Jason and Kristin Nichols have been hard at work building the most sustainable home possible for their family.
They searched high and low for the right property, and settled on a home in Sebastopol, in northern California.
They decided that retrofitting an existing home would be more eco-friendly than building from scratch, then got to work at Windhorse Orchard. They would plan to meet two ambitious building standards: the Living Building Challenge and Passive House Institute certification. They would need to collect a wealth of home energy efficiency data in order to pass those bars.
Home energy use contributes a sizable amount of pollution to the atmosphere. By cutting as much of it as possible, homeowners can not only save money on monthly utility bills, but they're also curbing destructive weather patterns, which have been wreaking havoc on housing costs.
The Nichols family also wanted to keep as many toxic materials out of the home as possible, so they opted for sheep's wool insulation, for example. They upgraded the windows to triple-pane, swapped in the climate control with a heat pump, installed a heat recovery system, updated to an induction stove, and put solar panels on their new metal roof.
It costs between 10% and 30% more for these upgrades, but with available rebates to cover the up-front costs and long-term savings, the Nicholses think they'll end up ahead.
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In a home as efficient as Windhorse Orchard, solar power can easily bring monthly energy bills down to $0, or even generate utility credit with the surplus.
If you're interested in enjoying the economic and environmental benefits of making this switch, check out The Cool Down's Solar Explorer. The Solar Explorer can connect homeowners to useful solutions, like Palmetto's LightReach. This subscription can reduce utility rates by up to 20% while paying 0% down on new solar panels.
The Solar Explorer can also connect you with EnergySage, which finds local experts who can tap into incentives and provide competitive bids for installations.
The determination of the Nicholses is palpable, and they're keen to spread the best practices they've learned to those in their community.
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Yes 👍 "If everybody would build the way we do or put the same level of attention to whatever they do, there wouldn't be climate change," said Kristin, per Sonoma Magazine.
"There wouldn't be social injustice and there wouldn't be threats to other species on this planet. Proving to ourselves that it is possible to reinvent the way we do things and make them regenerative has been an extreme source of hope. That's what I want to give to my children."
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