Escaping Winter - Bikes, beers & boobs in Beervana

Yes, another week with no sign of snow! Even had a few days of sun - seems the stories of never-ending rain here in Portland were unfounded.

Picked up some "cruiser bikes" (aka dork bikes with big-ass saddles) and have spent a couple of days checking out town. There are tons of cool bike features in town, making it pretty fun to roam around on bikes: you can roll your bikes on to the trains and there are bike hangers on the trains, cross-town bike routes on side streets are marked with bike symbols on the pavement, bike lanes everywhere, including some bike & bus exclusive roads, and the coolest thing is the bike signals at intersections - roll your bike over the bike-symbol painted at the stop line, and the light changes, sometimes with bike-only symbols! I'll have to post a picture of that.

On one of our first rides we rode up a volcano located within one of the city parks (how many cities have volcanoes? how cool is that!)


Then the next day, I ended up running up that f#$#$G volcano 2 or 3 more times on the hash house harriers run. There are 3-4 hashes a week here, so I'm sure that I will get in great shape (running or drinking, you decide). 30 odd folks on the hash, clear night, two beer checks and a keg at a partially finished house at the end. Return home by bike and train, so beverage enjoyment was not limited...



My 100-mile drinking diet is going very well. There are reportedly 30 breweries in Portland, and one of them is less than 5-min walk from here. (steam in photo is emanating from brewery just below our house - note bike lane and yet crazy double-decker interstate bridge in background)

Also, beer is very cheap, and both local beer and local wine are sold in very civilized fashion at the Safeway.






Did a cool "trail" hike one day called the
"4T" trail - for Train, Trail, Tram and Trolley - it is a loop where you do all four, including the highest point in the city. The train section included one of the deepest transit stations in North America - some 200+ feet deep! I was excited because it was the first time I've ever seen my professional organization's logo in public - there was a plaque in the station from the Association of Engineering Geologists - hee ha!







Finn's Grandma also arrived this week from Ontario. So, they've been busy doing serious tasks like "paper-bag-pants" and "junk-food-eating", Georgi and I have been able to go out for some hot dates....Avatar 3D one night, and a burlesque show the other night!

Oh, ya, and did I mention, not only no snow, but the cherry tree across the street is starting to flower.

MORE PICTURES HERE!

Escaping Winter - 1

Well, we arrived today in Portland, OR - moved in to our 1905 cottage across the river from downtown after 5 days of "overland" (non-aircraft) travel to get here. Sunny when we got here (still clear and warm) - after leaving a restaurant from dinner this evening heard people remarking "wow, it's NOT raining".

As I have come to loath winter, especially trudging through snow, we decided to skip a bit of Yukon winter - so we are hiding out in Portland, Oregon for 6 week. Why Portland? I don't know, but what I do know is there is no snow here! Also, I wanted to practice "post-peak-oil-living," so we are doing all of our travel without flying. Took that Alaska ferry from Skagway to Bellingham - three days, four nights on the ferry. Was very nice, clear, calm, sunny in Sitka and Ketchikan.




Apparently, Ketichan only gets 2 clear days of the year, and we got one! I was a bit disappointed with the seas though - I was hoping for big storms, big waves, etc. Just a little windy and rolly one night, but nothing to write home about.



Finn was great, and the time past pretty quickly. 'Course Finn spent many hours starring at the arcade games, which was very dull for Mom and, to a lesser extent, Dad.



Got off ferry today at 8am - made a run for the Amtrak train at 8:30 and made it due to the heroic ticket efforts of Bellingham station agent Mary (who was muttering under her breath the whole type "God damn Alaska ferry, God damn ferry, scheisse ferry, etc...). Although we ended up with tickets only as far as Seattle, we managed to arrive in Portland anyway.

We have yet to meet a Portlander other than waitress at Memphis-Blues type BBQ place we had dinner at tonight. First human contact in Portland was Croatian cab driver that spoke no English and got lost trying to find our place (less than 2km from train station). Then, it seems we are in the Ethiopian quarter of the city, so picked up milk at the Ethiopian grocery store.....

In closing, our house is nice, there is no snow here, kid is asleep, trains horns wailing in the distance, and having a beer in what is unofficially known as Beervana.

UPDATE: Georgi has posted some of the pics to-date - here is the link

5 Years in a GreenHome

Below is 5-years of energy use data from our GreenHome.

What is show is the actual energy delivered to the house, so I've taken out the effect of the different efficiencies of electric, versus wood versus oil heat. I've also "normalized" the data - that means I've converted all the data to a common average year, thereby taking the effects of cold years and warm years. (interestingly, the all five of the last years have been about 10% warmer than average...hmmm, climate change?)

As you can see, our energy use has been rising until this year. I think this is largely due to having a baby in the house starting in 2006 and Georgi started staying home then, making the house occupied full time. Our energy use dropped dramatically this year - although we did a number of small energy efficiency upgrades, I think it is largely due to the end of diaper laundry (hahoo!).

And here are the total energy costs to us as we've actually experienced them:

The Roots of Sustainable Buildings

I put the following diagram together to show the interaction of the various elements that comprise the design of a sustainable building. I did this diagram to illustrate the concepts I described in a previous post on Elements of Sustainable Building.

Feel free to use this with appropriate credit. Special thanks to my brother Lake for the tree-roots illustration behind.

Kicking the Fossil Fuel Habit

Our house uses a "combo" heating system - an oil-fired hotwater tank that provides both space heating and domestic hot water. Two years ago when oil prices were higher, I installed a small electric hot water tank to pre-heat the water with electricity before the oil-fired hot water tank. I described this conversion in a previous post here. That conversion was saving us about $50 a month in energy and reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 70% to 1.6 tonnes of CO2 / yr (Yukon average is about 12.6 tonnes / person / year)

A couple of months ago the insurance company decided to do an inspection of our home (we built it 5 years ago and they've never actually seen what they are insuring). Well, the inspector happened to notice that our above ground fuel oil tank does not have a "sticker" on it, and gave us 4 months to get it replaced. Now, this fuel tank is perfectly fine, but I had salvaged from the house we tore down previously. Given the fuel tank's age, it doesn't have a CSA sticker. We got a quote to replace the fuel tank, and due to the new code requirements for seismic tie-down, concrete pad, etc, it was going to cost us $2500 to get a new tank installed.

I've wanted to get off the oil for a while now, so I thought if my little pre-heat tank is providing 90% of my water heating already, why not go all the way with electric? In Whitehorse, our electricity is pretty green: in 2008 99.94% of our electricity came from renewable (hydro and a bit of wind) . The advantages of getting off oil include:

• reduction in GHG emissions associated with our house
• reduced risk of backdrafting (indoor air quality)
• reduced heat leakage up the chimney (my chimney always had a lot of air rising in it, constantly sucking heat off of my hot water tank)
• no annual maintenance on the oil burner (a savings of ~$200 /yr)
• no worries about running out of fuel/fillups, etc.
• no worries about oil leaks
• reclaimed 15 sq. ft. of yard where the fuel tank used to be (living in downtown, I value every square foot of yard I have!)

I looked into an electric boiler first, but we only have a 100A service, so that looked like it was out of the question (replacing a electrical service can be big $$). As an alternative, I got a the largest electric hot water tank from Canadian Tire - it is 60 gallons and has a big heating element at 5.5 kW. So, combined with the little hot water tank, I have a total of 8.5 kW of heating. My house has a peak heating load of around 34,000 Btu, which is 10 kW--this means the heating system is a bit undersized, however I mostly heat with wood, so this is fine, it is adequate to keep the house from freezing up if were away!

Total cost to me?

• Hot water tank: $560
• Wire, new 35A breaker and electrical permit: $105
• Plumber: $260
• Stevie bucks (renovation tax credit): $-79
• Total: $846

And that's not counting the $200 I saved on not doing burner maintenance this year! Now our house GHG emissions are just 0.19 tonnes / year from our propane cook stove.

So, anyone want to by a perfectly good 5-yr old oil-fired hot water tank? For sale, cheap!