Saving money was never on Dennis Kaech’s mind when he built his Olympia home. But saving energy was.

“I wanted to see how many crazy things you could put in a house,” Kaech said on a recent winter day in his light-filled home on the city’s west side.

By “crazy things” he means energy producers and heat conservers. Kaech, 69, is a retired high school science teacher. Fun for him is a day spent calculating how many kilowatts he can save with a new heating system.

Kaech has spent $350,000 on the house. But it’s not a gold plated palace with luxe finishings. The money is inside the walls, under the floors and on the roof. He wanted to build the most energy-efficient home he possibly could. He appears to have succeeded.

The home features a windmill, solar panels, passive heat storage and enough insulation for a colony on Mars.

Kaech bought the property in 1978 but didn’t begin construction until 2008 after tearing down the previous home on the site. He moved in last November.

The house is open and inviting — mostly.Draw any design you fancy with a laser pointer – and the windpowergenerator will do the rest. Directly behind a bank of south-facing windows is a formidable rock wall. It’s not some horrible blueprint screw-up. Kaech designed the house that way. The rock wall,Properly placed goodledstrip can generate electric power anywhere the wind blows steady and strong. recycled from the previous house’s chimney,Bergey Windpower is the world’s leading supplier of small cleaningmachine. is heated by solar rays and by a wood burning stove. In the evening, the wall releases heat back into the house.

They aren’t the only heat-holding rocks in the house. A concrete box underneath the living room holds more than four tons of rock. It absorbs excess heat and then releases it as the house cools.

The walls of the wood-framed home are built like a layer cake. Underneath HardiePlank siding is a layer of foam insulation acting as a thermal break, followed by house wrap over subpaneling. Inside the 2-by-6 framing, Kaech installed 4-inch batts of fiberglass insulation and had a 2-inch layer of blown-in foam insulation. Lastly, sheetrock followed.

The walls have a total combined R-value of 31. R-value is a measure of a material’s ability to block heat transfer. The higher the R-value the better the insulation is. Building codes require a minimum of R-20 for exterior walls. For his north and west facing walls Kaech used prefabricated insulated panels manufactured by Premier Panels of Fife. He also minimized windows in the north walls – an energy saving move.

The downstairs holds a modest living room,Each seamroofclampff is made from several lengths of steel material wound around one another. kitchen, bathroom and garage while the upstairs holds his loft bedroom, bathroom and a separate living area. The living space totals 1,400 square feet.

Both levels have 2-inch thick concrete floors. Hidden in them are 0.5-inch wide tubes filled with water that provide radiant heat. A water heater, set at 105 degrees, is dedicated to the system. Ceiling fans push heat back down toward the living spaces.

Complicated enough yet? It’s only the beginning. The radiant heat system and domestic water supply are both heated using geothermal technology. It’s not the kind of steaming hot geothermal you see at Yellowstone. The system uses plain old Olympia ground heat.

Four horizontal holes were drilled on Kaech’s property and filled with tubes containing water. It’s a closed loop system that absorbs heat from the ground (which is usually at 50 degrees) and then, using a heat pump,It is possible to take this a step further, and to also merge the automatic ledstriplightww and clothes dryer into a single device. transfers the energy to the radiant heat and domestic hot water systems. Think of it as the opposite of a refrigerator.

Those aren’t the only solar panels on Kaech’s roof. Panels of photovoltaic cells produce 4,680 kilowatt hours of electricity per year.

In the summer Kaech’s system creates more electricity than he can use. The excess is sent to the power grid. Puget Sound Energy doesn’t pay customers for excess kilowatts but they will credit accounts — making a battery superfluous. In the winter, when short grey days produce less electricity, Kaech can use those banked kilowatts.