zero-energy house ???

The four technology pieces I used throughout this project were Webspiration, Delicious, Microsoft Power Point, and email communications with an expert.

Webspiration was great to use for creating a question web. I was able to organize information and other questions on the same web and color code them. It was frustrating at first until I got the hang of using it.

Delicious was very frustrating. I thought it would be easier to copy my yahoo bookmarks into delicious because it is affilaited. But I stuck with it and figured it out. Small personal victory.

I love using powerpoint and have used it many times before. I feel that it is a great presentation tool.

Emailing my expert was probably the best source of information. It worked so well with the first expert that I contated another and have had phone conversations with him as well.

Ok, so I lots of wishes left in this project and jsut because the due date is approaching and I have created my final product, doesn’t mean that I am finished. I still have a whole section of questions to look into that would’ve been too time consuming for the timeline of this project. I still want to know about all of the different green building materials and I hope that in the future it will be possible to be grid independent. Some of the bigger challenges was that there is so much information out there about this topic, but it is hard to get a grip on. Another challenge was trying to figure out which information was credible and what people wanted from me, the inquirer. Also, making a final decision on what to use was difficult because we don’t have the specifics for our future house yet, and had to estimate a lot. Some of the strenghts were that I had a great set of experts that were willing to spend many hours answering my questions and doing additional research of their own. If I had to give advice to anyone at the beginning of this project or any inquiry project, I would tell them to get a good handle on the basics and create questions from what you learn and ask an expert. I think the weaknesses of this project was that in the beginning I didn’t really have an approach to inquiry. I was willy-nilly searching and scraping up information. Once I figured out how to search, using key wor strategies, and other models I had a much easier time. The next project I undertake will be much more organized. I think young adults and children would need more guidance in the webbing , wiggling, and weaving stages. They would need ways to evaluate information and resources, and they would need help synthesising the information. Rankin’s presearch model helps kids understand how to take information, put it inot their own words and draw conclusions. I think that someone who wanted to do some thing similar to this inquiry, but who ws insistent on being grid independent could come to much different conclusions than I.

I feel like the information that I have found can be used to help other families or individuals who are looking into building a zero-energy house. To create a power point I made a checklist, inspiration from the 8ws, to make sure that I addressed my essential questions and had enough information in my presentation to help others understand the benefits and basics of wach choice I made. They can use the power point that I have created as a starting place to look for information or for a summary of a whole lot of information. I feel like high school natural resource management classes and building trades programs can use the power point to discuss the choices we made and critique them. They could also use my inquiry project as a model for projects in thier class. Younger children could use the power point to learn very basic information about each kind of system and to explore the resources I have included to create their own model or a poster about the different types of natural resources. I will use my power point to present the ideas to my husband, or really other family memebrs that may be skeptical. I can also use this to show builders our potential plans and see what information they have to add to it. The power point is really like a plan for what we want to do.  I have struggled with the decision of how to communicate my ideas to the world. I think that it could be great to put it online, but have always had trouble trying to upload things and finding free hosts. To share with others in my family or builders, I can show them the power point in a slide show and highlight the benefits to anyone who still doesn’t get it. I am going to upload the presentation here for now as I work on other ways to share. I will also attach it into the forum section in oncourse. Zero-Energy House

One of my essential questions was, can we afford a zero energy house.  I modified it to is it cost effective for us to build a zero energy house. To address the question I used the compare/contrast chart, found in 8ws model, for each system we wanted to use. (Electrical- PV, wind) (Heating/Cooling/Water-PV, geothermal) I am a paper person when I need to think about things so I took the charts posted on webbing and put key points into the compare contrast chart. Part of the analysis was to admit that for where we live we cannot be grid independent at this time, but can make a huge difference by supporting the normal utitlities with others with others, and that we could eleminate natural gas using geothermal.(We don’t use much natural gas now.) I also learned of passive solar design, which we decided to use for our basic design. Rankin’s questions in the conclusion section of http://www.kyvl.org/kids/p4_use/conclusions.html were helpful in looking at the different charts I have created through out this process.

Another question is can we live our lifestyle in a zero energy house. Being interdependent with a grid, we can do the things we do now, but we will also change small things in our house and lifestyle to help out. We will be using 2 watt LED lights and installing motion lights in places like closets and bathrooms. We will also be using instant hot water systems for the sinks, and other appliances.

The last question, should we go all green had to be eliminated for the time span of this project, but I will be researching all of our options in that area as well. I was sad to have to had to get rid of it, but there was so much to the other questions that I had to narrow my ambitious beginnings a little.

I am feeling confident at this point. I am working on a final product and trying to decide how I want to share it. I still have feelings of doubt as there are still questions that I am working on with my husband and experts. As I have said before, new information leads to new questions, no matter how much you learn.

I used the basic information and information from companies I found to help narrow the possible choices of systems to use. I already knew that solar power was an option, but I was unaware of passive vs. active until now. There are also different types of solar products.

From my expert, Jim, I learned that because of where I live we may not be able to be completly independent of a grid or that it is the best decision long term or economicly. “I’m trusting you have access to the manual we issued to everyone.  I’m not sure complete grid independence is possible unless you want to purchase battery systems.  I think reduction of grid independence is very possible, but it depends on how much manual control you want to live with.  The older you get, the more convenient it is to rely on grid, and then it becomes a question of being frugal and responsible.” Through Swift Turbines, a company in IN, I learned that my wind rating is low. I know we don’t have any wind or geothermal plants in IN. No good fault lines for geothermal, only shallow heat. So, these can only be back up systems. Our skies pollution levels, again from research Jim has done, won’t give us enough power to be independent either. The conclusion I have now is that we will need to be tied to the grid, but we can still use these systems to use as little as possible.

I used a pretty simple method of checking sources of informaiton. My expert is LEED certified, and provides trainings in the area. He also stated his bias clearly.

I used the Big6 to think about what kind of information does this source provide and what was improtant from each. I Created a chart with those questions along with bias?, ending of website address (org,com,edu).

I spoke with my husband at end about this as well. He will be the person building it so he has a lot of say. Not to mention is 10 years experience and LEED certification. I have to say that I am feeling better now than at the last phase. I feel like I am getting a handle on the information.

So, after talking to my expert, Jim. I feel a little more confident. I think that the idea of being completely independent of a grid system where we live may not be possible. I am sad about this, but I can still do a lot to be to keep our dependence as little as possible…and maybe in the future we can be.

KEY WORDS: renewable energy sources, zero energy houses, photovoltaic systems, geothermal energy, wind energy

Those will get you the basic information. To get more specific, I used Indiana after the key words above (fill in your state or city) or company or home builders. It depended on the kinds of information I was looking for.

I created a Delicious bookmark folder for some of the sites I used. I was going to try to post it here or at least share it through email, but I can’t find the button to do it. ARG!

K, finally got delicious to work. Here is a link to my page. If this doesn’t work for anyone please let me know. http://delicious.com/berryjwells

So beginning my search, I am a little overwhelmed because there is a lot of information. It seems that my questions are leading to more questions. I am not sure that I will have a definitive answer(s) to my questions by the time we are finished with the project. I can atest to the feelings of confusion and doubt that Kuhlthau describes in her Exploring Information stage.

The first thing I did was think about what kind of information resources I had available.

Live- husband(LEED trained), Jim (trains construction comapnies on LEED certification and green building)     

Print-training book, magazines         

Digital-email with companies, Eencyclopedias        Mulitple- pictures, websites, video clips

I’m sure this list will grow.

I began by discussing my questions on the web with my husband, who has been a great deal of help because he is LEED trained. He helped me locate the person who trained him. (I will be interviewing him later in the process when I have more specific questions and thoughts.) He also helped me narrow my focus on some of the questions. After I had a better idea of what to look for I used metacrawlwer to search the net. I like metacrawler because of how relevant the “found” information is to what you are searching for unlike other engines. I went to wiki, I know some people don’t like this site because it can be manipulated, just to look for basic information on each of the types of renewable information. Ya know, what is it? What does it look like, kinda thing. I added bits of information to my initial web, but needed a different tool to focus my search better. zero energy chart I used this chart to help me figure out basci information. I also added more secondary questions and new or modified questions to my web.   I am a color coding freak, so information found is in a new color and so are the new questions. http://www.mywebspiration.com/view/305051a2b488

I am excited to try ask an expert in my next step of exploration, now that I have more knowledge and a focus.

I think that I may have to narrow the focus of the inquiry to the bigger picture of what kind of systems to use and how rather than get as specific as to what kind of other green materials to use in later parts of construction. That will have to come later.
More webbing to come, if fear

Ok, so I have just begun to brainstorm starter questions for this inquiry and feel overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge I don’t have.  For inspiration I read through the Questioning Toolkit by James McKenzie and started at the section titled Essential Questions. (Thinking that anything named essential is a good place to start.) He said that these questions are, “central to our lives”. So, I took that thought and applied it to what is centeral to me to find out about building a zero-energy house. (See link below to check out all the questions.) Then, I used those questions as parent questions for others. I’m not sure yet if all of them are relavent or what I am missing, but I’m sure I will soon enough.

 Here is a link to that web:  http://www.mywebspiration.com/view/305051a2b488

Creating the web was a little tough to get used to even though I am familiar with kidspriation. Although, I think that it will allow me to keep using it throughout the different steps of the project.

Onward Ho!

I thought that I would have more standards to link this inquiry to at the elementary level, but the only one I found was for 3rd grade and would not have the depth that this inquiry would require. However, I did find many standards at the middle school level and high school. Also, there are numerous standards that could incorporate this inquiry for a Building Trades Program; from planning materials, to installing rough and finished electrical systems, to applying new research into planning. This could be an entire semester worth of instruction on zero-energy housing for such a program.

The standards I found are:

• Describe how electrical energy can be produced from a variety of energy sources and can be transformed into almost any other form of energy, such as light or heat. (Core Standard)

• Recognize and explain that different ways of obtaining, transforming, and distributing energy have different environmental consequences. (Core Standard)

• Identify different forms of energy that exist in nature. (Core Standard)

• Hypothesize future needs and uses of energy related to business, industry, and population, and how energy conservation practices could be implemented locally, regionally and statewide.

• Discuss positive and negative features of nuclear, solar, water, wind, geothermal, animal waste, wood, and fossil fuel powered energy and consider how these features affect policy making as it is related to these natural resources.

I did not need to do much thinking about what topic I wanted to know more about. I did think about doing a topic related to school like fluency strategies, because that is something my students struggle with, or writing, also a struggle. But, I am very excited to learn more about renewable energy sources and how it could work  for my family. And, I wanted to do something more personal. I spend so much time working on school stuff that I had almost forgotten that I have other interests.  I am also a little nervous because there is so much information out there and issues to consider.

So, I chose to look into zero-energy and self-sustaining energy because my husband want to build a house. And we thought that if we want to start from scratch anyway, why not use renewable energy sources. We would also like it to be more of a self-sustaining home, not so much of the grow your own food and make your own clothes type, but in the way to produce the energy we need.  We almost always have TVs, game systems, or computers going, let alone the amount of water we use and how I like to be able to do dishes and laundry  all at once. Would it even be possible for our family to live in a house like this? Would we have to change our lifestyle? It is important to us, but can we do it? I have already begun dabbling with researching this on my own, but this project is going to give me the opportunity to really do it and make a plan!