More Ideas...

Water
One of the benign issues for many rural well-supplied residents to address is the hardness of water, and we're no different in that regard. I tested ours with one of my aquarium test strips and it was off-the-scale hard. The main reason for wanting soft(er) water is to limit accumulation of minerals in home appliances, such as the water heater and washer. I'd also like to have softer water for washing my hair. Right now, after 5 days at the cottage, I feel like I'm wearing a broom atop my head.

Not long ago, I was reading an article about residents of islands off the coast of BC and how they capture rainwater for household use. I didn't immediately see the potential application for us until a few days ago. It was always our wish to move the hot water heater and pressure tank to the woodshed once it is converted to living space. I began thinking about a possible layout for that new space, which got me thinking about the water run-off from the roof. It's the only side of the house that doesn't have ready access to the lake for run-off. We have a rainbarrel here in the city that we've used for gardening water, when we had time to garden. I thought we could do something like that. Then it dawned on me. Building a rainwater holding tank into the renovation of the woodshed would be an ideal solution.

The main bath, hot water tank and washer/dryer are in that corner of the house. It would be easy to run plumbing from the rainwater system to those appliances. There will be plenty of space for the necessary equipment, and if we want a huge tank, it will be easy to work one into the plans, since we have to tear out the slab and put in a proper foundation anyway. We could even set up solar assisted hot water at the same time in the same location.

Right now, such a system would cost about $6,000 to $8,000 because they are scarce one-off custom installations. My view is that all of this renewable resource technology (RRT) is going to start coming down in price, much as computers have over the past decade.

Space Heating
Another issue for our location is winter heating. Because of the lake, we are exposed to prevailing winds. Currently, the heat source is 30-yr-old baseboard electric. While the current cost of electricty is among the lowest in Canada, and quite likely North America, I'm not willing to bet that it will always be thus. We both feel we need to do what we can to reduce our reliance on electric heat.

The house is not oriented N-S; the 'south' facing walls actually face southeast and southwest. But, with a concrete slab, we have a reasonable heat storing mass, and the southeast gable wall has little or nothing in the way of sunlight obstructions. A while ago, I suggested to DS that when we undertake the exterior renovations, we could move the windows in the two back bedrooms from the northeast and southwest walls to the southeast wall, enabling us to maximise our passive solar gain. This would have the added benefit of removing openings from the load-bearing side walls to the non-loadbearing gable walls. Although she gave me one of those looks, she didn't say no. This would improve the view for what will be Bdrm 3: right now, that window looks out onto the garage and clothesline. Bdrm 2 would lose their lake view.

Yesterday, while browsing around for info on rainwater collection, I went back to the DIY Solar projects page. The solar space heating projects caught my eye. We have always planned to eventually use this for the garage/workshop and the Guest Cottage, but I hadn't considered it for the main house. We could, however, install one or two such units on the southeast wall and supplement the woodstove heat at that end of the house with solar spaceheating. This would be the perfect solution for Bdrm 2: improve the existing window, but leave it on the southwest wall. Put solar spaceheating on the southeast wall. Depending on temperatures, we could even put a solar spaceheating unit on the southeast wall of the second floor.

More food for thought, and more research to do.