For over 15 years, Golden Real Estate has operated a “Styrofoam Corral” behind its former office at 17695 S. Golden Road. During that time, the general public has brought us so much Styrofoam to recycle that we estimate we’ve kept over 40,000 cubic yards of the material out of landfills.
At least twice a month (including tomorrow!) we fill our box truck with what has been left in the Corral and take it to Atlas Molded Products in Denver, where it is densified for reuse to manufacture new products. It’s not shipped elsewhere.
In January 2022, Golden Real Estate moved to its downtown Golden storefront (shown above), and our former office building is now pending sale to another Golden business. (More about that later.) The contract of sale requires that the Styrofoam Corral be removed by August 31st, so we need to find another business which can take over this popular service.
If you or someone you know would like to host the Styrofoam Corral, we will make it easy for you/them, moving the chain-link enclosure and signage plus the motion-detecting enunciator which gives instructions to visitors. I will also personally train you/them, and our box truck will be available for every trip to Atlas Molded Products or another recycler.
We know that the public values this service. We have a donation box attached to the corral which receives over $100 per month in cash donations from visitors, more than covering the cost of bags and gas for the truck.
If you can help avoid terminating this valuable public service, please call me, Jim Smith, at 303-525-1851. Thanks!
This Thursday, July 6th, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, I’m hosting an open house at The Net Zero Store, 17695 S. Golden Road (our former office), where I’ll show visitors the steps we took to make that 1,318-sq.-ft. building net zero energy.
By installing heat pump mini-splits to heat and cool the building, and a tankless electric water heater, we had the gas meter removed, saving $50/month in connection charges. The building is now fully powered by the 20-kW solar array, no matter how much electricity is used both by the occupant and to charge up to three electric vehicles at once.
One of the two value statements on our yard signs (see logo above) is “Promoting and Modeling Environmental Responsibility.”
If you’re a buyer wanting to assess the energy efficiency of the homes you are looking at, you owe it to yourself to hire one of our agents to represent you and show you homes, because we know this topic better than most real estate agents.
In addition to pointing out how sustainable the houses we show you are, our inspectors “speak green” too, and, as a summer special, we are giving buyers who hire us a Free Energy Audit as a closing gift. Call me at 303-525-1851 or email Jim@GoldenRealEstate.com.
Every summer, Golden Real Estate gets a “showcase” booth at one of the farmers markets held in downtown Golden, and Saturday, June 17th, is our date this year.
Bring your questions about real estate, or simply come to say “hello.” We’ll have our laptops online so we can even help you look at homes and set up an MLS email alert matching your search criteria.
You’ll get to enter a drawing for a $100 gift certificate to a Golden restaurant. And bring your reusable bags — Golden’s is one of Denver’s top-rated farmers markets!
We’ll be there from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The market is in the parking lot next to the Public Library on 10th Street in downtown Golden.
Because of their higher fossil fuel costs, other countries are far ahead of the United States in the adoption of home electrification, including for heating. The United Kingdom is one of them, and The Guardian recently reported on a survey of 2,500 UK households that made that switch. I’m not aware of a similar survey here, where there may not be enough heat pump households to do a proper survey.
HVAC contractors here in America have been slow to offer or recommend the replacement of gas forced air and gas boiler heating systems with heat pumps, mostly because they are unfamiliar with them. When a homeowner needs to replace their current HVAC system, the vendor who has been servicing their system is most likely to recommend replacing it with a “newer, more efficient” model. So far, I have found only one company which installs and services both traditional gas-fueled heating systems and electric heat pump systems — always recommending the latter. That company, which I have mentioned previously, is Sensible Heating & Cooling, 720-876-7166.
The survey of more than 2,500 domestic heat pump owners and more than 1,000 domestic gas boiler owners in England, Scotland and Wales over the last winter is thought to be the largest investigation into how households have responded to date….
Households have been slow to take up government vouchers worth £5,000 to help cover the cost of replacing a gas boiler with a new heat pump. Slightly more than a third of the scheme’s grants were taken up in the last financial year.
However, the survey, which was undertaken by Eunomia Research and Consulting, found that 81% of households were as satisfied or more satisfied with heat pumps compared with previous heating systems, including gas boilers, electric heating, or oil and LPG boilers….
On running costs, which is another key area of concern for households considering a heat pump, the survey found that two-thirds of heat pump owners and 59% of gas boiler owners were satisfied even without extensive energy efficiency upgrades….
“The government should now have the confidence to move forward quickly with its proposal to.… streamline out-of-date planning rules to make it easier and cheaper for everyone to make the switch to cleaner, safer and more efficient heating with a heat pump,” [said Clem Cowton, director of external affairs for Octopus Energy, a local energy supplier.]
Since 2007, the use of coal for electricity generation has generally been in decline, while the use of renewables has been on the rise. Electricity generation from nuclear had remained relatively flat over the last two decades but has experienced a slight decline in recent years. In 2022, net generation of electricity from renewables reached 0.91 billion megawatt-hours, topping both coal and nuclear (0.83 and 0.77 billion megawatt-hours, respectively). In 2022, renewables accounted for about 21% of all net generation of electricity.
Notes:
Renewable sources of power include wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal energy. “Other” category includes petroleum liquids, petroleum coke, batteries, chemicals, hydrogen, pitch, purchased steam, sulfur, miscellaneous technologies, and electricity generated from non-renewable waste.
Electricity net generation is the amount of gross electricity a generator produces minus the electricity used to operate the power plant.
Cohousing is an intentional, collaborative neighborhood that combines private homes with shared indoor and outdoor spaces designed to support an active and interdependent community life.
Here in Jefferson County and Denver, we have several successful cohousing communities, including Harmony Village, a 27-unit townhome community in Golden, and Hearthstone Cohousing, a 33-unit townhome community built on the former Elitch Gardens site in northwest Denver. Both communities have common houses for group meals and other community activities. The common houses also have guest apartments that members can rent for visiting guests.
Cohousing communities like these are self-managed. Members pitch in to help with community chores. Typically, everyone knows each other by name. It’s all about being in community.
That doesn’t interest most people, but if it interests you, you can join Women in Sustainability and CohoUSon June 14th, 5 to 8 pm at Hearthstone Cohousing’s common house, 4700 W. 37th Ave., Denver, for a discussion and networking event. Attendees can take a tour of the complex starting at 5pm. At 6:30pm, there will be a short talk from CohoUS executive director Trish Becker-Hafnor, followed by a discussion of what it means to live in a cohousing community, myths about cohousing, and how cohousing benefits the environment.
I wrote about cohousing in my Dec. 29 column, which you can read at www.JimSmithColumns.com.
One of the most common lumber products used by home builders is OSB, which stands for Oriented Strand Board. It is not to be confused with particle board, which is basically sawdust and resin. With its limited structural strength, particle board is used primarily in furniture, cabinetry and countertops, typically under Formica.
OSB is a structural replacement for plywood, and is used extensively by builders for roof, wall and floor sheathing. It is also used in manufactured floor joists and is the skin material for structural insulated panels (SIPs).
Www.Naturallywood.comexplains that OSB “is made from wood strands 8 to 15 centimeters long. It uses the whole tree and makes use of crooked, knotty and deformed trees that would otherwise go unused.” Although that’s an economical use of waste timber, OSB is not as sustainable as the product invented by Plantd, an Oxford, NC, startup which won the “Most Innovative Startup” award from the National Association of Home Builders at this year’s International Builders Show (IBS) in Las Vegas.
What the company invented was an OSB substitute made from a proprietary grass that grows to 20 feet tall in a single season, drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere far quicker than trees do. The company claims that 14,000 acres of grass plantations can produce as much material as 400,000 acres of managed timber lands. These qualities make Plantd’s grass a superior crop for addressing climate change, which was the original objective of the company’s founders. “At Plantd,” says the company’s press release, “we are leading a shift to materials made from renewable grass and building the factory of the future to ensure atmospheric carbon captured in the field is locked away inside the walls and floors of new homes.” Here’s a great 10-minute video: https://youtu.be/tzuuEFemVDY
With $10 million in venture capital, the company will manufacture its “carbon negative building materials” in a former cigarette factory. Moreover, the farmers who previously grew tobacco will now be growing the grass needed by the factory, helping the local economy recover from the closing of the cigarette factory.
The company has been getting lots of national press, which you can read at www.PlantdMaterials.com.
Plantd is now constructing the first of its automated, modular, all-electric production lines at its new facility, with a target to open within the next 12 months, according to the May 3rd press release.
Here’s an excerpt from the website’s home page: “Throughout history, civilizations have advanced at the speed of material innovation. Timber, steel, and concrete enabled remarkable progress, but today they are the problem, not the solution. Continuing to build with these materials accelerates climate change and promises to impede progress by threatening our future on this planet. We see a world built from grass. A world where buildings no longer cause climate change but are central to the solution. Where they are stronger, more durable, and more affordable.”
Plantd’s founders, left to right: Josh Dorfman, CEO; Nathan Silvernail, COO; and Huade Tan, CTO. The latter two were formerly engineers at SpaceX.
The website claims that their product will be stronger, lighter, more moisture resistant, carbon negative, and will cost the same as regular OSB.
Plantd’s panels have just two ingredients: the perennial grass plus a small amount of resin (with the formaldehyde reacted out before reaches Plantd’s factory). This creates a low-VOC product with fewer chemical additives compared to other products, according to Plantd.
A package of new climate-related legislation signed this year by Governor Polis is designed to make it more attractive for Colorado households to ditch fossil fuels.
Many of the discounts are designed to be combined with other incentives, but not all the savings will be available right away.
Here’s a guide to what’s coming and when:
Electric Vehicles: Right now, Colorado has 80,000 registered plug-in hybrids and battery EVs, a long way from the state’s goal of 940,000 EVs on the road by 2030. The new incentives are intended to speed up their adoption through a $5,000 tax credit on the purchase of a battery-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle with a suggested purchase price of less than $80,000. For cars priced under $35,000, buyers can get an additional $2,500 credit. Any Colorado resident qualifies, beginning on July 1, 2023. After Jan. 1, 2025, the base rebate decreases until it’s phased out in 2029.
E-bikes: Denver proved the power of e-bike rebates last year. The state is now hoping for similar success. The Colorado Energy Office plans to launch an e-bike rebate program for low- to moderate-income residents this summer but hasn’t detailed the size of the discounts.
The plan for all Coloradans regardless of income is clearer. Under legislation signed into law this year, the state will offer a $450 discount on e-bikes starting on April 1, 2024 and continuing through 2032. The discount will be applied at the point of sale.
Electric lawn equipment: Because gas-powered lawnmowers and other lawn equipment is a major source of ozone pollution, the state will institute a 30 percent discount on electric lawnmowers, leaf blowers, trimmers and snowblowers, applied at time of purchase, starting Jan. 1, 2024 and continuing through December 2026.
Heat pumps: Heat pumps for household space heating and water heating, powered by electricity, are seen as key to reducing pollution from natural gas. Colorado currently has a rebate worth 10 percent of the cost of installing heat pump equipment. It was scheduled to expire at the end of this year, but recent legislation extended it through 2024. The same bill also includes new incentives depending on the technology.
For air-source heat pumps, a resident is eligible for a one-time $1,500 tax credit from 2024 through 2026. After that, it drops to $1,000 until 2029, then to $500 through the end of 2032.
For ground-source heat pumps, residents are eligible for a $3,000 tax credit from 2024 until 2026. After that, it drops to $2,000 until 2029, then again to $1,000 through the end of 2032.
For heat pump water heaters, residents can apply for a $500 tax credit from 2024 until 2026. After that, it drops $250 until 2032.
You can expect vendors of such equipment to be well versed on all these discounts and rebates.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has announced 6 finalists in its Equitable and Affordable Solutions to Electrification (EAS-E) Prize.
Although administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) here in Jefferson County, none of the finalists were from Colorado. Two were from California, and one each from New York, Oregon, Ohio and Nevada.
Two of the finalists focused on solutions which eliminated the need to upgrade a home’s electrical panel. The New York finalist’s plan focused on allowing the occupant to remain in the home during the conversion process. The Ohio finalist focused on cold-weather conversions.
Jim Smith's Blog 