Since We Can't Take It With Us....

.... we've decided to spend all our money now.  (Sorry, kids.)

Well, it's actually a Short-Term-Pain/Long-Term-Gain kinda thing. 

Don't know if you know, but things can be rather expensive here.  You learn to grocery shop a little bit differently.  (Don't buy grapes when they are something like $15/pound, wait until they come down to a reasonable $8/pound.   Buy 20 boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios when they go on sale for $4/box so you don't get caught short and be tempted to pay the $7.95/box regular price.)  You fill up your gas tank, whether you need to or not, because you heard gas is about to go up another $.10/gallon (they don't seem to do it in  3 and 4 cent increments here).  But the gauge-du-jour is electricity.

We are currently paying $.37/kwh.  I'm given to understand that is more than double what Californians are paying.  Granted... we don't need heat.  But soon, very soon, we are likely to really really really want to turn on our air conditioners.  But then we'd have to stop eating and/or driving.

So we have soul searched, internet surfed, proposal screened and number crunched options from here to the sun (snicker, snicker, snicker...) and we are proceeding with putting a PhotoVoltaic system up on our roof.  There are beaucoup state & fed tax credits available which help a bunch, and pretty cheap financing available (where they collateralize the system, not our house).  The math seems to work such that in about 3 years we will have recouped our net cost (total cost less tax credits) and in about 6 years the system will have paid for itself.

But of course, we couldn't stop there.  Oh no.  Turns out we need to put a new roof on the place before we cover it with PV.  Michael will be up on the roof this Saturday helping tear off the existing comp.  Good news:  Relatively small roof, very mild (almost no) pitch.  Bad news: It gets gnarly hot up there early in the day.  Hoping for  a little over cast and mild breeze.....  We are also adding a bunch of roof vents and attic vents to help let heat escape.  Muy importante, especially as we leave winter and head into spring & summer.  There is currently no venting and it can get quite warm & stuffy in here when the breezes are still and the sun's a-blazin'. 

So we are very excited at the thought of keeping ourselves cool when we are home, and the doggies cool when we go out without them.  And we'll still be able to afford grapes and Cheerios!