A living example of connectedness on the planet...

The Eartha Madre Project

Utility Building

Early on during the construction process we realized that in order to house all the equipment needed for the domestic hot water, the radiant floor heating and the solar energy system, it would be necessary and desirable for us to have all these systems housed together in the same place.  This required building an additional building that we refer to as the “solar building”.  Another post and beam structure, we obtained timbers locally and very inexpensively due to the massive amounts of lumber being harvested quickly after the Rodeo-Chediski fire.

Solar Energy System &

Utility Building

Installing the water tank inside the utility building

Inch by inch the tele-handler did an excellent job of helping us tilt and maneuver the 10,000 gallon tank into the open side of the utility building.  Having the water system and storage tank inside the building added thermal mass and assured less temperature fluctuation within the building.  With the boiler and hot water tank in the same room, the building maintains a reasonable temperature throughout the year which is nice because the building also serves as a gym and has a separate room for the solar equipment and batteries.

The hydronics (above)……...Eartha Madre’s circulatory system.

Our solar system

The solar tracker (above) follows the sun throughout the day and  the solar inverters (above left) and the battery bank (left) are housed in a separate room in the utility building.  Our current system is pre-wired and ready for an additional tracker and batteries which would be enough to handle all the electrical needs of the main house.  As things are now, the solar electric is hooked into specific circuits throughout the house so that things like the refrigerator (we use an super energy efficient SunFrost with its compressor on the top of the unit) and several communication circuits are all running on solar energy and never without power.  Our ultimate intention with the solar system is that we will be able to sell our excess power back to the local electric company. 

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