We are a couple of retired teachers who have lived in our home for over 30 years. In that time we’ve remodeled nearly every room in the house with the aim of reducing our environmental impact and creating a welcoming space filled with playful experimentation and art.

Our home is a modest two story structure built in 1929 on the ancestral lands of the Chinook and other indigenous people. In addition to seeking to create a comfortable home, much of what we have is an ongoing experiment in sustainable living involving a lot of tinkering and sweat equity.

Our key concerns in doing this work:

• Reducing the house’s overall energy consumption.

• Utilizing onsite energy sources to provide for as much of that consumption as is

• practically possible.

• Landscaping for food production and restoration of native habitat.

• Reducing water consumption largely through rainwater capture.

• Retrofitting the house for seismic stability.

• Elderizing our home so we can continue to age in place.

• Pacing and doing the work in keeping with a limited budget.

Results to date related to energy and climate:

• By 2023 our total household energy consumption was 28% of what it was in 1998. Note

  • Household includes both the house and cars.

• Since 2012 we’ve gone from generating 4% of our household energy from solar arrays to 18% in 2023. We in process of upgrading all this to generate half of our needs from onsite arrays, with the remainder coming from a subscription to a community solar program.

• By becoming a near total electric household, reducing our consumption, and increasing on-site production our household carbon emissions have gone from 13 to 3 tons per year.

An added bonus if you visit our home - On the day of the tour we will have set up a scale model depicting a climate resilient community based on our local neighborhood. This traveling exhibit was created as an educational tool and has appeared in a number of local fairs and other community events.