Solar Powered Cookies,er…Cooking...

Solar Cookies “Free energy“… what could be cooler than that? Well, “free energy” and “food“… Today, I’m baking Solar Powered Cookies in my Passive Solar Oven for snacks at this weekend’s South Sound Green Tour. Solar Oven with Assistant About 20 years ago, I was hired to go to Boston to teach the Fundamentals of Energy at a summer prep school. Given that  the classes offered were electives and there were many to choose from, I was pretty concerned about whether kids would sign up for my class. As a desperate...

Green Home Guide-USGBC...

The US Green Building Council recently launched GreenHomeGuide.com. For homeowners or potential homeowners (those seeking their next home) who are making the move to green, this site is a good clearinghouse for answering many questions, it’s also a great aide towards helping a homeowner to ask good questions. The site features exclusive content written by experienced working professionals from across the nation, many architects, designers and other industry folks. The first page opens up with a rolling set of relevant and provocative questions all pertaining to some...

Disappearing Window Screens...

Now that the leaden skies of winter are receding a bit allowing us to enjoy the beauty of spring, I’m enjoying looking out my windows more than I have in the past few months. There are two things impeding my otherwise perfect view of my empire. One: I can’t see out the bottom third of my full-lite French doors. Eddy, our dog, while passively window-shopping the bird feeders from the comfort of the living room, she manages to fairly effectively apply an obfuscatory coating on the entire surface of the glass…. and then… after actively shopping the...

Solar Tutorial Part A – The Very B...

Creating electricity from the sun has been around since 1954, but using the sun for heat energy has been around since the dawn of time. Have you ever leaned against a rock late in the evening that had been ‘cooking’ in the sun all day and discovered it to be warm? That’s solar thermal energy being stored in the rock or ‘thermal mass’. The ancient architects were all over that one! Despite it’s long history “solar energy” is still a mystery to many. Good Questions: Are there different types of solar energy? What is insolation? How viable is solar in...

Solar Tour in Olympia...

Come join us October 3rd, 2009, for the Olympia Solar Tour of Homes. For the second year running, The Artisans Group is proud to participate in this event. This year we’ll have two stops on the tour to showcase some of the latest solar technologies that work well in our region. The Olympia Solar Tour of Homes is part of the American Solar Energy Society’s (ASES) National Solar Tour program; our local tour is held annually on the first Saturday in October, to kick off National Energy Awareness Month. On the tour you’ll find real world solar applications,...