How the house performs

Sorry...been really consumed by the business my wife and I started. We had so much difficulty finding Mexican tile to do our bathrooms and kitchen that we decided to start an online Mexican tile store where you can actually get what you want not what they have. We sell colonial talavera, ceramic, porcelain and stoneware tile. Check us out at Mexicantiledesigns.com. We are now one of the largest importers of Mexican tile, sinks, murals and accessories in the world. Heck, we even provided the tile for Johnny Depp's  Bahama island man cave..pretty cool!

So after seven years in our adobe house we have accumulated quite a bit of data we can share with you....

The house is all electric. No gas and we only use the fireplaces for ambiance. We didn't want the carbon foot print of a gas truck coming to fill the tank every week/month.  Our local electric utility co-op offers a "Time of use" program where we pay $0.059/ Kilowatt hour for off peak usage and pay $0.168/ kilowatt hour for on peak usage. Those not part of the program pay $0.12/ kilowatt hour. To take advantage of this, we installed a timer on our ground source heat pump so it only runs during off peak hours. The heat pump is currently set to run from 11:00pm until 7:00am. We also set the dishwasher and our washing machine to run during these hours.

Below is a photo showing electric data for the past several years. Keep in mind that we live at 7,500 ft and the temperatures in December, January and February stay pretty much below freezing  often getting down to 5 degrees and even colder. Also, my wife's father spent the winter with us after being flooded out of his assisted living facility apartment in Boulder in 2014. We had to keep the heat at about 78 degrees for him (he was 93 then).

Time of Use Electricity Data

Durango, CO Climate Data

The inner wall and the concrete slab floor store heat so well, we are able to coast through the days with the temp still being at the set temp for the house at the end of the day. The thermal T for the outer wall pretty much tempers out the high and low peaks and the 7" of perlite between the outer and inner wall (R22) isolates the inner wall from the outside weather. No need for programmable thermostats because the stored temp in the floor and walls moves so slowly that it would take weeks to change to the different settings. In March of 2013, I turned off the heat pump for a week to see what would happen. We had a winter storm hit so there was no passive solar gain and strong winds to go along with snow, hail and sleet. After a week, the temperature in the house dropped 3 degrees.

We have the option to run the heat pump as a cooling source but there is no need for this. Even though we are near 90 degrees right now, the house is seldom above 73 degrees and cools nicely in the evening with a few open windows.

We had installed a timer for the hot water tank but after one summer, we added solar hot water and disconnected the timer. The ground source heat pump preheats the water to 90 degrees in the winter but not the summer so the solar panels help during on peak hours of summer and supplements the heat pump in winter.

We wired the upper roof of the house above the two guest bedrooms for photovoltaic but the pay off for the installation of panels and inverter is too long based on what we pay for electricity. We continue to monitor this.

We did not install widow coverings. We like the light day and night and have not felt the thermal loss was that noticeable.

In general, we are extremely pleased with the energy performance of the house.  When we stay in a stick built house, we really notice the wind, the cold, the drafts, the uneven heat--things we never experience in our great earth block house!  Please feel free to comment or ask questions. I'll try to be better about responding.