Bells and Whistles

Whenever I mention that we are going to build our own house, and that it's going to be eco-friendly, people always nod knowingly and say "solar panels, right?" -- but the truth is that solar panels are simply not cost-efficient, at least not yet. We won't be having geothermal heating either (where holes are dug deep down into the ground and the heat is used to heat the house, and the energy is somehow used to cool the house in the summer, too). In fact, there are a whole bunch of very expensive bells and whistles that people think of when they think of an eco-friendly house that may reduce costs and energy use, but cost way more to install than they will save.

One of the reasons is because we are building on our very small property lot, and within the city of Toronto. That makes geothermal impossible, or unbelievably expensive, and as we are already on the city power grid it doesn't make sense. If we were building on a new property that didn't already have utility access, geothermal would work well, but we're not.

The designers have also said that we can plan for the space for installing solar panels, in order to put them in at some date in the future when the costs for them have come down A LOT, but that time is still a ways away.

So our house is going to have a couple of bells, and maybe 1 or 2 fancy whistles, but no more than that, at least for the time being.