Mental Groundbreaking

Yesterday we visited the Greentopia EcoFest with my father, Al. While the EcoFest featured a number of different events and attractions, our main focus was to visit some vendors and get solid information about various green technologies for the home. We had actually been looking forward to EcoFest since our idea to build was just a tiny inkling over 6 months ago... But, not knowing where to even begin back then, we figured this event would be a good jumping off point.

My dad came along for the ride, and in fact you'll be hearing a lot about him on this blog, because he'll be helping out as a sort of adviser throughout the whole project. He designed and helped build his and my mom's house just over 35 years ago, and incorporated a lot of efficient plans and materials for the time. So his house is kind of a test case for us, and there are a lot of lessons learned that we can use to develop a well-informed plan for our futurehome. (Not only that, but my dad is super SUPER intelligent about, well, everything.)

It turned out there were a lot of vendors at the EcoFest, and they were very knowledgeable about all things solar, geothermal, eco-conscious landscaping, and more. My dad was concerned that most vendors would be installers and/or salespeople, but actually they had a lot of detailed information and were able to answer a lot of the technical questions we had. We collected a lot of info, which we will spend later posts analyzing and discussing.

Actually, I think we came as a bit of a surprise to the vendors - they didn't seem to be expecting anyone with actual plans to build, and definitely weren't expecting anyone who wanted to plan their house design around sustainable practices and already had some facts in mind. Rather, many people are looking to retrofit their homes, or they have some kind of "dream home" concept in mind that the technologies need to be adapted to, or they are part of some sort of suburban development where plots are laid according to networks of streets rather than facing any particular direction at a specific angle, etc. And then there were a lot of people at the festival that just wanted some intelligent entertainment (and further, some that were just there because it was free). Numerous vendors praised us for our commitment to sustainability and for being willing to adjust our expectations to follow green practices; but really, we couldn't imagine doing it any other way.

At the end of the day, we came away with a lot of names and contact info for people to get back in touch with later, and more importantly we left more informed than we were when we arrived (which I look forward to exploring more throughout this blog). I highly recommend visiting Greentopia if you have a chance, even if you don't have any specific motivations like we did.