To ask this homeowner a question, send an email to the CoSEIA office at info@coseia.org and we will forward your question to them. Refer to the Goddard home.

Solar Home #4

Larry and Jodi Goddard wanted to build their new dream home just a couple blocks away from where they currently lived, in The Seasons subdivision of the Grand Junction Redlands area. This golf course community is a strictly covenanted area, so any 'non-conventional' additions to the home had to be integrated smoothly with the architecture. Their builder, David Hoffman suggested a solar electric or heating addition to their already passive solar, SIP (Structurally Insulated Panels) designed home. Hoffman has made it a point of his company, Mountain High Builders, to try to include smart, environmentally sound building techniques wherever possible. The Goddards excitedly agreed to the possibility of solar.

Cory Sullivan of High Noon Solar of Grand Junction designed an integrated solar electric grid tie and a solar heating system to work with the house. Larry and Jodi Goddard enthusiastically embraced the systems and included them in the design of their new home, when they realized what the systems could do for them in the long run. As Larry Goddard said, when asked about his systems, "Everyone should try to be doing this."

High Noon Solar employee, Jonathan Weinberg, preps the racks for the Seido 2 thermal tubes. These highly efficient tubes will help preheat the Goddard's domestic hot water and radiant in-floor heating system.

The Goddard system uses 48 Sunda Seido 2 evacuative thermal tubes to preheata 250 gallon water storage tank. The Seido 2 tubes have the advantage of being turned to face South, even when in a flat mounted position. The barely noticeable snow load in Grand Junction's high desert climate makes it the perfect environment for such an install. These tubes are also integral for this system in that they can be 'hidden' behind the parapit wall so that covenants are not breached. The grid tie system includes 17 Mitsubishi 170 watt panels, mounted in a low profile manner for the same reason. The 17 PV panels are wired in a single series and are grid tied with an SMA Sunny Boy 2500 grid tie inverter.

The flat roof gives ample space for the placement of all 17 PV panels and 48 thermal tubes. The Bookcliffs in the background make for a perfect solar setting.