utilities and services

Earlier this week, our photovoltaic (solar-electric) installer connected the wires for the p/v panels through the holes we'd carefully drilled through the steel trim at the top of the upper roof. These wires will be concealed beneath, and protected by, the final piece of trim that gets installed as a cap over the top edges of the roof's standing seams. Once the cap trim is in place, the roof will be finished.

David drilling holes

David has been drilling holes at the top of the roof this weekend so that the wiring for the solar panels can be hidden under a piece of trim.

We also sprayed in more insulation in the mechanical lofts. It's our weekend to be monkeys.

solar power

Just when we thought we'd spend the next few days writing about the fantastic door and window installation at tin box, the crew from Electron Solar Energy arrived to install the flexible Uni-solar photovoltaic electrical panels we purchased from the Energy Store. Here's a photo of the first panel going up this morning.

rethinking the grid

Spending the last few days of 2011 in Southern California has been a wonderful opportunity to see how far the state and its cities have progressed in their efforts to repair and protect a fragile ecology. Los Angeles still suffers from a layer of brown smog that hangs over the region, but the air here is much clearer than it was in the past. Policies aimed at reducing fossil fuel combustion are working - incentives for buying fuel-efficient cars have led to consumers and taxi fleets adopting hybrids in extraordinary numbers (Priuses are ubiquitous here) and programs meant to increase renewable energy generation have made this the leading state for rooftop photovoltaic installations. The best part of this progress is how visible it is.