a guest post by Mitchell Thomashow

We’re mired in the depths of winter in Unity, Maine. I’ve lived in Northern New England since 1975 and this is easily the coldest winter I’ve experienced. There have been countless below zero nights, many days when the temperature has barely cracked single numbers, and plenty of snow and wind. I’m not complaining because the cross-country skiing is sublime and I have the great fortune to live in a solar home—The Unity House.

Enter Tedd Benson, the founder of Bensonwood Homes in Walpole, NH. In the 1970′s Tedd revitalized modern timber frame housing and shared his techniques with the industry; most timber frame homes built today are based on Tedd’s best practices. Now Tedd wants to bring this same open source approach to creating housing that is adaptable, sustainable, and affordable.

As the result of the Open Prototype Initiative -a design and construction partnership between Bensonwood Homes and the Open Source Building Alliance – we have The Unity House, a zero-carbon, President’s Residence for Unity College, a small environmental liberal arts college in rural Maine. Our college aspires to be an exemplary sustainable campus. So what better way is there to “walk the talk” than to live what you espouse? We worked with Bensonwood to have The Unity House model frugal sustainability, multiple use space, and ecological awareness. In theory it seemed just wonderful. Five months into the project, after another icy cold night, you might want to know how well it’s performing.

On a sunny day, regardless of the outside temperature, even when it’s below zero, there will be enough passive solar gain to keep the house at close to seventy degrees well into the evening. The solar panels -designed and implemented by Gro Solar of White River Junction, VT- will generate over 5000 watts per hour. During the day we produce more electricity than we consume. The Hallowell heat pump won’t be needed until very late evening or early the next morning. Over a three-day stretch of dry, sunny, frigid days in late January, we generated as much electricity as we used. I can safely say that when the sun is shining in the middle of winter, the Unity House is carbon neutral.

However, when it’s cloudy, things change. We moved into The Unity House in early September. Up until around Thanksgiving we were ahead in our solar accounting—more electricity generated from the solar panels than taken from the grid. Two months later, we’ve fallen behind. However, I am convinced that with the warmer and much longer days of Spring and Summer, the balance will be restored and our solar accounting will prevail.

Solar accounting aside, there is another important aspect of solar living, beyond the environmental and economic virtues. It’s just plain fun. It’s interesting and rewarding to observe how following the path of the sun informs how you live. You know that you are contributing to a more sustainable world and you are living the future in the present moment.

Check out the Bensonwood website (http://bensonwood.com/unity/) to get a sense of all the different models of the Unity House. Notice the tight and elegant design, the use of local and recycled materials, the emphasis on intelligence and craft.

And check out my blog (http://www.ucesrealworld.blogspot.com/) at Unity College, Environmental Studies for the Real World, to understand why ecological awareness and sustainable living are at the heart of how we approach education.

Mitchell Thomashow
President, Unity College

Posted by: admin on February 12, 2009.