Powering down their lives
Ellen Mackey wanted off the grid.
She wanted sunlight to run her refrigerator. She wanted rainwater to feed her garden.
But she was not living in the wilds of Maine. To become self-sufficient on a stamp of a lot in the San Fernando Valley turned out to be simply unsound.
Now Mackey wants to feed the grid.
She and hundreds of other green-minded pioneers around the nation opened their homes Saturday to show the myriad ways people can use less power, water, fuel and pesticides.
The American Solar Energy Society’s 12th annual National Solar Tour offered homeowners thinking about reducing their effect on the environment an unvarnished look at what it takes, what it costs and where you have to compromise.
Some attendees were solar novices, looking to learn. Others showed up with lessons of their own to trade.
“My biggest [solar] production is springtime,” said Freeman Baldwin, visiting a home in La Crescenta and talking to other visitors. “The panels heat up [in summer]. When they get hot, production goes way down.”
The solar tour is not so much a tour but a collective open house. Last year, more than 80,000 people attended homes across the country, according to the society. The group anticipated 115,000 on Saturday.
“Look at this,” said Jackson Shaw, 71, in the frontyard of his modest postwar home in Long Beach. He leafed through his power bills -- the highest this year being $1.71.
“My electrical bill this whole year will be well under $15,” he said.
He led a visitor to the back of his house to show his setup. Next to his water heater is a pump that drives water into solar panels on his roof. “The water comes down at 200 degrees,” he said.
Then to the solar voltaic system that powers his home -- 18 panels and an inverter. When the sun is out, they feed power into the grid all day long. He only pays Southern California Edison if he uses more power than he puts in.
If he wanted off the grid, he’d have to buy a bank of batteries to store the power so he could use it at night. Feeding the grid made more sense.
Shaw is a no-nonsense homeowner. He was not wearing hemp pants. There are no wind chimes or driftwood sculptures to be seen. In front of his hybrid Toyota Prius, he has an old blue Ford F-150 pickup with the hood open.
“I’m not really a major green person,” he said.
And he knew what visitors really want to know: “The hot-water system was under $5,000 with a rebate from the state. The solar system was about $20,000.”
There you go: how much green it takes to go green.
On wooded mountain slopes of La Crescenta, Ted Baumgart’s rambling home was drawing quite the crowd.
Baumgart, 60, has three solar-power systems: one to power his refrigerator; one to power his rock-lined, ionized pool; and one to power the model railroad track that twists through the forest of old knotted olive trees, lurking like trolls in his fairyland backyard.
Baumgart’s house feels like it was born of the mountain itself -- heavy wood beams, vaulted ceilings, boulders trucked out of the Tujunga Wash in a VW bus. It is cooled by thick rock-and-concrete walls, the shade of a giant pine and a design that funnels the breeze through the home.
Now this is the earthy, free-living romantic side of self-sufficiency.
Except that pine tree. It’s blocking the sun’s photons.
Baumgart’s solar panel expert told him if he wanted to really reduce his power consumption, he’d have to turn that tree to mulch -- so he could put solar panels on the roof.
“No way,” Baumgart said. “We want to live with the trees.”
Meaning not just these trees, but in tune with the whole tree race.
So he has panels scattered about wherever a stray ray hits, and does everything else he can to keep the place green, from composting to watering with gray water.
Eric and Juowie Lin strolled through the garden, collecting ideas for their home in Montrose, their 15-month-old daughter Rose along, strapped in a Baby Björne carrier on Eric’s chest. They have just started thinking about reducing their environmental signature.
“We weren’t that much into it until we had our daughter,” Juowie Lin said. “We realized we had to do something.”
They worried that driving a hybrid was not safe for children with so many monstrosities on the road, so they’re going to keep their SUV. But they’re thinking about forking out the cash for solar panels.
“When you do this, you know, it’s not for the money,” Eric Lin said.
Down the hill, in Sun Valley, Mackey’s was a different scene altogether -- less flamboyance, all facts. Her small stucco house looks like every other on the working-class block. But do not judge by first impressions.
Her front lawn is not your typical turf, but glue gamma grass, a native to the Western deserts. It is shaded by a laurel sumac tree and ringed by white sage.
“We’ve watered three times this year,” said Mackey, who is an ecologist.
Into the side yard, she showed off her fruit and vegetable garden. The compost and mulch are generated on site -- of course. Plants that attract hummingbirds and bees are interspersed throughout, as are flowers that repel white moths and aphids.
“We’re totally pesticide-free,” Mackey said.
At a time of year many gardens look like a plague of locusts just came through, hers looks like no aphid has landed, no snail has slunk.
Mackey walked around back, past compost bins, the electric wood chipper, the 50-gallon rain barrels, the bowls of tumbled glass -- Budweiser, Heineken, Skyy Vodka bottles -- used as mulch.
She points out the swamp cooler on the back porch that cools the house with minimal energy. She stepped inside. Solar tubes in the ceiling lighted up the house, while solar curtains blocked the heat coming through the kitchen windows. The countertops looked like granite but were made of recycled glass. The air was notably brisk for a warm afternoon.
“This house is really cool because I stuffed as much insulation as I could into the walls and attic,” Mackey said.
Her mission is, like the others, a work in progress. The solar panels on her roof are owned by the Department of Water and Power, and she is still negotiating the price to buy them so she can start selling back the power they generate.
In the meantime, Mackey is cutting every bit of waste she can. Every appliance is on a power strip so she can cut them off at night to reduce “phantom power” loss. She reuses plastic bags and bottles. Garbage is composted. She hopes, when she gets her panels, to be able to recharge her hybrid car off them.
The new goal, after shucking her dream of living off the grid, is simply a minor tweak toward reality: “We want this to be a fossil-fuel-free house.”
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