Monday, November 9, 2009

More on the start


We have been saving money for a garage, wanted to pay cash for it when it was built, had been hoping to have enough in the next year or so. My father went to a green building open house, saw some neat stuff. He ran into the guy that built our house, Dan Thomas. Dan specializes in insulated concrete forms for the exterior walls, makes them very efficient for heating and cooling in addition to being much quieter. Also at the open house was a home with solar water heating and a solar photovoltaic electric system. My Dad learned that there are all kinds of tax credits for solar. In essence, our state offers a 35% tax rebate up to $10,500, maximum of half of it the first year. The federal government offers 30% tax credit with no maximum.

My father was interested in meeting with the company that handled the solar system so we went also. Joe Sheffield from Alternative Energy Concepts spent several hours meeting with us, came to my house afterwards to discuss site specifics. Our ideal garage would be in a good spot for solar.

In talking this over with our builder, we decided to try and and finance the whole thing now, get as much tax credit ASAP by finishing construction in 2009 and not have to finance 15K.

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