Each big storm with a high tide and an
onshore wind takes a big bite out of Sarichef.Photo By Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition

In an email this week from John Woodward, an Alaska builder and Home Energy author, he wrote, “I put together a working/management group to manage the relocation of the community of Shishmaref sustainabely. They live on Sarichef, a barrier island that global warming is wiping out.”

Shishmaref is home to a small community ofInupiat, a Native American tribe. John is working with the Inupiat Tribal Government, the City of Shishmaref, and the Shishmaref Erosion & Relocation Coalition, to salvage as much of the village as possible before it goes under water and move it, along with the island inhabitants, to a new plot of land in the interior of Alaska.

The Army Corp of Engineers gives the island about 5 or 10 more years of livability. But as the ocean and permafrost warm and the ocean rises, unpredictable storms take a heavy toll on the island. “Each big storm with a high tide and an on-shore wind takes a big bite out of Sarichef,” says Woodward.

The community is seeking funds for a comprehensive alternative energy plan, an anaerobic pump/methane generator, and the retrofit of all existing buildings, including more than 110 homes, community buildings and a school. The homes will be retrofit to use less than 5 Btu per square foot to heat. Heating load calculations can be pretty complicated, but in general, contractors recommend furnaces that can provide 30-50 Btu per square foot to heat homes in the Bay Area. To reach such a high level of energy efficiency, the Shishmaref homes will have the insulation installed on the outside of the structure, a technique that Woodward has successfully used in the past. The new village will have the look and functionality of the Inupiat culture as defined and designed through community planning.

“Our community planning process involves community charettes with the whole community gathered in the school gym,” say Woodward. “The goal of these meetings is the rough-out of a comprehensive community plan for sustainable relocation of the existing salvageable infrastructure and the development of the new village site.”

The Inupiat will build their new village to suit their needs and lifestyles, to be efficient, and to be in harmony with its surroundings-in other words, sustainabely. Let’s keep an eye on our northern neighbors, who may teach us some valuable lessons. How long before whole towns in California will have to relocate because of water shortages? We all witnessed what happened in New Orleans a few years ago. How long before towns and cities on the coast of California will have to move inland or be seriously reconfigured because of the rising Pacific Ocean?

You can e-mail John Woodward with questions, comments, ideas, and offers of help atpanuktuk@yahoo.com.

I don’t think there is one big solution to our energy problems and the environmental problems related to the use of fossil fuels–there are lots of little solutions that in the end add up to a big solution.One of those little solutions I have been reading a lot about lately is a Drain Water Heat Recovery Device (DWHR). It looks like part of something you would find hidden in the hills and hollows of Appalachia that makes moonshine, but a DWHR device is a simple copper coil that you put around your shower drain that recovers some of the heat from your shower water. Cold water is circulated through the coils, gets heated by the drain water, and then flows into your hot water tank, or into your shower and hot water tank.The device is simple, effective, and doesn’t require much (like, no) maintenance. Drain water heat recovery devices contribute to large energy savings in laundries and in multifamily buildings, but will also work very well in single-family homes–as long as there is room under the showers. My one-story house in Walnut Creek is not a good candidate for such a device.

The simple workings of a drain water heat recovery device.Credit: gfxstar.ca, Inventroment Energy Solutions.

Canadian researchers from Natural Resources Canada tested the effectiveness of several DWHR devices at the Canadian Centre for Housing Technology.For an Ottawa household in which four people each take 12 minutes showers every day, a DWHR will save $150 a year in energy costs (at present, Canadian dollars are about equivalent to U.S. dollars). That’s about three times as much energy saved as the energy used to run an energy-efficient 20-cubic-foot refrigerator for a year. Over the 30-year lifetime of the DHWR, which costs about $800 including installation, the device will save the household close to $3,000.

The Canadian researchers created a Web-based Drain Water Heat Recovery-Energy Savings Calculator where building contractors, plumbers, and homeowners can go to estimate the cost effectiveness of several DWHR devices on the market. You just need to know the model of the device, the temperature of your shower water, estimated shower times, and so on. Right now it is set to work for Canadian locations. For U.S. homeowners, you have to pick a city in Canada. The calculator will be updated as newer technology is developed and tested.Here are some Web sites where you can find out more about DWHR devices that were submitted for testing at the Canadian Centre for Housing Technology:

• Power Pipe www.renewability.com
• ECO-GFX www.gfxstar.ca
• Retherm www.retherm.com

If a million households in the United States installed DWHR devices, we’d save a collective $150 million in annual energy costs, or about the equivalent of 1.25-billion kWh of electricity–or a ginormous amount of carbon dioxide in air from the natural gas not burned and electricity not generated.