents probably used this system, or your great-grandparents.
It’s very easy to follow this map.
Rain from the grey cloud hits the metal roof, the red roof,
goes into gutters, gets pumped right into this grey cistern.
That orange box is the pumping system that’s on demand.
It pumps water through a set of filters, and UV, to purify it, and into the house.
It’s so easy, even my dead grandmother’s cat’s fleas could do it, okay.
(Laughter)
So easy.
But, I told you I was going to tell you the bad and the ugly.
The bad is we have high variability of water fall here, right?
So you need a big tank to store it in.
We have a 40,000 gallon tank.
We could have put it underground, and you can see that on the map.
But we live on Stoney Ridge Road,
(Laughter)
so this was the best option.
This could be set up underground for neighborhoods, entire neighborhoods,
offsetting our drain on the aquifer system.
And I will tell you, it’s one of my favorite sustainable systems
that we’ve implemented.
Our water is amazing.
We still have the same coffee pot from 2011.
So my variable costs: 82 bucks, versus a typical water bill of $32.
Green for the environment, green for the pocketbook.
We had some other efforts that we did,
and I’m going to call these off in clock order.
We’re not going to talk about all of them.
The green plus means “yay, we like it.”
The red minus is “boo,” okay, that’s kind of how that works.
And I can explain why on some of these.
But let’s start at the six o’clock position: engineered lumber.
Instead of using full lumber pieces, we use reclaimed wood.
They were jointed together, finger-jointed studs.
Stronger than regular wood vertically, and reduces the waste, absolutely.
To the left of that, at the 6:30 position: icynene foam.
Could have used coffee grounds, or some other things.
We need a tight envelope, so we keep heat in, keep cold in,
depending what season it is.
Beautiful, my attic stays at 80 degrees in the summer.
Then if we go - I’m just going to do two more -
if you go to the top at about 12:30, you’ll see Energy Star throughout.
That’s windows, doors, appliances.
Get the best you can, it pays dividends right away.
Lastly, I will say that we enjoyed having low flow, because it saves our water.
And of course, when you are living out in the country, think of zeroscape.
You don’t want to put any foreign plants in there,
and you want eliminate any that are invasive.
At the end of the day, we’ve been living this way,
and we have to think about policy implications
for sustainability, construction, and for us in general.
Why?
Because if we don’t, then we will continue to pollute,
and leave nothing for our kids.
One of the things that I love that a lot of people don’t,
because it drives up house prices, are the solar mandates in California.
All new residential construction must offset its electrical usage
anticipated by solar panels.
All new construction.
It drives up prices, offset with tax credits.
We need to tighten our residential construction requirements.
Why don’t we have a fraction of a wood building
be built at least with engineered lumber, for reclaiming?
And some additional water resource controls would be nice.
For example, I don’t want my neighbor to come by and suck all the water
from the aquifer out, and damage everybody else.
So these are the things.
So why am I interested in this?
I am biologically extraneous.
I have three kids and three grandchildren.
I have a responsibility, and many of you are, too.
We have responsibilities to pass down a sustainable environment,
a livable planet to them.
Because at the end of the day,
there is no Planet B.
(Laughter)
I’m Larry, thanks for listening.
(Applause)