living local and green

Bob and Werner checking out the solar panels at Compo.

I was driving around Compo Beach this afternoon when I saw Bobby Rogers, longtime Westport resident, testing his demonstration solar panels. His company is Solar FX

He claims the panel heated the water in his tank 40° in 4 hours.

These are solar panels that heat water–not the panels that produce electricity.

I was impressed by how well-engineered this panel seemed, and I was impressed by the number of curious passersby that kept coming up to Bob.

I can’t install one. I have an 80 foot tall Elm tree that shelters the house and provides natural air conditioning all summer. Unfortunately it blocks the sun from the roof where I actually have copper pipes prepared for this kind of solar panel installation.

Until last year I–like many Westporters–had to travel to get to a farmers’ market.

For a long time Weston was the only game around (if not in town).

Now, thanks to the late Paul Newman, I have the choice of a Thursday farmers’ market and a more modest but still very satisfying Sunday market behind the Saugatuck Congregational Church.

Despite the tomato blight these markets have provided some excellent produce as well as a refreshingly different community gathering place.

I have particularly enjoyed the following vendors:

Fort Hill Organic Farms

Belta Farms

In addition to having beautiful vegetables in great shape the people staffing these stands are knowlegable and pleasant.

Wood.

Buying stove or fireplace wood is tricky in Westport.

Using a good, efficient stove such as a Jotul or Hearthstone can cut your oil, electricity, or natural gas heating bills. Burning word also adds a quality of life enhancing element. Nothing nicer than a flickering wood fire in a stove that is simultaneously stopping your thermostat from triggering your furnace on during these early fall nights.

I used to enjoy an enviable connection to a local arborist. We’d experience a monster storm. He’d have a bunch of windfalls to clean up. I’d get a load of rough cut hardwood. Then I’d get my chain saw out, cut the wood to length. Over the next couple of weeks–with maul and sledge hammer–I’d split the two cords of wood I usually burn every winter.

Then I discovered that I had a significant tear in my shoulder. My orthopedist diagnosed a rotator cuff injury not severe enough for an operation, but severe enough to curtail wood splitting.

So two years ago I started buy wood.

I am a researcher, and I learned some of the pitfalls quickly.  A “face cord” is not the same  as a “full cord”; the former is a stack of wood 4′ x 8′ by the length of the log. The log could be 16″, a pretty much ideal length for a wood stove. Or it could be 19″ –about the length most arborists cut their wood. But a full cord is 128 cubit feet of wood, typically measured as four feet deep, four feel high, and eight feet long. A six foot high stack, that is two feet deep and eight feet long is equivalent. You get the idea.

Further I learned that hardwood is not only desirable but also cleaner and safer to burn. Hardwood trees are oaks, maples, walnuts, cherry, alder, locust, hazelnut, hickory, birch, butternut, tulip and the like. Softwoods are pines, cedars, hemlock, spruce, and other conifers (cone-bearing trees). You don’t want to burn softwoods in either your stove or fireplace because burning them releases lots of kreosote. This is the stuff that collects on chimney walls and the insides of stove pipes and when it ignites causes a dangerous chimney fire. Other trees that arborists might cut up and sell (unethically) as hardwood include willow, sumac. sycamore, and a few other types. These may not produce much creosote, but they don’t provide much heat. Elm should never be burned. It must be disposed of under the supervision of a local tree warden due to regulations intended to prohibit the spread of Dutch Elm Disease.

You see advertisements in local papers. A friend tells you about a good source for wood. Eventually you pick up the phone and call, hoping to buy some good firewood for the winter. In Westport, I have tried two sources of wood. Both provided prompt service, neither measured up to what you should expect.

Miro Brothers Landscaping 764 Burroughs Road, Fairfield 203-367-6307 was my source of wood for the winter of 2008-2009. Mr. Miro was friendly and fairly cheap. He delivered two truckloads of wood which worked out to be two full cords for $200 a cord. If the wood had been good, clean hardwood I would never have tried anyone else. Unfortunately Miro’s was about 25% softwood or rotten wood.

Bernie Izzo runs a wood delivery business from Izzo’s Country Gardens and Landscaping, 1431 Post Rd E, Westport, CT 06880-5510 (203) 246-2700‎ When I was shopping for some late season dahlias I noticed the hugh stack of clean-looking firewood on the premises. So in early October I called him and order two cords. He quoted me a price of $530. After having been burned (so to speak) by Miro, I figured good, clean hardwood might be worth the extra money, He delivered promptly, but when I measured what I had stacked, he delivered 30 cubic feet less than the expected 256 cubic feet two cords consists of.

I have a call in to Bernie, and I will post the results.