High in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains: Foothills versus Mountain Living in Southern Colorado

July 24, 2016August 19, 2020 / Laura Lee Carter / 12 Comments

Yesterday was so interesting! We visited some new friends who have lived up above 8,000 feet in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains west of here for the past few years. Loved hearing their stories about living up high.

I know many have romantic visions of life up in those beautiful mountains, but remember this too:

The approach to their house is a windy, dirt road off of a major highway, a road they and their few neighbors must maintain, unlike the county road we live off of, 15 miles west of Walsenburg. Once they came home a few years ago and there was 6 feet of snow on this road. They couldn’t go home!

We heard stories about when the deep snows come, and the big state highway snowplows plow their road closed! That’s why they need to maintain snow-moving equipment themselves….imagine that!

I asked them how deep the snow gets up there, and they decided one picture was worth a thousand words!

WOW! We have had a few snows of a foot or so, but nothing like this! They told us stories of a few snowstorms where they shoveled for eight hours straight. If they didn’t have heavy equipment they wouldn’t be able to get out for weeks!

Their property includes an old straw-bale cabin on a mine site plus 100 acres. Their water comes from a spring nearby, and what delicious water it is! They heat with a large wood stove, which requires a great amount of log splitting to prepare for the winter cold. They have electric service, mainly because the costs of returning renewal energy back to the grid here requires outrageous fees and insurance requirements, and going off grid presents other problems with reliability and initial installation costs. We are stuck here until better energy storage solutions are developed worldwide.

The natural beauty of their landscape is beyond words and, did I mention, they have no water or heating bills… They maintain a number of wildlife cameras and see so many different animals around their home. Bears are so commonplace that they have named a few of them! It’s a wonderful place that requires a lot of work to maintain.

Postscript: This home was lost in the Spring Creek Fire , July 2019.

We recently built a passive solar home right at 7,000 feet and are told by our new friends that we are really saving a lot of money in the winter by absorbing the sun’s heat directly into our insulated slab, which helps to hold the daily sun’s heat within our home overnight.

We hope to add a few of these solar thermal water tubes to our home soon to increase our thermal mass and help to moderate temperature swings both in the winter and summer. Beyond solar, we depend on Cadet forced-air electric wall heaters on thermostats for all of our winter heating needs. They usual turn themselves on during the night and turn off soon after the sun comes up most days. In the summer, the positioning and excellent insulation in our new home keeps us cooler than most without the need for air conditioning. We have ceiling fans in every room.

We have rarely been “snowed in” this past winter, but we did purchase a Subaru and love how well it works on steep snowy roads. Overall, we’re glad we chose a lower elevation, especially since our home survived the Spring Creek Fire in 2018!

We are newcomers to rural Colorado, so after two years I compiled a book about the total experience of moving here to build passive solar in the foothills: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado Please feel free to contact me directly for copies of any of my books! MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com

With the best of intentions, change can still be hell! Trust me, I know…

May 25, 2016October 13, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 16 Comments

“Even in seemingly dormant times, we are in transition. Losses and gains are in constant play. We are the change-agent, and we are changed. Even without toil, we transform. So, wisdom advises us to open our hearts to transition; to honor fully what is passing, to learn from all that unfolds, and to welcome what arrives at our door each day with courage and curiosity.”

As all who have been reading this blog for the past year or so know, I have had many doubts about this big, dramatic move Mike and I started on two years ago. Especially when we first moved to Walsenburg, and I basically hated it.

But then if you took anyone from a beautiful, suburban home in Fort Collins, and moved them into a tiny, dirty 100-year-old house in a sad, rundown town an hour away from any decent sized city, the shock would be total, and it was!

The challenges we have faced in the past two years have been daunting for both of us. For me the biggest challenge was simply adjusting to such a different world than I was used to. For Mike it was the many extra expenses, frustrations, and delays in building a passive solar home in a rural environment.

I am now quite happy that we made this choice, while Mike says he wouldn’t have done it if he had known how unhappy I would be in the process of adjusting to something so different.

In retrospect I wish I had not worried so much about everything and trusted more in Mike’s vision for us, because this place is heaven. I fully appreciate how much courage and vision it took for Mike to push this whole project through to completion.

Now we live in a beautiful home that is supremely quiet, with fantastic views in every direction, and our direct-gain passive solar is working great! Plus I now feel like I’m making a few friends and slowly starting to feel like I belong here.

In summary: This place is perfect, but change can still be hell!

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How did this happen? How did I end up here, feeling so fortunate? It’s a long story, one I can now share with you in my new memoir…

Home Designs That Changed America

April 21, 2016April 21, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 7 Comments

I found it interesting to watch the PBS special “10 Houses That Changed America.” In this program, the two houses that reminded me the most of our new passive solar home in southern Colorado, were the Taos Pueblo from ancient times, and the Glidehouse.

taos-pueblo

Ancient pueblo-style homes faced south for the best winter exposure to the warmth of the sun, and had thick adobe walls to help maintain indoor temperatures year round. This design provided much needed warmth in the winter, and cooler temperatures in the summer months.

Then I learned about the Glidehouse, which I had never heard of before. This is now built prefab in a factory, but was originally the architect Michelle Kaufmann’s attempt at creating a reasonably priced green home.

What did that mean to her? She wished to create an energy efficient home that maintained its indoor temperature through its unique design. With excellent insulation and many south-facing doors and windows to add solar heat in the winter, the overhanging roof on the south helps to keep the sun out in the summer. With lots of windows facing south, very little indoor lighting is needed during the day. She also installed a low-flow water system. Kaufmann’s main idea was to conserve natural resources, collaborate with nature, and create a healthier, more comfortable way to live.

Unlike our own custom-built passive solar home, the Glidehouse does not include a specially-designed direct-gain slab that collects heat during the winter months, and then releases it at night, greatly decreasing the need for additional heat. We also spent the extra dollars for spray, polyurethane foam to insulate our outside walls, providing the best R-value for both winter and summer.

I am happy to see more Americans who are concerned about energy efficiency in their living situation, not just to save money, but to live more in harmony with the earth. I love living so close to nature, and waking up to see bunnies coming up to my sliding door to look in in the morning.

Why we love snowstorms in Colorado!

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

We’ve been sitting in a snowstorm here at 7,000 feet in southern Colorado for the past four days. I loved it! I wrote about this and it seemed like everyone responded with, “That sounds horrible to me!”

This is exactly how horrible it is. When the snow clears and the Sangre de Cristo peaks emerge from the clouds, we are surrounded by incredible beauty. This is our view to the south today.

This is our view to the west as Mount Mestas emerges from the storm.

Besides the stunning views following a storm, we have now received two and a half inches of precipitation, about one-sixth of our total annual rainfall, leading to fields of spring flowers like Indian paintbrush, lupines, penstemon, or these lovely wild iris:

I took these photos last June, west of here in a high mountain meadow. The same can be said of the photo in the header of this blog, an amazing spread of spring flowers which only appear when we get some hardy spring snowstorms!

In conclusion: If you want the rainbow, you must have the rain…

Life in a passive solar home

November 5, 2015September 6, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 7 Comments

This post is for those who are curious what it is like to live in a direct gain passive solar home. That included me until a few months ago!

For example, today the sun is out, but we had a high of 46 degrees outside. Inside we are toasty warm in the low 70s with no forms of heat needed.

To build a direct gain solar home you must first properly position it with almost all your windows and sliding doors facing directly south. And the windows and doors must be made of the proper kind of glass.

In addition, your roof needs just the right amount of overhang on the south side to keep the sun overhead and not shining into the house until around September 1st.

You must also start out with the right kind of insulated slab to hold the heat in the floor, instead of it leaking out into the ground. This is essential!

The walls must be well insulated, and then we chose dark gray tile throughout the house to absorb the heat as it enters the house from our south-facing doors and windows. Right now the sun is shining about 10 feet into our home!

You also need ceiling fans if you want to keep the heat down off the ceiling in winter.

At the time of building this house, I understood why we made these specific choices, but only now do I see the great advantages to living in a home that holds its temperature so well.

Yes, our home does cool down at night, but very slowly. The low temperature outside last night was around 20 degrees. With no inside heat on, the outdoors got down to 64 degrees. Then as the sun starts coming in to the house the morning, our home warms up very quickly.

Sometimes before I leave the house I think, “Should I turn down the thermostat?” But we have none…old ways die hard.

Fortunately we were able to find the perfect passive solar perch for our new home, one that faces south and also offers us a 180 degree view of the Spanish Peaks and the Sangre de Cristo mountain range.

Now that I understand all of this, I am mystified why everyone doesn’t use the free solar heat of winter! Of course I never would have understood all of this without Mike’s expertise and education.

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Midlife change is so worth it!

November 4, 2015November 18, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Although Mike and I did consider ending it all before we met in lucky 2005 (see previous post), we both agree joining forces has been the BEST thing that has ever happened to either of us!

Together, through a great love and stubborn persistence, we have assisted each other in attaining our most treasured life goals, goals we would not have attained without each other’s support.

Mine was to become a writer. So far I’ve written three books! Mike’s was to build his own passive solar home with a spectacular view.

Mission Accomplished! And, BTW, the passive solar is keeping us toasty warm this fall! More often than not we have to open a window to cool down our home. So far, so good. We have only needed to use our supplemental heaters on the coldest and cloudest days.

The sunrises up here are GLORIOUS!

And all in all, I would say we are a good example of:

“Don’t give up in midlife when things feel hopeless!”

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If you can change your mind and change your priorities like I did, there are do-overs before it’s all over! That is the message of my books and blogs.

And, finally, the rat is dead! Mike found it in his car and killed it! He was so happy! We still have our new cat Charlie. He’s not so good with rats, but he’s great at finding bugs, and re-defines playfulness for us!

Rasta and Charlie are still not the best of friends, but we’re getting there…

still coloring mandalas, and LOVING IT! It’s so healing for my poor recovering brain…

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