The Feds count it as a vacation home. Not sure if that tax break is still available.

Beautiful photos Tom! That's a homey home. I wish we had the web based monitoring for power use that you have.

We get most of our power from hydro so electricity is maybe cheapest in the country. We also have bulb replacement subsidies. We started with the lights on much of the time, putting in CFLs. We're adding a few LEDs. Gas fired boiler also heats domestic water. Clothes dryer is gas. That lets us be in the bottom 20% of power users for similar houses without even trying.

I've been looking at MacBook Air computers for super low power consumption to replace two that run full time one serving a website the other an EchoLink node. The latter is a PC laptop that helps heat our bedroom. I won't miss it.