I just read some great news: Nanci Pelosi just met with the mayor of San Francisco to announce her support for the Securing America’s Energy Independence Act It is a similar bill to the one I wrote about last year.

So what’s the details of the new bill? It…

…would extend the residential and commercial ITC for eight years, modify the residential and commercial tax credit for photovoltaic systems to $1,500 per half kilowatt, remove the 30% cap for commercial installations and the $2,000 cap on residential installations and provide three-year accelerated depreciation for commercial solar and fuel cell projects.

It also changes the solar water heating credit from a maximum of 30% to an absolute credit of up to $2000 (which is awesome!). As you may be expecting, I’ve done the math…

Solar Water Heater: Assuming it costs about ~$3500 to have a professional install a solar water heater on your roof, that means you’ll have spent $1500 after taxes. If you add on the incentive from our local utility company ($800), that leaves the price for an INSTALLED solar hot water heater at $700! That means if you’re currently heating your water with electricity you’ll make up the cost in 1.46 years. You’d be crazy not to invest in one!

Solar Electricity: Right now solar panels cost about $4.5/watt. Under normal circumstances you can get about 6 full-sun hours a day. If you bought $18,000 worth of solar panels (4 kilowatts) you could generate about 24 kilowatts/day which translates to approximately $2.4/day in “free” energy. For now I’ll ignore the cost of installation, wiring, and other equipment (inverter) so it would take 26.7 years to make up the cost in an ideal world (assuming 30% losses in the system which is typical).

Now lets add in this new incentive… The bill allows us to get a tax credit of $1500/half-kilowatt. That is $12,000 of free money! This leaves us with a total price of $6,000 for the solar panels or 6.84 years to make up the cost. Since it costs about $5,000 for the extra equipment plus installation the real figure is more like 12.55 years. In other words: It still isn’t worth it financially… but if you finance it you can increase your monthly electricity payment by a small amount while doing good for the environment.

Note: This doesn’t take into account the increasing cost of energy or inflation. Realistically, you could probably get the payback time under 9-10 years. The real key is for the cost of solar panels to come down… If we can get the price/watt down to about $2.50 then you’d be stupid not to invest in solar electricity. At that price you’d make up the cost in 3.4 years! I’m still holding out hope that Nanosolar can keep their promise of $0.50/watt by 2009.

I closed and moved into my new home on Tuesday, the 26th of September. I didn’t blog about it because I’ve been busy with the move!

Anyway, we’re finally moved in and unpacked (except for the garage). Most of the new fence is up and the dogs are having fun in their new place. So far I really love this new house. Before I say anything else on this subject, I want to thank some people for their help in this move:

• Solid – for helping me out when our moving truck ran out of space. For helping me put up the new fence. For helping me fix the old house to get it ready for re-inspection (new siding on the garage).
• Candy – for an excellent job helping us pack.
• Varma – for helping me put up the new fence.

• My inlaws – for helping us out with a bit of storage and helping me with various fixes of the old house (to get it ready for inspection). Also, for helping us pack.

  Now for the pictures (Note: links to whole album):

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  Stats:

• ~1600 square feet (200 more than the old house)
• 3 bedrooms (with a large master)
• 2 full baths (garden bath attached to master)
• 3.5 card driveway (driveway has an extension on the side which is pretty neat)
• Very fancy fireplace (see pics)
• 2-car garage (with a cool vertical brace in case of hurricanes)

• Awesome location right around the corner from the new mall (River City Marketplace) and about 4 miles from Jacksonville International Airport.

  Now for the extraneous qualitative info:

• The air conditioner/thermostat can remain set at 78 degrees and still feel very comfortable. My best guess is that this is due to some sort of dehumidfying feature that I was previously unaware of. Should save me a ton on the energy bill.
• The siding is hardipanel which is really nice because it will never rot (the T1-11 siding of my old home did and it was a huge pain in the ass to fix for inspection). It also looks better than vinyl siding IMHO. Also easier to maintain (lasts forever).
• When the house was built they used a vapor-barrier, air-sealing house wrap. My wallet will really appreciate the energy savings of that particular feature.
• There is a storage attic over the garage which I’ve already begun to fill with our not-used-often items like holiday decorations and winter clothes.
• Inside the attic of the house is loads and loads of blown fiberglass insulation (at least I think it is fiberglass). Excellent energy savings (no more drafty old house for me!).
• There are tons of smoke detectors in this house. As in, copious amounts. There’s like four in the living room alone. It is quite odd, but I guess it is a positive feature.
• The ice maker in the fridge works! We can buy 2-litre bottles again!
• There is a laundry room between the garage entry into the house and the kitchen. This is really nice because the room can be closed to seal off the sound.
• All the exterior and interior doors are fiberglass. Awesome insulation and awesome soundproofing.

• The kitchen actually has counter space! The old house had barely enough to put a plate down.

  I’ve already done some improvements:

• Installed a 6-foot privacy fence (to keep our dogs in since they can jump a 4-footer).
• Caulked various nooks and crannies on the exterior (probably not necessary, but it is a good idea). The garage in particular needed the most (since I will be insulating and finishing it).
• Replaced almost all of the light bulbs in the house with compact fluorescent bulbs. Essentially, all lights that are not dimmable.
• Bought a new washer/dryer (Kenmore Elite HE4t: High efficiency awesomeness)
• Fixed a constantly running/leaky toilet (that was probably costing the previous owner a fortune in the water bill).
• Lubricated/cleaned a few squeaky doors.

• Fixed some loose vinyl siding on the garage door frame (just needed some caulk and a bang with the hammer on one nail).

  …and here’s what I plan to do:

• Finish the garage: Insulate it (walls, garage door, attic area), install some new electrical outlets for power tools, install some vents for the air conditioner, and finish it up with some non-paper-based drywall.
• Do a bit more weatherization (the front door needs a new vinyl strip on its bottom).
• Buy some end tables for the living room.
• Paint over the caulk that I used on the siding (you’re supposed to let it dry for at least 7 days before you paint it) so that it becomes invisible.
• Use the homeowner’s association-approved stain on the fence (I think they want “caramel”).

• Paint/decorate the baby’s room and baby-proof the house. I need lots of electrical outlet covers methinks.

If you remember, I installed a new privacy fence a few months ago. Back then, I replaced the chain link fence that ran along the property line between my neighbor’s yard and my own. At the time, the purpose of the fence was simple privacy. It was a fairly easy (and cheap) job that only took a few hours.

This weekend, I replaced the rest of the chain fence with the same 6×8 stockade panels that ran around the entire back yard of the house. I had no idea it was going to be such an huge project! It took 44 man-hours, loads of power tools, about $800 worth of fence stuff, and tons of back-breaking work. Quite a contrast from the last fence job.

Why did I decide to replace the rest of the fence? One of our dogs was getting out. From standing, she could leap over the old four-foot fence. While impressive, she was wreaking havoc for the neighborhood cats and was scaring children who walked by our house (the next door neighbor’s sadistic/tease-the-dogs child being the most notable). She was just doing her job (alarm system), but she’s supposed to do that from INSIDE. She never bit anyone and I seriously doubt she ever would—unless she felt her life depended on it.

Regardless, it had to be done…

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We started by measuring the amount of fence we needed and then going to Lowes to pick it up. We made a mistake so we ended up with one extra panel (we bought enough panels to cover the yard forgetting about the gates). Here’s what I purchased:

• 15 6×8 Stockade Fence Panels
• 16 4×4×8 Fence Posts
• 2 6×5 Stockade fence gates

• Gate mounting hardware (two boxed sets of hinges/latches and a handle/latch for two-way entry)

  We had to make two trips since the posts couldn’t fit inside Solid’s truck along with 15 panels.

  The job began easy enough: We unloaded the equipment and started to remove the old fence. Before long we had the front two sections on the sides of the house completed (with the gate installed). My Fein Multimaster came in very handy for this job as a vertical hole needed to be cut through the gate for the latch.

  After that, everything became much, much harder. The fence in the back of the house was completely covered in overgrown weeds, bushes, and trees. The job quickly changed from “lets put in a new fence” to “lets clear three decades of overgrowth and brush”. It took us all day on Saturday (4 of us working) just to clear away the brush and remove the old fence. This process involved bolt cutters, a sawzall, the Multimaster, my hedge trimmer, a chainsaw, an axe, two machetes, and lots of digging.

  On Sunday I lost two workers to tourism so Solid and I finished clearing the brush (dragging the remaining branches into the woods) and began what was supposed to be the easy part: Installing the new fence. It was 100x more difficult than before.

  There were three primary reasons why installing the fence in the back was much more difficult:

  1. The corner fence post was a metal pole that had my neighbor’s chain fence gate attached to it. Once we got permission, we took that old post out, flipped his gate around so it swung the other way, and screwed two metal fence hinges into the new wooden post. This required a lot of alignment and careful execution.
  2. While we successfully cleared away most of the brush and branches, there were still major root systems running along the fence line that had to be cut out to make holes for the fence posts. This was a huge pain in the ass and slowed everything down.

1. My property slopes upwards slightly from the corner fence post to the other end of the yard. This meant that the more fence we installed, the more we had to dig out to keep it level. The last five panels required some major trench-digging which meant even more roots to clear out! The last two panels had to be raised a few inches from the rest of the fence because the roots were just too think to cut out (very large and ancient tree at the corner of the yard).

   With the exception of the two front-facing sections, it was a lot of back-breaking work. I want to thank Solid, my father-in-law, and his guest for helping me out.