Daily Impact: Return from a road trip!

This is the 23rd posting to this blog.


I have not posted to this blog in over a week. I went out of town.

Travel makes a big impact on the total carbon emissions for a person. I took Astro up to Washington DC in the van. I left Orlando on Wednesday, September 21 at about noon. It was hot, and I ran the A/C until it became evening. The A/C in the van has been week for a while, and it seems that the repair I made did not hold. I used a can of sealer which I picked up at the auto parts store, and it held for a few months. I will try to use it again, and hope for better results.

I am not sure if it was the heat, the A/C, or some other problem, but the van only got about 22.5 MPG on the first tank of gas. The overall average for the van is usually over 24.5 MPG. I have been keeping records of this for several years. I do know that the van likes cooler weather. On the return trip home, it got over 25 MPG for an average of 23.6 for the whole trip. The whole trip was 1702 miles, and I only drove the van seven miles while in DC.

Team Florida's Flex House. One of my favorites.

I went on this trip to attend the Solar Decathlon. Click here to go to their website. This event is held on odd years in our nation's capitol. This year it was not on the national mall, but was relegated to the West Potomac Park which is south of the Lincoln Memorial. I rode my bike from where I stayed in Alexandria to the event each day. The ride was a test of my riding abilities and stamina due to the several hills along the route. I had to dismount the bike twice each way to walk up the steep hills.

This was my third time attending the Solar Decathlon. I enjoy looking at each of the homes for new ideas for my own house. There are several which I intend to incorporate into my home in the next year. The first will be to remove the climate control ducts from my attic. That space is always hot despite the roof being painted white, and most of the climate control I use is for cooling. I will install exposed ductwork below the ceiling. I have already figured out how to do this, and have the routing planned. I now need to shop for ductwork which I can paint to make pretty.

A second thing I wish to incorporate is a desicant dehumidifier. There were three teams who used diferent salt brine systems for this purpose, and I will explore these options. A third thing I wish to do is to add insulation to my attic. Once the duct work is removed, there will be plenty of space to add much needed insulation. I was going to insulate the inside of the roof with spray foam, but learned from Michael Flynn (Team Florida) that this will make the rafters of the roof rot. He did say that using closed cell spray foam under the floors would be a great idea. That will be step four.

Step five has nothing to do with energy savings, but will make certain parts of the house more private when I get a roommate. Instead of installing pocket doors which is expensive, I will use external sliding doors instead. Several teams used these in their houses, and when done right look very nice. I will install one between the kitchen and the west part of the house, and one between my rooms and the living room. I prefer to use translucent panels for these doors, and will keep my eyes open for the right kind.

I will resume keeping track of my daily impacts tomorrow. Even though I put about 1300 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere by driving to DC, at least my house was not using any grid power while I was gone. I left the one room A/C on 86 degrees and on energy-saving mode, and plugged it into the solar outlet. The fridge and exterior light remained on solar power as well. I had some concern that there would not be enough sun and/or wind to keep all of these things going while I was gone, but thankfully everything was OK when I returned on Monday night. I was so happy to see that outside light burning brightly as I pulled into the driveway. That meant that the fridge still had power, and that there wasn't a nasty mess inside to deal with.