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I didn't realize this was the first attempt in history to build a house using all solar power but since the first attempt failed because of frozen pipes, obviously we should just forget solar power.

Maybe you should send an email to these guys VanHelsing... I think they're called General Electric

http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/solar/en/index.htm

And just think what will happen to autos now that the government is in the automotive business: ugly cars that don't function properly.

No Fez, you missed the point. There is just not enough solar and wind power available to keep a house warm in a northern climate. Either these people were smoking dope when they should have been in science class or they got some really bad advice. And another thing...$900,000...you have got to be kidding!

$900,000 for 800 sq.ft.? Fez you can confide in us. You failed Econ 101,right?

Thats not what the article says, 390... it only says there were fuck ups... that's probably what energy expert and extream right rabble rouser Van Helsing wants you to believe. Myself I don't know...

Fez..., I feel obligated to remind you, there are scantily clad women at my weblog.

:-P

Fuz of course the article didn't say they were smoking dope instead of being in class. You aint the brightest bulb in the box are ya fuz?

BWAHAHAHAH!

$800,000 for an 800 sq.ft. house. In Troy, Michigan.

Even if this green crap actually worked and actually had a payback, think of it. Up North here I pay around $2400 a year in gas and electric. Houses sell for around $50 a foot. That means it'll take me a mere 316 and 2/3 years to break even. Making the wild-assed assumption that this crap won't break or need service in the 300 years.

Wow! I can hardly wait for mine.

Looks like the biffy building at a rural highway "rest area".

Since this worked out so well and the gov't has a spare car company doing nothing, you know a solar/gravity powered car is next.
Gravity for downhill trips..............

Once they fuck up that idea then its on to solar powered planes!

I didn't realize this was the first attempt in history to build a house using all solar power but since the first attempt failed because of frozen pipes, obviously we should just forget solar power.

Yup.

Maybe you should send an email to these guys VanHelsing... I think they're called General Electric

Would that be the same General Electric whose finance arm (GE Capital) had to be bailed by TARP, and hence has its balls in hock to the government, now run by Obama? The General Electric that is hoping to make money off the government retrofitting municipal buildings with CFLs? That General Electric? I just want to make sure we’re talking about the same one.

Who would want to live in a monstrosity like that, anyway? It looks like one of those cheap shacks the KBR cobbles together in Iraq for soldiers to sleep in. Minus the weird stilt things in front and the big, lame wheelchair ramp.

Also, since when do solar power units run 900,000? Must have been Union labor...
Enjoy-Polarbear

Building a solar-powered house in the over-cast north. Now what could go wrong?
Considering that energy transfer efficiency (solar to heated water-storage-electricity) can in optimal circumstances be well under 2%, what you have here is something very much like a guy trying to make a perpetual-motion machine in his garage.

Only in the case of solar-powered houses, the guys are the whole country tinkering with tax dollars irrespective of the physics involved.

But never mind the physics; that's a bit nerdy. What about the free-market? Haven't these geniuses ever wondered why an evil corporation somewhere hasn't capitalized on the free sun to make fortunes out of solar-powered homes?

I researched their website, http://www.solar.ltu.edu/2_elec.php and there's some real problems with this house.
Most importantly-It's little more than a giant Styrofoam cooler!

It's made almost entirely out of fiberboard/Styrofoam sandwich with what appears to be duct tape.

The walls aren't really waterproof, so they covered them with tyvek cloth and installed some kind of synthetic plastic sheeting over it. It's not really waterproof, but between the plastic sheeting and the tyvek, I'm sure it will hold up.

They also laud fluorescent light bulbs as the best solution-not mentioning the mercury hazard in their comparison.

I don't know who would want to live in a house that can't withstand anything nature could throw at it. That house looks like the first thunderstorm that rolls through will flatten it.

Here's the cost list: http://www.solar.ltu.edu/2_cost.php
I'm not sure what happened, but they estimate the house to be worth about 646,000. I wonder how it got to be 900,000?

Enjoy-Polarbear

I wonder what happens to it if a hurricane or tornado hits? Do a million flying Styrofoam pieces constitute any environmental threat or just a mess?

I bet if you lived in one of these, you would have these obnoxious neighbors who would keep coming over and threatening to pick up your house...

Enjoy-Polarbear

Kind of like those so called enviromentaly frendly WIND TURBINES that kill or injure all those birds AND BEWARE ECO-FREAK MOONBATS WE BIRDS WILL HAVE OUR RIGHTCIOUS REVENGE ON YOU ALL SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK

$900K for 800sf of the ugliest "green" (well, black, now) home on the planet - and it doesn't work. So effin typical.

Michigan should be proud to tout this home - it's just like the cars they build - butt ugly and broken down all the time.

I can't wait until GM pulls the plug (pun intended) on the Volt. To sell any, they plan to subsidize each vehicle to the tune of $10K - seems perfect for GM - that's about the same "profit" margin they make on every vehicle they produce today....

Did the junkies rip out the copper yet?

If not, my bid is $500!

I know for a fact that even in a hot or warm sunny climate a solar power house may not be all it's cracked up to be. Not that I wouldn't consider it, if I could afford it... but I'd just be very, very careful how the thing was built.

I lived in an apartment complex in San Diego, which had solar powered hot water for the entire complex. Unfortunately the hot water thing was set up directly next to my bedroom. It was more than a few years old, perhaps not well built or maintained properly.

But because the water there is HARD there, there were these balls of minerals the size of tennis balls that would build up in the water panels. Then the thing would go BANG! BANG! BANG! all night long, I could not sleep... moved out, end of story.

Styrofoam? Forget what nature can throw at it - what about the fire hazard? One spark and that sucker's going to go out in a blaze of glory.

Looks like a trailer.

Once AGAIN, REALITY crashes head on with the liberal Utopia.

"looks like a trailer"?

You're right! It does look like the Clinton library! 8-)

Fez are you really dumb, or did you just OD on Koolaid?

The Laws of Thermo Dynamics, make this POS Trailer just as big a failure as Algore.

Sure Solar can be used to augment the normal energy sources. But a 900000.00 Trailer is a-bit pricey.

Anyway Fez lay off the Koolaid, try weed, your Messiah burns it often.

1 fanny short of a million. Well there ya go! This is the middle class solution for the masses, right Fez? A-hole. There's this thing called mathematics. Learn it, live it, love it. Otherwise, you're dead meat. Bye a-hole.

Fez: "Thats not what the article says, 390... it only says there were fuck ups... that's probably what energy expert and extream right rabble rouser Van Helsing wants you to believe. Myself I don't know... "

Fez, I've read your post ten times and I still don't understand. I said they screwed up...you said they f'd up. What is your point?

Kind of like all that poppycock about how becuase of polution all our major cities would be under hudge domes or like in the eco-wacko movie SILENT RUNNING we would luanch all our national forests into space on spacecraft

That thing looks more like an office than a house. Somebody got took if they paid 900,000 for it.

Greens come up with the most rediculous ideas ever when it comes to all this carbon footprints poppycock