Living Your Principles

Inspirational song: Invisible Sun (The Police)

This one counts as a double.

I have been dreaming of putting solar panels on my home for so many years, I can't remember a time I didn't want it. Maybe when I was too young to know what solar panels were. I mean, Jimmy Carter put them on the White House. Did I understand the concept then? It would have been my absolute first exposure to the concept, if so. But the idea of generating my own guilt-free electricity? That's my idea of heaven. I've made my house as efficient as I know how: using all LED lights, upgrading my hot tub to one thoroughly insulated, cooling with a whole house fan for all but the very hottest days of the summer. But I like having a well-lit kitchen, my clothes dryer is electric, and darn it, sometimes I like falling asleep with the TV on. I have emotions about how much electricity I use, even with my efforts at efficiency. Solar panels would go a long way to helping me feel less wasteful.

I've been very upfront about Mr S-P's favorite haunts, the building salvage yards where he frequently spends hours browsing through everything. His mountain cabin is better than 90% reclaimed and recycled from places like these. Yesterday he sent home a text from the big one in Boulder with a photo and the question, "Want to go solar?" He sent it to both me and T, and T said he wasn't interested in carrying the panels in the picture up the steep hill between the parking area and the cabin half a mile up and through the woods. My answer was along the lines of "For the house in town, sure!" The entire set-up, 40 panels plus a ton of accompanying structure, was not cheap. But it was a savings of roughly $3000 over a new system. From the salvage yard, he called the company who originally installed this system, and got information and a quote for installation. So, um, it looks like this February, we will be going solar!

How does this count as a double? Because not only am I reducing my carbon footprint so I can sleep with the teevee on when I feel like it, we are reusing the large set-up that someone scrapped when they upgraded to a Tesla wall (from what we understand), keeping a large amount of material out of a landfill. Win-win!