NEW MILFORD — In 2002, Mike Sumple designed a attractive, 3,450-sq.-foot household with nine rooms and three and a 50 percent baths in New Milford. The dwelling is a present-day write-up and beam cedar home that sits back again 700 ft from 2nd Hill Road on 4 acres of wooded land.
Great, you may say, but there are a lot of expansive, well-created houses in Litchfield County. Properly, what is different about Sumple’s dwelling in that it makes use of geothermal electrical power to warmth and great the inside of the property, and now photo voltaic to present electricity.
“I desired an electrical power productive property,” Sumple reported. “The residence has been rated 3 instances as a very well crafted electrical power successful residence by CL&P and then Eversource.”
The heat from under the floor of the land was tapped into by drilling 100-foot-deep, a few-inch-diameter holes into the floor. Copper tubing was put in into these holes and linked to the warmth pump, which generates the scorching refrigerant gas to heat the home in wintertime. In summertime months, the hot gases are reversed to a liquid to amazing the residence. The sequence of procedure of refrigerant is copper earth loops to the warmth pump to the air handler. The earth temperature of the refrigerant adjustments it from a fuel in winter and to a liquid in the summertime.
The three-story property capabilities cathedral ceilings, an open up floor program, and a walkout basement with sunroom. The continual heat delivered by the ground-source warmth pump and the site of the high-velocity air stores in the ceiling, partitions, and flooring, pointed out Sumple, is intended to provide convenience to all three concentrations of the household. The home is located on a higher elevation of Connecticut, wherever the temperature at times dips close to zero. With the thermostat established at 68 levels, the house owner saves vitality and there are no cold spots.
“Instead of burning fossil fuels to make heat, we only use a floor-supply heat pump to transfer warmth that by now exists in the ground into the home,” Sumple discussed. “We buried copper ground loops and stuffed them with refrigerant. The floor-source warmth pump, alongside with the copper loops, transfers the warmth from the floor into the house. In the summer time, this procedure is reversed, and the warmth is moved from the property into the floor, which is cooler than the outdoors ambient temperature. Some of this warmth is utilised to deliver no cost domestic hot drinking water throughout the air conditioning year.”
The geothermal approach eradicates the want for a chimney since there is no combustion taking area. Also, there is no generation of carbon monoxide gases in the property. The once-a-year discounts for heating and cooling are in the array of 40 to 60 percent, preserving appreciable cash for the home owner. Talk about leaving no carbon footprints on the land and in the air.
Sumple has upped his personal environmental ante. He just lately put in a photo voltaic program by Pure Place Vitality. “I experienced been on the lookout at solar panels for a couple of a long time. Pure Place Strength signifies Sunlight Electricity out of California. They have the best efficiency panel and arrived out with a 400-watt panel that was installed. I needed to minimize the variety of panels to get the kilowatt output that I was looking for. The method was mounted pretty efficiently with no difficulties.”
PurePoint Vitality is based in Norwalk and about the past 13 a long time it has carried out residential, business and agricultural solar assignments all over Connecticut, as properly as New York, Kansas, Texas, Nevada, Illinois, Florida, Georgia and Haiti.
“Homeowner Mike Sumple experienced appeared into solar above the yrs and needed an productive photo voltaic system that would support his energy requirements together with his geothermal technique,” discussed Mike Dowling, Pure Stage Strength Company Progress Manager. “We 1st consulted three years back and furnished a turnkey job that provided style, engineering, permitting, set up, inspections and remaining commissioning.”
Dowling’s organization utilized a number of roof spots, together with a detached barn/garage, in the challenge. The enterprise installed 34 SunPower A Series 400-Watt panels with micro inverters. Dowling statements SunPower supplies the “highest effectiveness panels obtainable.”
Dowling concurred with Sumple that the installation went smoothly. “Because the panels were being remaining placed on numerous roofs and on a detached barn it was needed that system was engineered to feed electrical power again to key electric powered panel in home.” Six employees, together with Dowling and Challenge Supervisor Natalie Castro, labored on the set up. It took six months from session to closing commissioning for the project and process energizing. The task was eligible for a Connecticut Green Bank Rebate and a 26 % Federal Solar Investment decision Tax Credit score. The dwelling was once again rated as power successful by Eversource Residence Vitality Options simply because of its solar element.
“I’m really pleased with the result,” claimed Sumple. “My August electrical invoice went from $230 down to $27 pounds. I’m estimating that I’ll save about $2,000 a calendar year on electricity prices. This need to enhance as strength expenditures are likely up annually.”
At minimum for New Milford’s Mike Sumple, the future in residence heating, cooling and electricity is now.