Category — Home

I always start to think about putting my boat away around Halloween time. It is, at once, something to be dreaded and enjoyed. This summer wasn’t exactly the greatest boating summer. With little Mia in her first year, coaching two soccer teams, and the demands of running the sales side of an Internet start-up, I think I got on the boat about 3 times this summer.

Now, the prospect of going to Lloyd Harbor park, lining up the trailer, paddling out to the boat in the icy cold weather, and trailing the boat out to Westhampton (where I store it for the winter) is daunting. That’s a lot of work for three days of boating–never mind the $500 winterizing bill I’m going to get from Powles Marina in Cold Spring Harbor (and that’s if Joe doesn’t find anything to fix–which would be a miracle).

All that being said, putting the boat away will give me a few hours to spend with cousin Sonny, and always generates a few laughs (usually intermingled with curses as we try and get the trailer attached to our truck). It is also a natural stepping stone between summer and fall. Although I didn’t get on the boat an awful lot, we did have great trips to Hyannis Port and Montauk this summer. I did get to watch my adorable daughter enjoy her first days on the beach. I did get to spend hours and hours with my son and daughter coaching soccer. And–thank God–I did get to grow our new business.

Summer may be over, but there is a great Halloween party this Saturday to look forward to, a few sweaters that I wouldn’t mind wearing again, and the sleeping weather has been just fantastic. Once I get the boat out of the water, I may actually start looking forward to fall!

The Krusty Krab

We have all heard of solar thermal water heaters by now, I hope. The system whereby liquid is heated inside black boxes on your roof and pumped into a heat exchanger and used to heat hot water in a tank. These solar thermal systems can also be used to heat radiant floors.

But how many people know that this kind of system can also power an HVAC system as well? Incredibly, they do, as evacuated tube solar thermal panels can be coupled with absorption chiller technology to heat and cool your house.

A company called SolarPanelsPlus has taken the two tried and tested technologies of solar thermal and absorption chiller and combined them to make an affordable, efficient, no-fossil-fuel burning HVAC.

One drawback is this type of solar thermal system will not work at night even with battery backup, so you will probably keep your other HVAC unit as a backup. But the energy savings are huge, and even on cloudy winter days this system can take enough sunlight and make heating and cooling power out of it.

This is definitely something to consider if you want to retrofit a new HVAC that will let you almost completely stop using your other fuel-burning system and begin using the free power from the sun.

Evacuated solar tube powered HVAC units by SolarPanelsPlus run on little electrical energy, and as with other appliances that run on electric, this can be offset by incorporating some solar PV.

This system does not use ozone-depleting refrigerants, and uses Lithium Bromide. This innovative HVAC option can also be set up to desalinate or distill drinking water.

—Paul McGinniss, canvas Healthy Home columnist