Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Energy/heating/desing issues (FWD)

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

Gary Shea  SHEA [at] XMISSION.XMISSION.COM in Salt Lake City
is the author of this message but due to a listserv problem 
it was posted by the COHOUSING-L sysop.

RAYGASSER [at] delphi.com writes:
>In reply to Jeffrey Hobson's queries:
>>Ray Gasser wrote:
>>>Community is designed in two roughly parallel rows, with all houses facing
>>>within 10 degrees of solar south. Houses have 14 foot mostly glass walls . .
.
>We
>are also looking quite seriously at ground loop geo. $$ may impact, because
>the gas company (NYSEG) may rebate (e.g. "not charge") for installing the
>main gas lines to the community if we have gas heat. Otherwise, we would
>need to spend $40k or so to get gas cooking in the Common House and/or
>individual homes (thanks to a nice reply by Roger Diggle, we may be able
>to get gas cooking in the super-tight houses with better air/heat
>exchangers). Heat delivery will be radiant floor HW.

Hi, this is my first post to the cohousing-l list -- I probably
met some folks at the burning souls meeting in Boulder or at
the conference.  If you remember me, Hi!.  I'm in Salt Lake City,
where a group (tentatively named Wasatch Cohousing) is in the
very early stages (had our third public meeting Tuesday).

After hearing all the talk at the conference about the high
cost of anything other than subdivision-style construction,
I'm amazed to see such ambitious energy planning.  The Cohousing
book makes it sound like Nyland had to work amazingly hard to
get even less than the above describes (I may be doing them an
injustice -- hope not :).  Could you please explain how you can
pull this off financially?  We have several folks who will simply
not participate unless they can go this route, and others
(like me) who would be willing to work harder in order to get
energy-efficient features.

Any input would be much appreciated.

        Gary