LiveSmart BC Community Hero
LiveSmart BC Community Hero: Jim Loucks
Cache Creek has an abundance of renewable energy in the form of the sun, and a Cache Creek Bed and Breakfast uses it to control the temperature in a 7,200 square foot house on Quartz Road.
Owner Jim Loucks says they've cut $550 per month off of their utility bills by going to solar thermal heating, including $350 per month it cost just to heat the indoor swimming pool. Now 720 square feet of rotating solar panel uses water from a 7,000 gallon tank to heat and air condition the home and provide hot water for the owners and guests.
Loucks says they no longer use natural gas, and their electricity bill has been reduced by almost $200 per month.
From Victoria, Loucks had never gotten into solar heating before he and Lynne Loucks moved to Cache Creek. But Cache Creek has all the sunshine you need, he says. He had Select Solar Systems in Sorrento design a system for the B&B. It took almost a year to completely install the computerized system - the bank of solar panels rotate to catch as much sun as it can - and it has been fully operational for a month. They've been heating the pool with it since March.
Loucks was elected to Cache Creek Council last month and wants to encourage more solar energy and alternate energy for the town's public facilities, especially the outdoor swimming pool and nearby Public Works building.
"We could eliminate any costs for heat," he says, and swimming pools are notorious for high heating bills.
"What I wanted to see with Cache Creek," he says, "is to get Cache Creek energy-neutral."
He feels that business and industry will locate in Cache Creek if the town can produce its own energy and boast low energy costs for the business community.
He says his next alternate energy project will be to get Select Solar Systems to design a turbine that will turn the B&B's hot water into energy.
"We put a lot of money into alternate energy to be a little bit more on the green side," says Loucks.
