Alternative Energy Sources:
Rappahannockers think out of the box and off the grid

by Jill and Jed Duvall

A little car, one that has seen some years, motors down the country roads of Rappahannock County. It passes the high school on the main highway, winds through Castleton, and moves along the road to the Flatwood Recycle Station on its way toward a home with special heating arrangements. We are on an imaginary tour of alternative energies firmly established in the county.

First, the high school. An addition that was opened in 2000 is heated and cooled, in a closed-loop system, by water drawn from the ground. A great deal of pollution is being avoided each day by this system, keeping the air in the county that much cleaner—not to mention saving on fuel costs.

In Castleton, the little car winds passes a special house, a small one, nestled into a south-facing hill. The home was built in the early 1980s by Richard Langelle, who now lives in Springfield, Virginia, and who sold it this past autumn to Julia and Chris Westfall.

What's special about this place is that it is a passive solar home, designed to catch the rays of the sun and hold on to the warmth. This "berm home", as Julia Westfall calls it, has a wood stove and an electric baseboard heater. Those backups are not often needed, says Westfall, because the house is cozy in all but the coldest weather. When she first saw the three-bedroom, two-bath house, Westfall adds, she thought, this "looks like a really cool house", adding, "I didn't want it to have a 'basement feel', and it doesn't."

Rappahannocker Judy Tole stokes the outdoor furnace that heats their home. A thermal water jacket around the furnace heats water that is then carried to and circulated around the house, producing an energy-efficient method of heating. Photo courtesy Pam Owen.

When the little car rolls through the Flatwood section of the county, it comes to the home of the Tole family—a large home on a hill that slopes gently down to a pond. A large furnace is out in the yard, not in the basement, where most furnaces are located. John Tole installed this wood-burning furnace that warms his home. The furnace blower system allows the wood to burn very hot, thus increasing energy efficiency. Water in a 1,000-gallon tank is heated to 180 degrees, and delivers the heat through a heat exchanger that is combined with a forced-air system. Since the Toles have plenty of fuel in the fifty acres of forest on their land, they realize significant savings in energy costs with this system.

The Tole homestead also includes a solar water-heating system. A thermal collector that Tole built sits atop a greenhouse and warms water to at least 120 degrees. The backup is an electricity-powered water tank.

Down by the pond is a small but powerful pump, 24 volts of direct-current energy, powered entirely by the sun. This system irrigates the Tole's rhododendrons.

Now, what about the car that has taken us on this tour? It's a 12-year-old VW Jetta owned, operated, and modified by Amos Blanton. Two things are important about this car: it is a diesel, and most of the time it runs on free fuel. Blanton, a mechanic, spent $400 on a kit to convert the engine to operate on vegetable oil. Peanut oil works fine. So does oil from a restaurant fryer. That's where Blanton gets his fuel. Restaurateurs are happy to get rid of the old cooking oil, which frees them from having to pay a commercial hauler to remove it. All a free-fuel motorist needs to do is filter the oil.

What happens if no vegetable oil is available? The car still runs on diesel fuel; indeed it warms up on regular diesel before it begins to burn the free stuff.

What do people do who haven't the mechanical and engineering talent to build their own systems? They can drive a hybrid car, such as a Prius. They can buy an efficient, motor-on-the-top refrigerator, such as a SunFrost; they can invest in an expensive but enormously efficient clothes washing machine, such as a Staber; they can invest in a solar-powered attic fan, quieter than others, and off the electric grid.

For More Information on Alternative Energy

Alternative Heating. John Tole is happy to respond to questions on energy-efficient options for heating a home. E-mail him at johnrtole@alum.mit.edu.

Hybrid Cars Using Recycled Cooking Oil. Amos Blanton says one of the best sources of recycled oil to use in a hybrid car like his are Chinese restaurants, because they have fewer bread particles in their used oil. Another has been a local restaurant.

For more info on using cooking oil to fuel your car, Blanton suggests a visit online to www.veggievan.org, or read From the Fryer to The Fuel Tank, a book by Joshua Tickell, available at the Rappahannock County Library. Anyone who wants to ask Blanton about the conversion can e-mail him at veggie@bokonen.net, or look at his website, www.amosblanton.com.

Other Sources of Information. For more information on hybrid cars, motor-on-the-top refrigerators, efficient clothes washing machines, and solar-powered attic fans, e-mail the authors of this story, via mail@rlep.org. The U.S. Department of Energy also has information on renewable-energy technologies, at www.eere.energy.gov/RE.