Our Cool House
A Maryland adventure in Energy Smart, Not So Big living.

Welcome to Phil and Lisa Malone's Home Page...... literally!  
This web site is all about our cool house at Deep Creek Lake (Mc Henry) in Garrett County,  Maryland.  

You can also see how to use my Web Energy Logger system to monitor your own home, school or business.

Although it seemed like a short summer, we actually had a great growing season this year.  Since we avoided the early Spring cold snap we usually get, all the plants that have adapted to a short growing season went crazy this year.  

The summer was so mild that I actually got some yard projects done this year.  Lisa and I moved several tons of stones and river rock to create a dry river bed at the rear of the house, and a rock water-feature in the front.  I even broke down and planted some grass.  It was a good opportunity to act like a manly Garrett County guy and pickup a load of topsoil in my new second-hand truck (a pretty fuel-efficient GMC Canyon).  Now Lisa spends lazy afternoons sitting out by the fountain watching the Humming Birds playing in the water stream.  I had to go and buy a lawn mower. D'oh!

We still get a regular stream of visitors like Black Bears, groundhogs and Chipmunks, but a really cool thrill was a flock of Wax Wings that descended on the new fountain and spent a day during their migration at our cool house.

 
The house is still performing well thermally.  Our last power bill was only $53.  I'll have to start using some of the WEL's new features to track long term trends. 

My GEARS (Garrett Engineering And Robotics Society) center is continuing to grow with new programs.  In addition to our FRC and FLL teams, we now have a new FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team that will meet at GEARS and compete in La Plata MD, next February.  We're also having fun building underwater robots to swim in our octagonal test tank, and later in the lake.

Phil..