Conscious Living

Hey, welcome back to Conscious Living. Good to see you. After many years on the road, obviously we love to travel and celebrate the joys of travel. But, you know, for us, I think at this point, we're a little burnt out.

Yeah. I mean, it does start to wear on you a little bit. And sometimes you just want to, like, not go anywhere. Yeah, we just want to chill, watch some movies, eat some good food and just go nowhere.

And so that's why on this episode, we're celebrating the wonders of the staycation. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's easy to think that the only way to enjoy yourself is by getting on a plane and going somewhere super, super far, you know, increasing your carbon footprint by, I don't know, 75%. Right.

Of course, the plant based diet helps reduce it by 75%. So I don't know, is it kind of cancel itself out a little bit? I don't really. Know.

It seems like you got some questions and I'm not really sure about all that, but I can say it is we live we're blessed to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, just outside of Palm Springs. I mean, the thing is, it's like being at home, you know, you can use a lot of energy. Right? Yeah.

And being at home, you know, if you can do it in a way that's more sustainable, a little more green, minimize your footprint and stay at home and have a good time and have a staycation with snacks and electric bikes and pool dips and, you know, things that could potentially drain the planet. You know, that's that's my question. Can it be done? It's a good question.

Trained as an attorney, let's not forget. That it will never leave. I'm a thinker. Yeah, you are a thinker.

And I appreciate that. But, you know, for me, it's like we live in the in the desert, like solar. It's here, like, it's incredible what we can do. And let's see if we can fuel this house off solar energy.

Frankly, I want to see if we can go net zero. ohh net zero. I mean, that's a high standard. I mean, I always thought that net zero is like only for homes that were being built from scratch, from the ground where you could, like design every architectural element to make it as eco friendly as possible.

You know, we bought this house as is, right? Yeah. Mid-century built in 1961. You know, back then they weren't talking about eco anything.

So it's like, how do you retrofit a house? That's already been built, you know? Yes, we're in the desert. There's sun everywhere.

But, you know, how do you capture that in a way that is energy efficient and cost efficient? Yeah, we might be able to get there. I mean, I'm open to it. I'm skeptical.

I have to see the facts, you know, I have to see the cost. I have to see the plan. And hey, what better time than a staycation? We're home.

This is the time to do it. If we're going to do it, as long as we can have some fun, too. Okay, well, how about this? How about I make you deal Whats that?

How about I make you something delicious? Your favorite breakfast in bed? Perhaps you've got my attention. and you go on this journey with me and see if we can do it.

All right? I'm willing to go on the journey. I'm willing to try. The breakfast will help as long as it's good.

You know, I don't do anything but good, baby girl. Wow. Well, that's actually not sometimes, like food sucks. Sometimes it's okay, most times its really good.

All right, I'm willing to try. I'm willing to be open minded. All right, well, let's do it. All right, breakfast first.

Look, deal. oh, pound? Rock, Scissors,Paper, I cover you. Wait.

No, no, you smashed my scissors. Dont go away, You'll see who wins this rock, paper, scissors, adventure. You know, it's one thing to offset our travel. You know, when we get on a plane and, you know, being vegan, eco fashion, all those things that contribute to a better carbon footprint.

But it's like, well, how are we living in our home? You know, we're living off of electricity, coal powered electricity, gas powered electricity. It's like, yikes. So solar panels felt like the direction that we wanted to go and we wanted to go for some time.

But when it's time to actually get the solar panels, oh my God, there's so many different companies on the market and they all do solar differently and not all solar companies are you know, created equal. So we had to do a lot of research and we eventually decided to sit down with a consultant from SunPower and, you know, see what they had to offer. Most, if not all of other solar companies are brokers, middlemen of some sort, pulling different pieces of equipment, putting together what we joke about called the Franken Solar System. The power of one is our SunPower Equinox Solution.

This is all one integrated system by one company and under one warranty. Okay, so if there was never an issue on the roof or anything different, you only have one company to call. Right? And as a company that's been around for over 36 years.

We have led the industry in solar cell efficiency, durability and warranty. right. We're going to have some fun now designing a system together. First, I want to show you what we call the radiance image of your roof so you understand which part of your home gets the most sunlight so we can maximize efficiency.

And then we're going to have get you guys involved in picking exactly where these panels go on the roof. So we can see how much energy you can offset and how much money you can save. You cant generate natural gas off your roof. No.

But you can generate natural electricity, cant you? Thats right. Let's start here with this image. Ooh, that's our house.

The consultation was great, you know, very illuminating, learned just seeing the energy that we could offset just from the most abundant resource here in the desert, which is that sun. I mean, it's like sunny here 360 days a year. Why would we not utilize that? Whoa, 102.

Okay, not bad. 102 there. So I am confident and I hope you are too in this system design, which is an 18.7 kilowatt system. Yeah.

116% offset of that last 12 months home energy needs okay. That this is going to not only cover 100% of the current energy needs, but giving you room to convert those appliances from natural gas to electricity and having a net zero environment. That would be beautiful. How's that sound?

Yeah, beautiful. Sounds great. Okay. Fingers crossed.

Now, we never want to call this a complete off grid solution, because in a way you still need the utility because there could be a long days of like stormy weather where you don't have enough solar power that builds up to store. Right. Another key thing and a lot of people don't realize this about grid tied systems is that any excess solar power coming off rooftops is actually being redistributed to your neighbors. So whether they have solar panels or not, during a bright, sunny day in the spring or summer, it's likely they're receiving solar power.

It's just being delivered from the utility company or your electric company, but was generated ultimately off your roof. That actually helps everyone out. It puts less strain on the on the electrical grid. Right.

Fewer blackouts caused by high use. Wow Right. And it's a good feeling knowing that clean solar energy is being produced and being distributed through your own neighborhood. Yeah.

so the more of us that put solar panels on our roofs like this, we can all help the entire community. Thats right. So breakfast in bed is everything. I mean, you know, I got to get Bianca on board with this whole thing.

So making sure she's got plenty of delicious snacks. Her favorite food. I chose to make one of her all time favorites, which is an omelet. I'll tell you, just egg, which is a plant based, made of beans, egg.

And I can make an omelet with it. Throw in some vegan cheese there. Spero is my favorite goat cheese and her favorite goat cheese. A little spinach, a little green onions grown from our garden.

And I think she'll be a happy camper, at least for a few minutes. This is what I love to eat. I love sandwiches, obviously. I love breakfast sandwiches.

So first thing we're going to do is we're going to start with the plant butter, get our sausage going, our beyond sausage. And I like the patties for this, So we're just going to drop some butter in there. And the key is with all plant sausage, all plant meats is make sure you get plenty of butter going, plenty of plant butter. We're going to just drop those in.

Daddy's hungry and it is staycation so we can treat ourselves a little bit. I love Cooks. women owned business. Randy Cooks is a delightful human being, and she makes this gluten free sour dough.

Born and raised in San Francisco. I know about some sour dough bread, y'all. And this is excellent, excellent sourdough bread and it's gluten free. So both Bianca and I can have it because she likes to be gluten free So while our sausage is going, I'm going to pop these eggs.

Now, these are my other favorite, just eggs, plant eggs. And so these are frozen. And then you just pop them in the toaster for about 6 minutes. So we'll just butter that bread.

It looks like our plant protein patties are complete, so we're going to take it off now. We're going to put back in this juicy deliciousness. Now we put our bread in, and now we're going to put our Violife in there. Put the top on, cover it.

So plant eggs are now out of the toaster. It's a nice brown bits. Oh, it's hot. The key thing that we're looking at is our pepper jelly, right?

We want that spice. This is spicy, sweet. It's delicious. I get mine from Trader Joe's.

Okay, so now we're going to flip this beautiful look at that, our Sando, and we're going to just put it all together We got our egg in there, we got our melted cheese, we got our sausage, Here's looking at you. Happy staycation. Mmmm This is comfort food. This is staycation.

You can't get this on the road. This is about being at home, baby. After cooking, a good chef always cleans up his station And his carbon footprint. Best way to do this?

Composting. It turns soil into a carbon sink eliminating methane emitting food scraps from landfills. One step closer to net zero. We talked with net zero experts, who all said make sure you get an energy audit And so we were really mindful about making sure that we found a great person and we're super pleased with Alex and Rob.

Husband and wife team, they even brought their little babies with them, which was awesome, just having them around. It was really important for us to hire an independent organization that would give us an accurate assessment of what our home was using, what we needed to get to net zero, what the process was, what we needed to shore up and really got that with that team. Oh, wow. So it seems like your filter is really impacted.

You can see there's a lot of dust that won't help with indoor air quality or airflow as well. And let's take a look at the return platform. Now. It looks like it's unducted return platform.

I would say possibly ten up to 10% of the airflow is coming from the attic, which can be causing some of this dust. Oh, wow. So is that something that's a pretty simple fix? Yes.

This is just basically someone coming and sealing up those areas. An energy audit, in a nutshell, we're looking at the shell of the building to see how well sealed and insulated the house is. We check the energy systems which are heating and cooling the space to see how well those are working. Do they have high duct leakage?

Do they have sufficient airflow? How is the filtration for indoor air quality? So we look at all of those characteristics and give recommendations to help reduce the energy, increase the indoor air quality of the home, to make the home a more pleasant space. These doors...

are they custom made? Yes. And it's funny you mention that, because these doors, I do not think are energy efficient. I mean, we try to close them and it just there's like there's no seal.

Do you think we're wasting a lot of money with these? I think a good amount, especially in the summertime. One option is to possibly add more weather stripping or just changing the doors. This is an older style can light, The practical benefits of getting like an energy audit from a third party is you're not getting recommendations from the salesman.

to have an unbiased opinion on what's going on and what they recommend and their expertise to accomplish the homeowners specific goals. So, what about those light bulbs? Well, they should be LEDs. Wonderful, because LED is 75-80% more efficient than incandescent.

Okay. Well, maybe that's a step in the right direction. Yes. Got that one thing right...

This is an older style can light, which is not air tight and it has holes up into the attic. And this is allowing a free communication of air from the house and attic. As soon as we turn on an exhaust fan, it depressurizes the house and it's going to pull air from any nook and cranny it can. By having these sealed eliminate the pathway for dirt, air, and particulates into the home, and add to the overall efficiency.

We got some potential, Michael. This box is unsealed around the perimeter, which is then allowing, again, just like the can light for air leakage to pass between the attic in the house. We also analyze the HVAC system to see how much leakage there is in the ducts. If theres high leakage, then a of that freshly conditioned air can be leaking into the unconditioned attic, and also that duct leakage has the potential to pull particulates 4 ton system having a nominal of 1600 CFM, we have a duct leakage, a total system duct leakage of 391 CFM, which equates to 24.4% leakage, which has a whole bunch of potential.

That's a big leak. After the audit, the first thing we did was to bring in Enviro Duct Seal Technologies to address the leaky ducts and make sure the entire HVAC system was more energy-efficient. Next step was to swap out our gas powered HVAC system with a much more sustainable electric heat pump system. I spent five years in the Marine Corps.

That started with supporting combat disabled veterans with free systems and service and repairs and it's morphed into adding on an internship program. It's all called HVAC for Heroes. A heat pump is an air conditioner that has the option to run in reverse. So while it removes heat during the summer, it puts the heat back inside during the winter time to keep the home nice and comfortable.

And variable speed is describing the stages that the system can operate. Rather than just being all the way on at 100% and all the way off, it can work at multiple stages and in between 0% and 100%. Variable speed is the best product available, most efficient, and far beyond the most comfortable. American Standards variable speed product is 700+ speeds, while most of the other brands are between 16 speeds and 95 speeds.

So these variable speed products that can work at a very large number of stages are able to mirror exactly the weather or the humidity levels it has to remove or the amount of people inside the home, whatever's going on, so that that system can work at its absolute minimum at all times, but while still maintaining perfect comfort in the home. Going with an all electric heat pump system will definitely help lower the carbon footprint of that home. Gas heating systems have a heat loss. There is an exhaust pipe to them that has waste to it.

They also burn fossil fuels that has its damages on the environment and all electric has its benefits. It's 100% efficient, far more comfortable, and it's better for the environment. The heat pump system is made for certain climates- this desert climate, it's perfect for it. Most homeowners are getting the wrong system.

The system we took out of here was more than double the size that should be in this home. So now we have a high performance system, uses way less energy, it's far more comfortable- well, it has to be installed differently than the systems were even five, ten, 15 years ago. You know, there's something about just like dressing up, putting on a cute little outfit and, you know, going out, you know, painting the town red. Even if it's just for a few minutes, it just.

It boosts the mood. It kind of takes you out of the yoga pants and pajamas, you know, staycation standard staycation gear and helps to I think, push the reset button. There's this too much going on right here in the house, and I just need a breath. Mom needs some time to herself, so I'm going to hop on this bike and take a little ride.

I'm gone. It's as hot here, right? So I want to go on a bike ride, but I don't necessarily want to be pouring sweat. So having an electric bike, being able to just flip the you know, flip the nozzle.

And next thing you know, I'm going 20 miles an hour is awesome. And and so I love taking it to one of my favorite places. One of my happy place is, frankly, on earth, which is the farmer's market. I figured I just let Michael handle all the complicated stuff.

Well, I tiptoed away to my favorite happy place. I think it's the best word for it. Curated vintage fashion show here in Palm Desert at the Imago Galleries. Yes, we're here for shopping.

We're here for a little fashion show. And we're here for Mama to de-stress. So let's go. I guess its time to go shopping well, the thing about vintage shopping is it's a treasure hunt.

You never know what you're going to get. It requires all of your senses to look at the textures, the tones, the colors. How well is it made? What era?

You get to think about what the history is. Theres nothing more net zero than vintage fashion Where old is new again. This is like a Chanel towel. Actually, Chanel it was one of the first designers to ever make terrycloth garments on the French Riviera pin 1940.

Wow. Okay, see, I know my. I know my fashion. I love it.

I love this. Look at it, it's got a little, it does. So if you wanted to cover up your neck, you'd wear it a little bit higher. Yeah.

And if you wanted a little extra space, this is too cute. You have to match with. With the right, like, bikini top With the right bikini top. Oh, I happen to have made What?

While I'm having a blast shopping. I think we should check back in with Michael to see how he's doing back in the house. Hope he's not working too hard? Well, I figured after the fashion show I was having such a good time.

It would only be fair to bring Michael Pizza for dinner. So I stopped by our local favorite pizza joint. Put it on the back of the bluejay bikes and rode home with a surprise that he, I think, will enjoy very much. Finally, it's time to install the solar panels.

We landed on an 18 kilowatt sun power system that would provide us with 116% of our current annual energy usage. So we have room to grow, especially if we continue with our electrification of our gas appliances in the future. One thing that really sold us on SunPower was the panel technology itself, which is best in class and engineered to be more efficient than their competitors. So the panels last longer and produce more energy using less space.

We wanted to create a true microgrid environment to use solar energy not just during the day, but also at night or when the grid goes down due to power outages or rolling blackouts. So we added a 26 kilowatt hour sun volt battery storage system, which will charge during the daylight hours and provide power for our home at night. And I must say, I love our wallbox ev charger. Finally, we can now charge our electric car right at home using renewable energy from the sun.

One of the things that I was most concerned about when we bought this house was the amount of natural gas it took to heat the pool. This is a beautiful place that we live, but in the wintertime it gets cold at night and the pool gets cold. We found this company, Raypak, that has been doing heat pump technology for years and years and years. Did a lot of research on them and actually they have come and they're going to be installing a new heat pump technology pool system to heat our pool.

With Reypak, net zero living is possible with the technology that we're creating. We have a product called Crosswinds that has inverter technology and it uses a lower kilowatt consumption to begin with, and then the rest is Mother Nature. Your ambient temperatures usually are hot or humid. The heat pump will actually transfer that energy, that heat energy, into the water.

And so you're actually getting the most efficiency out of out of the product. You're using the ambient temperature most of the year or even sometimes, depending where you are, all year long. And then the nice thing about our Crosswind is that it can be set to three different modes. So you can either heat or you can cool or you can set it at essentially auto.

Could be a hot day, could be a cold day. It will bring your pool to where you want. It gives you more versatility and flexibility out of your pool usage than you would normally get. With just a standard heater, especially gas heater, you can't do that with gas.

You're using solar, that's perfect because the sun is supplying that continuous energy. Now you're using a lot less fuel, a lot less energy, and you're getting 300-400% efficiency back. Finally, we're going to be able to harness our solar power and harness the rays of the sun to heat the pool. It's pretty exciting.

But this is starting to feel a little bit like a staycation. Little bit? Yeah. I mean, you're in your pool.

youve got your floatie It's warm. Yeah, it's relaxing. The sun shining. Yeah.

I think it could be worse. I think so. No complaints Count my blessings. Gratitude practice, for sure.

That's right. That's right. Well, I hope you're counting your blessings at home, because we're going to have more fun and frolic right here. Coming up.

Don't go away. The rest of the country, all of the states but California, refer to HERS as, like, an energy audit. But here in California, HERS is a code requirement when you have either a new home built or, in this instance, a new air conditioning changed out. And it requires a HERS verification to come in, which is a pass fail test to make sure certain thresholds are met on your new air conditioning system.

previously we were at 24% duct leakage But now that you've reduced the capacity of the system With what we have now, 64% reduction, something like that. So huge reduction in duct leakage. To complete the HERS certification today, we have two more tests. We have the airflow volume test And then we have the refrigerant charge verification that we'll do outside at the new heat pump.

Congratulation, you're now HERS certified- California HERS certified for the alteration that you guys had done of this air conditioning system. when this vacation is over, we're going to want to, you know, travel again. And when we do, we want to rent the house out to people who are coming to this wonderful destination, Palm Springs and Palm Desert. And when we do, we've been told that having a hot tub makes the house a lot more marketable.

I mean, who wants to swim in a pool and not dip in a hot tub right after? Not me. I know Bianca liked the aesthetic of an above ground cedar hot tub, but I wanted to make sure that the environmental sort of elements of it and the sustainability elements of it really matched up. I loved the folks at Roberts Hot Tub because they were really mindful about walking us through what the process is, what the eco friendly benefits are, the installation was seamless.

I have a hot tub that is sustainable as it can be. we've got an electric heater that will pull energy directly from the solar panels and the battery and and it's all biodegradable and it was grown FSC certified, so it was grown in a sustainable manner versus fiberglass that will never break down. In order to go net zero, you have to buy things and they all have a carbon cost. Whats the cost of producing these items, what's the cost of shipping these items and all of those, you know, add to your carbon footprint, right?

So it's like nothing's perfect, right? You know, we're on the journey to try to be more mindful or on the journey to minimize our carbon footprint. A big piece of the journey is being willing to not know and to be curious and to maybe get it wrong. There was this moment this summer where it was literally one, you know, one of those desert nights.

Right? It's like 113 in the day and at night at midnight, it's like 102. And we got a notice from the power company. They were going to do a rolling blackout Luckily through the SunPower app we can track exactly how much solar energy were producing and using, 24/7, 365 as soon as the blackout started, it switched immediately to our battery and literally all night we were able to sleep in the comfort of our mini split.

We had our refrigerator on it, kept all our food cool, and there was something just so amazing about that experience. The journey to to being more sustainable is, you know, always going to be filled with doubts about whether or not you could have done a better job. And the answer is always, yes, you could have done a better job. We don't claim to be perfect and have the answers.

We wanted to find out. We wanted to see if this experiment could really pay off. And, so even though were net zero so far which is great, The net zero conversation is based on a 12 month cycle, so check in with us in a year. It's the journey, not the destination, right?

That's what we tell ourselves. I almost smelled it. It's just ginger beer. But something is just like smell the aroma.

It looks like alcohol, it's in a glass like alcohol, but alas, ginger beer. Ginger beer. Cheers. Cheers.

Heres to you. See you next season. Until then. Hmm.