Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cost of eco building

[Robert (robert]

Every house in Eno Commons incorporates a geothermal heat pump and other 
green technologies.

> From 
http://www.ncgreenbuilding.org/site/ncg/public/show_project.cfm?project_id=174, 
"Advanced Energy did a follow up energy use study which proved that homes at 
Eno Commons on average used 60% less energy for heating and cooling than the 
average for homes built in the same time period (using Duke Energy's North 
Carolina database for 1998-1999)."

I seem to recall the upfront additional expense of a geothermal heat pumps 
was in the neighborhood of $5K (includes a $2K discount from economies of 
scale).  So the payback period is about 5 years.

-Robert Heinich
Eno Commons Cohousing
Durham, NC
whose geothermal heat pumps are now beyond the payback period and therefore 
are free


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Mlj45 [at] aol.com>
To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 7:58 AM
Subject: [C-L]_ Cost of eco building


> We are a newly forming co-housing group in Ulster County New York, and we
> are currently in the design stage. We are discussing the costs of 
> "building
> green", installing solar, geo thermal, etc... We are wondering if anyone 
> has any
> information about balancing out the initial costs of building green, 
> versus
> how  long it might take to get back the initial extra investmant in energy
> savings.  We know, of course, the value of building green, but need some 
> feed back
> on the  financial part. Thanks, Lynne James, Ulster County  Co-Housing
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