Older Green Home For Sale in North Asheville

Here’s a place where you can be minutes from downtown, yet have your own green getaway, surrounded by nature on less than a pretty level acre (.62) and low maintenance. SEE PHOTOS BELOW. Great southern exposure to add solar to this 1966 1-story home (approximately 1488 square feet) with full basement. Plenty of room to put your organic gardens. This home has been maintained organically since the current owners bought it - no pesticides in over five years. Cherry trees, crab apple, regular apple trees, peach trees, grapes and lots of wineberries to get you started.

Rain chains flow the water from your gutters. A rain barrel is ready to water your tomatoes. Did I mention the creek? It flows year round through the front yard. A lovely gate way takes you over the little bridge from the driveway/parking area - plenty of room for guests to park. Patio and porch space will get you outside, if the gardens don’t.

General renovations include a new kitchen with stainless appliances, two new bathrooms, three bedrooms, and lots of light.

Green features include

* new Energy Star windows
* airsealed and super-insulated attic (sealed, foamed, cellulose R38)
* exterior walls sealed with caulk and foam
* walls correctly insulated with formaldehyde-free batts
* sealed ductwork
* oil furnace that runs on partial biodiesel (biofuel)
* low-flow toilets and faucets
* lots of FSC certified finishing wood
* all zero and low-VOC paints, caulks, sealants and finishes
* green carpet in 2 bedrooms
* bamboo floor in bathroom

The wooded floors throughout are going to be totally refinished when the owners move out - they want them to be perfect for you. The owner designs green interiors for a living and is nationally recognized, so this is a great house.

Oh, and the basement - there’s one nearly finished room and the rest is just waiting. The ceilings are full-height and it’s parially conditioned space with a half bath and the beginnings of a kitchen already. You could fix it up as an apartment.

Another great source of information about greening your computer use is Godo Stoyke’s book The Carbon Buster’s Home Energy Handbook (2007, New Society Publishers). He did so much great research for this book. It’s filled with charts and graphs.

He discusses which computers use less energy. He also discusses the Energy Star rating of computers and says it really isn’t that helpful. The best way to be sure is to go to the company’s website and check out what they say is the power consumption. He admits that may be really hard to find and may even be inaccurate.

Laptops, in general, use less energy by a ratio of up to 6:1. So if you can get by with a laptop, you’re doing Mother Earth a big favor. At the time he wrote the book, the Apple Mac Mini was one of the most energy efficient desktop, consuming just 13 watts during normal operations. That was less than some computers use while turned off! A similar PC uses three times that amount while in sleep mode.

As far as turning off your computer, or not. He says that before 1984, hard-drives were very fragile and the stress of turning them on and off was not good for them. But, now they are designed for frequent on and off cycling, especially laptops.Electrical surges and thermal cycling are not a big issue. Computers that are turned off or in sleep mode are expected to last longer.

So, I’m going to continue turning mine off. Stoyke says that if you change your computer settings to automatic sleep-mode and turn it off completely when not in use, the five-year savings will be about $343, 4,400 pounds of CO2 and 3,470 kWh of power. You need to actually unplug it from the wall or turn off the power strip to get the full benefit, a habit I’ve been in for quite some time. Getting down under my desk at least twice a day is good for me and good for the planet!

We’ve had all kinds of computer problems lately. Doesn’t it make you want to scream! I’m relatively knowledgable about computers, but after a point I want help. The first person we called spent about three hours here trying all kinds of things and finally gave up, unable to fix the problem. He did give us lots of “helpful tips”, though, and charged us a bundle. One of his tips was to leave our computers on always. Never turn them off.

The next person who came was wonderful - and has a policy of not charging if he can’t fix it. But he did! And in a fraction of the time! Who is he? Carlton Whatley of carltonwhatley.com. Hopefully he won’t mind me telling you about him. I’m planning to contract with him for a regular maintenance program he has where he will check out my computer and kind of give it a tune-up four times a year. I really think it will be worth it. Check out his website for more info.

He also recommends leaving your computer on. I guess that’s just what computer people recommend. They say its easier on your computer because it maintains steady temperature, where turning it off and on brings it up and down. Also, if you want to get automatic updates and things like that, they can happen at night.

Well, I recently spent some time at Warren-Wilson College helping to prepare for Mountain Green, the annual sustainability conference. While there, I came across their computer use guidelines. I’ll put them below and also show them to Carlton when he comes next week to see what he thinks.