This, folks, is what a building permit looks like...

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Et voila, the new green studio [0] is a go! (Is it just me, or does “the new green studio” sound a bit like The New Zoo Revue [1]? Maybe it’s just me.) Time to get cracking: I’ve got almost all [2] my [3] junk [4] either stored away or listed on craigslist [5]. I’ve got a space cleared for any salvageable building materials [5] I can pull from the existing studio. All that’s left to do is, you know, pull the mother down.

One slight problem: even though no one’s going to be living in the studio, it still needs a backup heating source; using the solar radiant system [5] we had planned won’t be enough, apparently. (Nor will wearing a sweater on those rare sunless days [6] we have in Boulder.) We need something mechanical, something grid-tied, in order to pass inspection once the building’s done. There are three options for this.

The first is tying the studio to the all-powerful boiler [6] in the main house. That would involve running plumbing underground from the house to either panel radiant heaters [7] or in-slab radiant pipes [8] in the studio—which would involve digging a new trench for said plumbing. Not too great an issue, since we’re already going to be digging trenches [8] anyway, but I’d rather not unearth my entire backyard, especially for a building—insulated and supertight as it’s going to be—that won’t require a great deal of mechanical heating.

The second option is to just throw a couple of electric baseboard heaters [9] in there. This is probably the easiest solution. Again, I hope to rarely need artificial heat in the place, so the fact that most electricity is coal-fired doesn’t matter too much. But electric heaters are ugly and inelegant, and not the most efficient devices out there—and there’s no way to tie them into those solar thermal panels we want to throw up on the roof. In effect we’d be installing two separate heating systems, which seems a little much for such a small, not-legally-inhabitable building.

A good friend (a prince among energy nerds) came up with a third—and, I think, best—solution this past weekend. (We were drinking pineapple sake in the middle of the afternoon; perfect for brainstorming.) We have a 53-gallon water heater [9] already, left over from the new boiler installation [9]—plenty big for running a radiant system on its own. (Indeed, that’s what we were using it for before the new boiler came along.) We’ll pop that into the studio, run radiant pipes either in baseboards or in a newly poured concrete slab—and we’ll tie the solar thermal panels into the whole thing. The panels will heat (or at the very least preheat) the municipal water going into the tank. Hopefully the thing will never have to fire up all winter. The only issue I can foresee is venting: The tank will sometimes need to fire, and when it does, it’ll combust natural gas, which when burned, of course, creates carbon monoxide. Not so good for the health, apparently.

Next week: Pictures from the deconstruction. Word!