Tour Provides a Look at Needham’s Green Side

From keeping bees in their backyard to powering a household with the sun’s rays, homeowners in Needham are actively pursing a greener, cleaner life.

On Saturday, June 11, a few of these people opened their homes to give others a chance to explore the possibilities during the League of Women Voters of Needham’s Green Energy Tour. It was the first League-sponsored tour in about 25 years and came about because new technologies and federal and state incentives are making “alternative” energy systems more affordable and prevalent than ever before, according to League member Susan McGarvey.

Planning a Green Energy Tour may not seem like a natural fit for a group whose main purpose is to encourage informed voting, but McGarvey said the League has been part of the environmental awareness effort for years.

“The League of Women Voters does advocacy for positions after study, so we’re interested in global climate change, and our Needham League has a Climate Action Committee,” she said.

For McGarvey, also a member of the , it just makes sense to pursue a more eco-friendly way of living.

“I have a concern about our energy use, so anything that we can do as a municipality to be more efficient and not spend our money overseas on fossil fuels—and have more money to make our schools and our town better—is a good thing,” she said.

Six homeowners participated in the Green Energy Tour, each offering a different type of “green” system.

Heat From Underground

At his Gibson Road home, Bob O’Connor took visitors down to his basement to explain how they use a geothermal system to heat and cool the house. The first of its kind in Needham, the geothermal system is now being used in other homes around town.

“We needed to replace the oil furnace—it was old. We wanted to get central air conditioning, and we wanted to do something good,” he said of why he and his wife decided to pursue an alternative energy system.

They did some research and ended up hiring a contractor to install the system—drilling two 300-foot-deep wells in the yard to accommodate a piping loop that carries water through the system. How does it work? The underground water stays a constant 55 degrees, and when it reaches the house, the geothermal system takes the heat out of the water and blows it into the house, warming it. In the summer, the system collects the hot air from the house and transfers it to the water, which is sent back underground where it returns to its constant 55 degrees, O’Connor explained.

“Two years ago, we had one wall air conditioner for our bedroom, and last summer the whole house was cooled for the month of July and the bill was like $60 cheaper than the year before,” he said.

The system cost about $34,000 to install, including replacing the 90-year-old house’s leaky ductwork, but the homeowners also received a $10,200 federal tax rebate. O’Connor said they save about $1,900 annually on heating and cooling bills and that he expects the savings to have paid for the system in about five years.

A Solar-Powered Education

Over on Brookline Street, homeowner Ken Farbstein stood in the garage, out of the rain, talking to Green Energy Tour visitors about something they weren’t seeing much of that day: sun.

He and his wife Daryl Juran installed photovoltaic (solar power) panels on their roof last July and are already noticing a difference on their monthly electric bills.

The system is pretty simple: The panels collect the sun’s rays, turning it into energy, which feeds into the house’s electrical system. On a not-so-sunny day like the day of the tour, the panels produce less power; on bright summer days, they may produce enough to power the entire house and feed electricity back into the system, for which the homeowners receive a credit.

Farbstein said his family has been environmentally aware for some time, from composting to recycling to limiting their water usage. Then he read an article about how solar panels could actually be affordable, and “I got pretty enchanted with the idea.”

Still, he had to convince his wife, who wanted to see the proof.

“I mapped out month by month what I thought it would cost and what I thought I would save and it looked like we would get a windfall of money that we could use for my son’s college education,” Farbstein said. “And that’s what happened.”

The system cost $50,000, minus a state tax credit of $5,500. Farbstein secured a “green loan” for the remaining $45,000 through Wainwright Bank, which they consider to be like a second mortgage.

“It turns out that month to month, what we save on electricity plus the solar renewable energy credit available here in Massachusetts [incentives for building toward the state’s renewable energy goal] are about equal to the loan repayment. So we’re pretty much even month to month,” Farbstein said. “But we’re about $15,000 ahead of the game because we got a check from Uncle Sam as a tax refund through the 30 percent federal tax credit, so that’s going to pay for my son’s fall semester tuition.”

Farbstein, who admits he is “kind of obsessive” about tracking the system’s output, can see how much energy is produced daily and monthly by the solar panels and showed some of the printouts to visitors on the tour. But the real evidence that the system was working came with his electric bill.

“You get this bill and it says ‘No payment due.’ It’s pretty strange,” he said.

Forty-thousand Bees and Other Things

At the Howland Street home of Babette Wils and Mark Somerville, “green” means a lot of different things.

About six years ago, the couple hired an architect, Gerry Ives, to help them design a more energy-efficient home within the walls of their 1870s-era house.

“He was the one who came up with south-facing windows [which provide passive heating from the sun during the winter] and encouraged us to build this deck,” Wils said. “We don’t have air conditioning; everything is done with cross-ventilation and with shading from the trees. In the summer, we eat outside on the deck—it’s cool and it’s got a nice breeze.”

The family also uses more efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs and is “religious” about turning off lights when they’re not in use, but ultimately the house has many of the appliances found in a typical Needham home—only they’re all Energy Star items, requiring less energy.

Outside, the family keeps a full garden of perennials, growing berries and vegetables to put on their table, and also rents out an 800-square-foot garden plot to Needham businesswoman Kate Canney, who operates The Neighborhood Farm.

“She’s an organic farmer, and she didn’t have any land a couple of years ago but she knew a bunch of people who had lawns, so she asked them if she could grow produce in their gardens,” Wils explained. “It’s a barter system; we give her the land and she gives us credit to buy from her farm stand at the Roslindale Farmers Market.”

Canney operates about 10 mini farm plots around Needham, Wils said.

She estimated the family saves about $500 per year on groceries with the food they receive from The Neighborhood Farm and their own gardens.

And then there are the bees.

About a month and a half ago, Wils and Somerville became local beekeepers—caring for approximately 40,000 Italian honey bees in two hives on the back of their property.

The idea stemmed from a book Wils read, “The Fruitless Fall" by Rowan Jacobsen, in which the author explores the colony collapse disorder that is causing worker bees to just disappear.

“[In the book] he’s sort of sleuthing and finding out that it really has a lot to do with the way bees are kept commercially and the pesticides that they are exposed to when they go out foraging,” Wils said. “One of the conclusions he comes to is that small, local sustainable beekeepers are a real key part of the future of bees.

“I was like, ‘Whoa! We have to keep bees,’” Wils said.

It did take some convincing, but ultimately her husband was up for the idea.

“It was either bees or chickens, and I think bees seemed like a better option,” Somerville said.

They have only had the bees about six weeks and have yet to see any honey from the hives, but that’s not really their goal.

“Getting the honey was good but actually having the bees be successful and pollinate is as much the objective,” Somerville said. “Normally you would harvest honey during the summer and fall and try to leave them with just enough to make it through the winter, but the more bee-friendly approach is to leave all the honey there, let them eat what they need to eat for the winter and at the beginning of the spring take what’s left over.

“If there’s honey next spring, we’ll get some honey; otherwise, the bees will at least have had a better chance of surviving,” he said.

Ready to Go Greener

Other homes on the tour included: a Brookline Street house that uses co-generation—a gas-powered generator that makes electricity, with heat as a byproduct; a Cynthia Road house that uses a solar thermal system to heat water, rooms and even a pool; and a century-old home on Alfreton Road whose owners use a variety of techniques, such as special insulation, to save energy.

Among those participating on the tour was Maureen Commane, a member of Green Needham.

“I’m just interested in the green energy alternatives,” she said. “We try to conserve a lot. We don’t have any air conditioning. We don’t use that much electricity. […] I guess I’m interested in seeing what the options are.”

Needham resident Aurelie Cormier brought her daughter, 13-year-old Kelsey Mullikin, along with her. Though it’s not exactly the most desired way for a teen to spend her Saturday morning, Cormier said she was glad Kelsey came along.

“I really appreciate the fact that she’s coming and learning about some of this, because this is essential,” said Cormer, who has joined the town’s 10 Percent Energy Challenge—pledging to reduce energy usage at home. “If we’re going to continue to live on this earth, we need to be doing more of this.”