Michigan family takes green living to the extreme

[Clear Blue Sky]

PIGEON -- Brion and Kathy Dickens might just be Michigan's greenest couple.

Consider:

• They heat their 4,000-square-foot home with a biomass boiler that is fed with pellets made from wood, corn or sugar beets.

• They have their own windmill to provide electricity.

• Their electric car recharges by plugging into the windmill's turbine.

• Brion makes his own diesel fuel from waste grease to help fuel his Dodge pickup and Oldsmobile and to completely fuel his construction equipment.

• They helped start an annual Earth Day celebration four years ago that now draws about 6,000 people a year.

-snip-

When they added to their Victorian farmhouse surrounded by farm fields outside Pigeon in 2002, they were using propane for heat. Their home is close to Saginaw Bay in Michigan's Thumb. Because they were doubling the home's size and adding Kathy's dream indoor pool, they feared propane costs would be astronomical. Brion looked into alternatives.

He chose a corn-fired boiler because corn was cheap then, at $2 per bushel, and a more efficient fuel than propane.

"We paid back our installation costs in a year" with the savings, he said.

Unfortunately, he didn't foresee the ethanol boom and skyrocketing price of corn, which has lately flirted with $6 a bushel. Now, he's using wood or sugar beet pellets from the local co-op. Local farmers grow sugar beets, and the pellets are made from leftover pulp.

"It's still cheaper than propane," he said.

The boiler heats the indoor pool in the winter; in summer, it's heated by solar panels. They're not off the grid, though; when the family wind turbine is down, as it is now because of a broken blade, they get electricity from DTE Energy. At times, though, they sell electricity back to the utility.

Brion buys biodiesel from the local co-op as a way to support farmers or uses a processor to make biodiesel from french fry grease he rounds up from local restaurants. He estimates he's made 300 to 400 gallons over the past few years and has taught school kids how to do it. This week, he'll be helping students to make biodiesel out of sunflower seeds from a crop the school grew beneath its wind turbines.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/NEWS05/804220396

[blue sky at night]

1. thanks for the post...

and welcome to the DU. I love seeing information about the Green! Hoping you will stay on top of stuff like this and I will do the same.

[Clear Blue Sky]

2. Thanks,

Interesting screen name you have. Similar to mine.

[blue sky at night]

8. I am a sailor...

it is a play on the old adage; red sky at night, etc. I couldn't even think about any red skys!

[roguevalley]

3. I wish I could do half of what they do. thank you for this.

[dbackjon]

4. I'm sorry, but living in a 4,000 square foot house with indoor pool

Is in no way 'Green'.

Burning wood is not green either.

[htuttle]

7. The house is too big, but it depends on what you do with the pool

Paint the inside black and give it a nice sunny southern exposure -- not a bad heat sink, depending on the climate.

But if you actually heat it? No way...bad...

[kestrel91316]

9. Burning wood or other plant material is a hell of a lot greener than

burning dead dinosaurs.

I agree about the 4000 sf and the pool.

My dream green house will be about 1200 sf. And no pool.

[dbackjon]

10. Depends on the source of the wood

And I really wouldn't want all my neighbors burning wood all day - the local pollution would be deadly.

[kestrel91316]

11. Exactly why we ned to put out primary focus on insulation of homes

that don't have LARGE amounts of it. And we need to rethink the 2000 sf per person or whatever that so many people are having to heat because they live in such large homes with so few occupants.

[caravan77]

5. Good for them

To save the earth, we'll need many families similar to this one.

[roody]

6. That is great and there are folks in Michigan

greener than them.