Bill Busting 102: Cheap Hot Water

Every man can be his own plumber, and every woman can be hers, if they're willing to do the work. If you happen to own property that includes water rights to a natural spring, all you have to do is get some pipe, put one end in the spring, put a filter over that end to keep out sand, cover it while working, bury it deep enough that it won't freeze, and attach the other end to a faucet. Before opening the end of the pipe at the spring, set the faucet in place above the sink, tub, trough, whatever you want the water to run into, and set up a drain pipe to carry water away from the house. Ideally this pipe empties into a small pond a few yards above the spring branch, so that your used water does not drain into a stream others use. Give natural processes a chance to filter your germs, soap, dirt, etc., out of the water first. And, of course, as a regular reader of this web site, you already know that you don't want a water-flush toilet; spring water is for drinking and washing, only. Now your water needs are taken care of, if you have the use of a natural spring.

"Golly, that sounds easy if you say it fast. How do I..." I'm not going to try to explain the details here, because I don't have faith that I am that good a writer and because you probably need to comply with local regulations anyway. If you did not inherit a simple system that runs spring water through your home and learn how to maintain it from your elders, and you have not done enough plumbing work to know how much of what to put where, consult a local expert.

What if you don't have access to a spring? First of all, does everyone already know how to get cheap water?

The easy way is to live in a well-watered part of the world, where you can collect water from springs or during rain storms. Very little of this water will be fit to drink, but filtering and boiling are relatively cheap ways to make it as good as city tap water. Arguably it may be better if you get enough fluorine in your diet and don't want excessive fluoride from your water.

The more complicated way is to spread non-porous objects over the ground at night and collect water as water vapor in the air condenses on cooling. A sheet of black plastic will work. 

City water grids save enough time and labor that most people set a high priority on keeping their homes connected. If you can't afford to stay on the water grid, however, you can survive without it. 

To get the benefit of hot water for washing grease off dishes, hair, etc., you need a large glass or metal container for each person in the household, and a window or windows facing southwest. This will provide hot showers on warm sunny days, tepid water on wet or cold days, and cold but not frozen water on most (but not necessarily all) winter nights. Park the containers in front of the windows. Water can be drawn out from a simple tap, or connected to faucets and shower heads in the house, depending on what you need.

A basic renovation everyone can make that will save money, even while they're connected to the city water grid, is to think of the hot water tank as the first and probably the best of those water containers in your new solar water heating system. Brother Sun will save wear and tear on the electrical heating elements, or save gas, as willingly as he will heat the water in a plain container. The hot water tank that came with the house contains a thermostat that turns on the electricity or gas when the water temperature drops below a certain point. Placing the hot water tank in front of the southwest window drastically reduces the amount of non-solar energy you need to maintain the preferred temperature.

Heating water by solar power alone won't provide the sensory pleasure of a hot bath or shower when temperatures are below freezing. In order to give patients hydrotherapy treatments, nineteenth century practitioners used to heat water on a wood, coal, or kerosene stove. Someone would carry a gallon or two of hot water to the tub and pour it over the patient. The treatment worked for some people but it cost more than most Victorians considered reasonable, because of all the labor involved. 

More modern ways to heat water are barely past the experimental stage. Having a lot of people dependent on water, electrical, and gas grids is profitable for a lot of people and, if they can add the Internet as yet another grid into which everybody can be forced to pour monthly payments, many people would be even happier. This is not a sustainable plan for all those billions of surplus humans who, we're told, will be making every livable part of the world as crowded as New York City if we continue having babies and most of those babies continue to enjoy long healthy lives. No nation can afford to have its economy dependent on a vulnerable central grid. Each house and each office block needs to be what the grid owners call, with a shudder in their voice, an "energy island." But corporations aren't in any hurry to fund the development and commercial production of devices that take people off the grid. They are less concerned about how human lives will survive an emergency than about how they can suck in more revenues each month.

In theory, your solar collector and/or your exercise bike could store energy in a battery you could connect to a device in the wall behind the sink, or even in a faucet or shower head, over which water flows. When turned on, this device would use a small amount of electricity to heat up a heating element like the ones inside a conventional water heater. The water flowing out of the faucet could be heated to 140 degrees Fahrenheit if you wanted it to be. From time to time, since the 1960s, people have patented such devices and marketed them by direct mail to small groups of friends, or in "alternative" newspapers and magazines, but they're not likely to be in Wal-Mart for a few more years. 

Wal-Mart and similar stores do, of course, sell non-electric water heaters. Wal-Mart has a nice cheap one that burns propane. Is propane cheap where you live? 

I've not seen a water heater that burned wood for sale recently. That's a cheap option if you can find the heater, meet local safety regulations, and haul truckloads of free firewood away from construction sites where the construction crew will thank you for saving them the trouble of hauling it to the landfill, or burning it on the site. Solar is by far the cheapest, safest, and most sustainable option for heating water...when it's feasible. At least you can offset the expenses of using propane or wood, or some other kind of fire, to heat water if you use it only in freezing weather.

If perfected the hand-held "hot water on demand" type of heater would have revolutionary effects. For one thing, it would remove all need for chemical herbicides: hot water is the perfect herbicide, reliably wilting the plants you don't want while promoting growth of the ones you do. 

Meanwhile...carrying buckets of hot water to warm a bathtub of water the sun has heated to about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, on a winter day, will at least rev up your metabolism and make a tepid tub comfortable.

Bill Busting 101: Cheap Lighting

This is the first of a series of Frugal Posts. Four of these posts have been funded. There are more. Today we discuss cheap sources of light.

1. Sunshine

In a well designed house, for most of the day you can read, sew, wash dishes, even tinker with small motors, without adding any light. Just peel away all the decorations from the windows and let the sun shine in. "Sunbleached" is a classic, preppy color scheme for rugs and upholstery anyway. On gloomy days, mirrors make the most of the natural light available.

2. Candles

Candles are a nuisance for serious use, but they work. Set them in a metal container, NOT glass or plastic, large enough to catch any dripping wax, which you will re-melt and reuse. (If you use candles for lighting you are going to be making a fair number of your own, from leftover purchased ones or from blocks of plain wax you can probably buy cheaper than purchased candles.) Try to do everything that calls for good steady lighting--reading, sewing, machine repair--by daylight. If you do need good steady lighting, give up on trying to trim one wick to provide it; light another candle. Blow out extra candles after use.

Making your own candles is an art form. Don't get carried away, because color actually reduces the efficiency of candles. Note how professional candle makers usually dip a core of plain wax in a thin coat of bright color. 

I save all candle scraps and drips, scented wax "tarts," etc., and melt them down together for reuse. White cotton string is the traditional wick material. It will hang straighter, and form a nice straight wick down the center of the candle instead of floating off to the side where it won't burn evenly, if stiffened in a bath of borax dissolved in water, but this step is not absolutely necessary. If you want short candles you can burn under a saucepan for cheap cooking, two wooden matchsticks of similar length, propped up in the center of a cleaned cat food tin, work pretty well. The foil molds in which chafing dish candles come are flimsy and hard to reuse, but they are an ideal size for using just enough wax and wicking to heat up enough canned, "instant," or microwaveable food for one or two people.

For lighting, cheap molds of the ideal size are found inside rolls of paper towels and toilet tissue. Set them on a metal base, hang a string down the middle, and pour in wax. When they are cool and solid, slip off the cardboard mold. For gifts or special occasions, dress these new candles with coats of colored wax and/or herbal oil. If you want to get fancy you can stick on layers of wax to form fancy shapes, flowers, trees, whatever, but fancifulness actually reduces candles' efficiency as lights.

I don't usually scent candles, although I sometimes buy scented ones at charity stores and sometimes buy citronella-scented ones. Chemical scents are probably all more or less harmful; herbal fragrances can have medical effects that someone who'll be exposed to them does not want. The most noticeable effect of herbal scents in the mint family (all mints, catnip, basil, pennyroyal, thyme, oregano, lavender) is to discourage flies and mosquitoes. Other effects, especially of pennyroyal and some kinds of basil, can include starting the birth process if anyone exposed happens to be expecting a baby. If you like scented candles, use them with caution.

Candles can be dangerous if handled carelessly. Babies and animals have to be kept away from them, clothes and draperies have to be controlled so they can't be blown into the flame, and someone has to stay awake in the room where a candle is burning. Some chemicals should be kept out of rooms where candles and matches are burning, too. I believe we need a federal law requiring all fire insurance policies to be written on the understanding that people use candles, and fireplaces--but use yours in such a way that you don't need to buy into the insurance gamble.

Because so many people use candles only on special occasions, almost any visit to almost any charity store is likely to yield a nice collection of candles, some used, some not. Unless someone in your family is extremely sensitive to scents, all candles are safe to use and recycle. If they come in silly shapes or in glass containers, melt them down, gradually if necessary, into your own molds and holders.

Candle wicks were one of the basic household supplies our ancestors hoarded but there are several alternatives, if you have not saved enough real cotton string. Cheap yarns don't work as wicks--synthetic materials like nylon and acrylic melt too quickly. Grass burns too fast, but dried-out slivers of wood or sturdier plant stems can make good wicks. Annie Dillard famously described a moth flying into a candle and, since nobody picked the moth out, becoming a wick. It's true: most dead insects can be used as emergency wicks, though some release nasty odors and some contain gases that pop or spark. A thin trimming off a cotton rag is another emergency wicking option. All of these alternatives will remind you to buy some cotton string, but they'll generate enough light for everyone to see where the furniture is.

3. Oil Lamps 

Oil lamps are traditional, decorative, and collectible. I'm not a big fan of oil lamps or heaters. The fumes are too sooty. I don't like scrubbing soot off walls, much less coughing it up out of me! 

However, oil is relatively cheap, can be considered sustainable in the sense that most people won't use it if they have alternatives, and will justify a collection of antique lamps if you have one. Oil generates lots of heat as well as light, which can make it a good choice for winter emergencies.

4. Those Adorable Little Solar Lights 

Who can resist those little solar lights that are in the hardware and farm supply stores these days? Some of them are no bigger than an electric light's switch plate. Some of them are shaped like an electric light's switch plate. They contain tiny batteries that charge when exposed to sunlight and discharge, in the form of giving off a little light, when brought indoors. 

It takes a lot of tiny solar lights to do more than make it easier to find stairs, but they are a cheap, easy, sustainable source of light. If you need an incentive to move, stretch, and bend, buy a lot of solar lights to carry in and out. 

5. Fireplaces 

If you have an open fireplace you can read by the flickering firelight, as Abraham Lincoln did, and by the age of forty you can have impressively sombre-looking wrinkles like his, too. Not recommended as a primary alternative to electric lights, a fireplace will provide a lovely romantic atmosphere for one evening, anyway. Be sure the chimney is kept clean so the fire doesn't fill the room with smoke or set fire to the wall.

6. Motor Vehicle Lights 

Only in a few kinds of emergencies can this be considered frugal, but your car or truck's motor is good for a few hours of light or heat. Some new gas-burning vehicles are designed to be used as emergency gas-powered generators. 

7. Alcohol and Other Chemical Burners 

"Are they safe?" We do not live in a safe world. The only way to be safe is to be dead and buried--then this world has no more harm to do to you. Next question! Some chemical burners have been around long enough that people who are familiar with them consider them safe, relative to this mortal world, and frugal, relative to the gas and electric companies. I, personally, don't know enough about them to recommend any of them. If you have inherited one you should consult someone who's been using one like it.

8. Traditional Battery-Powered Lights 

The ones that run on two D-cell batteries, are good for six or eight hours, and give about as much light as a candle only it's steadier light, are good if you're not going to use up the batteries all at once. They are, for example, easier to carry around the house or hold up to the breaker box than a candle is. 

Smaller flashlights never were very useful. I wouldn't buy one. 

Bigger flashlights, with batteries big as canning jars, will light up a room for a whole night if necessary and are worth buying batteries for, but using them to replace electric lights is certainly not frugal.

9. Newer, More Efficient Battery-Powered Lights 

I have a little rechargeable flashlight, about half the size of the traditional two-D-cell kind, good for about twice as much light. Never having used it for more than a quick flash of light--to look for dropped objects in corners, to make sure nobody else has set up camp in my shoes when I put them on at night, to find the matches and light a candle, that sort of thing--I'm considering, this summer, when to recharge its itsy-bitsy battery for the fifth time. In nine years. Some new battery-powered lights really do represent dramatic progress in battery technology; others are just overhyped. I'd tell you where to buy a flashlight like mine if I knew, but I don't. I think--I could be mistaken--that it was one of the "rewards" my natural sister used to get, approximately every time she turned around, for selling Avon. (I recommend Avon as a job for all beauty queens.)

One thing those big, slick slabs of plastic that are currently being sold as "phones" really are good for is emergency lighting. They really will light up a room all night and, after a few hours on a charger plugged into conventional electric power, they'll be as good as new and ready to do it again the next night. If you have one of those things, you might as well get some use out of it. They don't exactly work like phones, and who still uses a phone, anyway, except a few businesses that still have the wall-mounted kind.

If your goal is just to stick it to the power company, lighting your house with new battery-powered devices has potential. But it's not frugal. Even new batteries will run down and have to be replaced if they're used every day. You'll still be hauling a lot of money to the store and a lot of batteries back, and they can still corrode and leak toxic chemicals into your pockets. A good new battery-powered light is worth keeping for a flash of light, but will not replace sunlight, firelight, candlelight, or even Edison's clunky old light bulbs.

The computer on which you're reading this has significant room-lighting potential, too. You couldn't stand to look at it if it generated enough light to do things like illuminating a printed page from which you wanted to copy something to post on your web site. Nevertheless, it does put out enough light that you could see it if something unexpected happened to be where you always set your bare foot if you happen to go to the door at night.

10. Serious Solar Power 

Good old Brother Sun pours down enough energy to meet all of our needs, most of the time, if we were only collecting it. 

This web site has been saying for some time that, if the electric power companies want to survive, they need to forget about those exciting (to some) new sources of energy like "fracturing" or "fracking" shale, building nuclear power plants, or drilling for oil in new locations, and start working with what's already here. Every shed and garage is a solar power plant waiting to be built. If Appco, Pepco, Dominion, et al., install those solar energy collectors wherever property owners agree to pay them off in electricity, the companies will not have to worry about becoming irrelevant when people install the collectors at their own expense, and also the three corners of Virginia can eliminate one longstanding source of acrimony as the Point will, at last, be supplying something that everybody in the Hump and Swamp admits they need. 

The companies will currently balk and whine, saying that of course they caaan't install solar collectors on sheds, and that the only safe way to install one at your own expense is to have it wired into the grid in such a way that you're still dependent on the company and your solar power can be cut off if you don't pay your monthly bill. Wrong, boys. It may involve pay cuts for high-level company employees, but it's quite feasible to restructure the electrical grid in such a way that the companies will be paying property owners monthly checks. The companies need to be planning for this. They must not be allowed to fantasize about building any more power plants, of any kind, unless and until they have invested in more equitable relationships with home and business owners. They need to be thinking of every property owner as a resource on whom they will depend as they continue to meet the energy needs of the cities.

The possibilities are endless, and delectable. Should parking lots have shelters from the rain, as an incentive to park at the far corner of the lot and walk, to get your exercise in? Of course they should, and why should those shelters not be collecting solar energy? "Clean" public transportation in the cities has been called a boondoggle because it consumes electricity. Could commuter bus stops and train stations generate even part of the energy the buses and trains consume? Electric vehicles aren't feasible if they have to be powered by the existing grid. What if they could be powered by their own garages?

Yes, batteries can corrode and release toxic minerals over years of exposure to wind and rain. Yes, some sort of filtration system needs to be installed along with the batteries. And what about storage of collected energy? Charged batteries can be stored long enough to get households through as many days without sunshine as most of the United States have, but where? Plans for safe storage of batteries--battery sheds?--need to be made, too, before households start trying to become solar farms. 

But there's no real reason why frugal people need to be making payments to keep lights turned on. Brother Sun can take care of that. We just have to pay attention to new technological developments, exercise good judgment, and not let the companies jerk us around. We need laws that steer the companies in the right direction--either moving with property owners to harvest energy from sheds and garages, or just dying now and clearing themselves out of our way.

Song: We Don't Need Nuclear Reactors

As regular readers remember, the Appalachian Power Company's Aaron Walker was talking about building a nuclear reactor in Wise County, Virginia, last year. The position of this web site is that no new power plants should be constructed until every "consumer" account in the Point of Virginia has at least had the right to refuse to become a "producer" account. 

Last winter, I wrote a batch of Antinuke Songs and sent them to a "solarpunk" 'zine. I may have told some people at APCo that Antinuke Songs were being written, too. Anyway, the'zine didn't snap up the songs, which are folk not punk, but APCo personnel now say they've not heard any talk about building new nuclear power plants lately.

Well, that's nice. Now where's my rack of solar cells?

This one is sung to the tune of the "We don't need no education" song from Pink Floyd's "Wall" album. Click here for the original words and video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U (I suppose this one is sort of punk.)

 Hey people, leave these hills alone

We don't need nuclear reactors

We have plenty of sunshine

Round the houses where we're living

Why put our lives on the line

Use sunshine

Don't put our hills on the line

You want nuclear reactors?

Put them in your own back yard

Mountains full of good spring water

Don't need to be cut and scarred

Use sunshine

Don't put our mountain springs on the line

We can build you generators

You can pedal at your seat

If you need more than just sunshine

That's an easy need to meet

Use sunshine

Don't put our neighborhoods on the line

You may not blow up this mountain

You may not blow up the town

Bad enough to smash the atoms

Out on bare unwanted ground

Use sunshine

Don't put human lives on the line

Mark Warner on the Lower Energy Costs Act

This weekend, this web site received Congressman Griffith's E-Newsletter summarizing the Lower Energy Costs Act, US HR 1. The Newsletter went live on this web site; you should see a link to it on the right side of the page. 

This web site particularly called the Newsletter to the attention of our US Senators, who are not paid to sit around reading personal blogs every day. Since they're D and our House Representative is R, we can expect some debate about the final wording from them; that's how the system is supposed to work. This web site asked them to make sure the bill supports the economy of the Ninth District of Virginia by requiring APCo to invest in harvesting our sunshine before it sinks any more money in fossil or nuclear fuel. 

(For those who don't know: Virginia already has laws authorizing anyone who has the money to put as many solar collectors as we want over our roofs, sheds, pavements, and any southwest-facing slopes that are too steep to cultivate and too rocky to support fruit trees. Stores like Gate City's Thriftway Supermarket, which died partly because its oldfashioned flat roof held water and sprung leaks, could have new, watertight, sloping roof covers that drain water and collect sunshine if their owners chose to invest in such. I could have a new, watertight, sloping roof cover if I could afford one. And yes, the technology is already workable to allow us to sell our surplus sunshine back to APCo. One of my old schoolmates claims to be collecting monthly checks for that. I am not asking for taxes to be used to make all of us equal participants in this venture, though I would emphasize that solar collectors can be installed on roof covers, outbuildings, or shelters especially over stores and parking lots, so they would actually protect rather than weigh down roofs. I would like to see a requirement that APCo install solar collectors wherever anyone they've threatened to disconnect for non-payment will allow them to install one, before APCo sinks any more money into new plants. This web site supported letting APCo build a new plant, which didn't look bad or do obvious damage to its environment, back in 2011-2012. They built it and everybody was happy. Now they're saying it's old and inadequate. Well. Let them have more sources of energy. Enough to sell to PEPCo and Dominion! And after a few years when they can balance their payments to us against payments on the equipment they install, they should start sending us monthly checks, too. It is jolly high time the Ninth District's economy was boosted by something that is clean, Green, honest, and wholesome.)

Below is Senator Mark Warner's reply. From its format we may infer that it was typed, probably by a student, from a template that was probably mailed out to a lot of people who've e-mailed him about this bill. 

"

Dear Ms. King,

          Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Cost Act.  I appreciate the benefit of your views on this important issue.

          On March 30, 2023, the House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 225 - 204. The bill must pass the Senate and be signed by the President before becoming law.

          You may be assured that I will keep your views in mind as this issue is considered. If you need additional information or if there’s another issue that’s important to you, please visit my website at: http://www.warner.senate.gov where you may send a message to me or sign-up for email updates to get the latest on my work in the Senate. You may also follow me at: http://www.facebook.com/MarkRWarner/ and https://twitter.com/MarkWarner.

Sincerely,
MARK R. WARNER
United States Senator

"

Morgan Griffith on US HR 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act

The E-Newsletter is long; editorial response is below. From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

The Lower Energy Costs Act

House Republicans recently passed H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act. By numbering this legislation as H.R. 1, Republicans recognize that unleashing American energy is one of Congress’ top priorities and critical to the wellbeing of the American people and our economy.

  

In 2020, under President Trump, the United States achieved energy independence. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. produced more petroleum than it consumed, the first year since at least 1949. Unfortunately, this energy comeback was short-lived.

 

On his very first day in office, President Biden began enacting policies to counter the energy achievements made in the last Administration, ones that severely hampered domestic oil and gas production. As a result, the American people have experienced exorbitant energy prices.

 

The Biden Administration made permitting new fossil fuel and nuclear energy projects very difficult. The New York Times recently reported that even thousands of renewable energy projects are delayed due to the current regulatory landscape. 

 

In parts of Virginia gas prices reached record highs, close to $5 a gallon in June 2022. The price of residential heating oil hit an all-time high in November, costing Virginians $5.52 per gallon. 

 

This has been especially burdensome for low-income households; some families in the 9^th District have had to choose between paying their energy bills to keep their homes heated during the winter and other necessities. 

 

We can do better.

 

H.R. 1 incorporates 25 individual pieces of legislation from across three different standing House committees to address the energy issues we have experienced over the past few years.

 

As a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Energy Subcommittee, I have been proud to be one of the people working to make H.R. 1 a good bill.

 

H.R. 1 aims to increase domestic energy production and alleviate some of the cost increases at the pump, by reversing Biden’s anti-energy policies.

 

It includes legislation to disapprove of Biden’s canceling of the Keystone XL pipeline, which cost the United States 11,000 American jobs and could have had a positive economic impact of between $3.4-9.6 billion. The additional oil would have been cheaper to transport to American refineries by pipeline, rather than moving the oil by truck or train. This would have kept gasoline prices from rising as much.

 

The legislation also requires the Department of the Interior to resume lease sales on federal lands and waters and repeals many restrictions on the import and export of natural gas, including LNG. 

 

About half of the homes in the United States use natural gas for space heating and water heating. Included in H.R.1 is legislation to repeal President Biden’s natural gas production tax. This tax has played a hand in increasing household energy bills across the country.

 

H.R. 1 reforms the country’s permitting process through changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) permitting process. These changes will streamline federal environmental reviews for all sectors of our economy by ensuring that NEPA review challenges are substantive and by setting deadlines for completion of the NEPA reviews.

 

This energy package also repeals Section 134 of the Clean Air Act, relating to the greenhouse gas reduction fund. This $27 billion ‘green bank’ was implemented as part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act to advance the bad policies of the Green New Deal.

 

The legislation also addresses our need for domestic production of critical minerals. In the left’s rush to green energy, America has become too reliant on volatile Chinese supply chains, and in some cases, the use of slave labor. The Department of Energy reported that, among other things, China controls 80% of the world’s rare earths production and refining which is needed to manufacture wind turbines and 60% of lithium refining needed for electric vehicles and battery storage. 

 

I believe in an all-of-the-above energy approach, including renewables, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of our national security. This legislation boosts the mining and processing of hardrock minerals, including critical minerals needed to ramp-up production of renewable energy components, maximizing our domestic energy production. It also requires the Department of Energy to identify resources that are particularly vulnerable to supply disruptions.

 

Unfortunately, before the House passed H.R. 1, President Biden threatened to veto the legislation, to the detriment of all Americans.

 

Hopefully the Senate will work with us to get a bill that helps Americans by lowering energy costs.

 

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. On my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives

"

Editorial response: 

We can do better than fossil fuels and nuclear energy, too, in the Ninth District.

We have lots of sunshine. Well, we get plenty of rain too--but we do get enough sunshine to generate electricity from solar collectors.

We have lots of paved parking lots that people would like to have sheltered. With solar collectors? Why not?

We have lots of old farmhouses with lots of outbuildings, all of which have roofs, all of which roofs could be supporting solar collectors. Some of these buildings are no longer in use for their original purposes--especially the tobacco barns!--and could be used as battery sheds.

We have too many store and office buildings that have cheap, flat roofs that hold water and sag, and often leak, and badly need to be capped with roofs that slope and drain off water. Big roofs. That would hold lots and lots of solar collectors. 

Almost every needy family, almost every retired couple, almost every business in the Ninth District, has an untapped source of energy...enough to meet our own requirements, and to sell to people in the cities who don't have roofs or pavements of their own. We should be Virginia's leading producer and exporter of CLEAN energy.

APCo should be sending us monthly checks, and sending Pepco and Dominion bills! 

Regulations that seem to make this difficult are the work of protectionist corporate interests. We need a sensible conservative Congress to cut through those regulations like a hot knife through a stick of butter.

You, Mr. Griffith, know your way around by now and should be in an ideal position to slash through the red tape and put the Point of Virginia at the front of twenty-first-century technology. And the retirees, the business owners, and the working parents of the Ninth District will love you for it.