Visitors have traveled for miles to see David and Laura Sill’s new garage in Reisterstown. What makes this three-car garage worth the trip is that it was made out of about 200 bales of straw and features a toilet that heats waste into environmentally friendly ash.

The Sills’ garage was finished last week, just in time to be part of the B-more, B-Green Solar Tour on Sunday sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society, Potomac Regional Solar Energy Association and several energy-related companies. The self-guided tour featured 10 homes and businesses in Maryland that use green techniques to cut carbon emissions.

Building a green garage was a natural for the Sill family. The family’s Victorian home has solar panels, which supply about 40 percent of the family’s electricity. So when David Sill, a physician at Mercy Medical Center, wanted a heated garage so he could work on cars year-round, he looked to the sun again.

“The power is raining down on us as we stand here, yet we don’t use it,” Sill said.

One of the first things a visitor will notice about the new garage is that it doesn’t have a paved driveway that causes run off. Instead, the driveway is a “permeable pavement,” sort of like a thin metal grid that’s barely covered by dirt but allows vegetation to poke through and rain to be absorbed.

The garage relies on three solar panels for heating. The panels heat a tank of antifreeze-like fluid, and when the garage needs heat, the fluid will be circulated in a grid under the floor. The garage can be heated up to 80 degrees, Sill said. “These walls are tremendously insulated because they are so thick,” Sill said.

Looking at the garage, there’s no evidence of the bales that make up the 21-inch walls other than a square of plaster purposely cut out to reveal the golden straw. The bales are covered with plaster. The exterior features cement-product paneling, said Polly Bart, owner of Greenbuilders in Butler, which constructed the garage.

The straw came from a farmer about five miles away from the Sill home, Bart said.

Other features of the garage include a small bathroom with an electric toilet. Waste is collected in a bag, and at the press of a button, the bag drops to the bottom of the toilet, where an electric coil incinerates the waste and leaves behind an eco-friendly ash.

On the roof are two small gardens that will keep the garage cool in the summer and extend the life of the roof, Bart said.

The 1,400-square-foot garage with screened porch cost $160,000. The Sills will get some of that investment back in federal and state tax breaks for the solar panels and energy-efficient doors.

Other sites on the tour included a green-certified building at a winery, imitation cedar shakes made from recycled rubber and plastic, and a rooftop solar pool heating system that allows a 1,000-square-foot pool to be heated about 10 degrees higher than usual at no extra cost, according to tour organizers.

In South Baltimore, the Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center gets nearly all its electricity from solar panels, said Cheryl Miller, a building administrator. Miller said she likes that the lights automatically turn off because she sometimes forgets to switch them off when she leaves.

But solar isn’t the only green features of the center. The building also uses “gray” water – after someone washes their hands in the bathroom, the water is filtered and then used for the toilets, Miller said.

Jerold O’Brien has always been a bit ahead of the curve. He bought his scenic property near Summit Road in the 1970s and planted organic grape vines to make Silver Mountain wines long before it was popular to make wine or be organic. And in May he took the next step by completing what may be the largest solar array in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Living out in the mountains always encourages self-sufficiency. O’Brien’s goal is to obtain all of Silver Mountain’s energy from the solar array — and deliver power back to the grid.

“I believe in the concept of sustainability, renewable resources and of reducing our carbon footprint,” O’Brien said. To that end, he’s installed 6,000 square feet of solar panels that have the potential to generate up to 46 kilowatts at any given moment.

The array has 264 panels, each generating 175 watts at peak power. It’s about 10 times the size of a typical home solar setup, which generates 4-5 kilowatts.

The average household in the United States uses about 8,900 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, according to “Electrical Energy, the New Book of Popular Science.” While the yearly output of O’Brien’s system is not yet known, you can bet this puppy pumps out the watts when the sun is shining.

O’Brien calls it Triple Green, not because of its $450,000 cost, but because it’s environmentally positive in three ways. The array is installed on a steel roof over three levels of winery operation, including the
loading dock, crush pad and settling tanks and fermenters and bottling operation, reducing refrigeration and shielding equipment from the elements.It generates electricity to support the winery, an office and the tasting room and sends more back to the grid. Also, the roof can collect 50,000 to 80,000 gallons of rainwater for irrigation.

“It covers all of the work area, tanks, equipment processing area, which used to be in the sun and rain continuously. The steel canopy provides shaded parking as well,” said O’Brien, who acted as his own general contractor, having built the residence and winery. He used Star Building Systems for the steel canopy, Carl Coombs of ACS Architects and Akeena Solar Co. for the panels.

Creating this shaded area has been a plan of O’Brien’s since he rebuilt the winery after the 1989 earthquake, but he never had the money to finish the solar component.

Happily, technology and government incentives have improved, and the project’s green components also helped it get through the county’s permit process.

Still the state rebate of $58,000 was a small portion of the $450,000 cost and how federal incentives will be implemented has not yet been decided.

“It’s a damn big investment,” said O’Brien, who had to borrow most of the money to install it. Calculating how much it will save is tricky as well since the value of shade and rainwater harvesting is unknown.

What O’Brien really wants is to be paid for the excess power that the array sends back to the grid.

“The current state law says that if you produce more than you use, PG&E gets that energy for free,” said O’Brien. He is hoping that bills currently in process to recompense privately generated electricity pass because, “I think the state needs that law as an incentive to build. There are lots of people like me who can generate more than they are using.”

Though O’Brien figures the loan payments are greater than the savings so far, he’s not in it for the money. He points to his winery that generates about 5,000 cases a year and the array and said, “It’s not a money-maker. It’s a lifestyle that should only be experienced if you’re crazy enough to want to work all the time.”

By Stacey Vreeken Central Coast