For the first time ever McLouis “Mac” Robinet, 78, and his wife Harriette Robinet, 80, are comfortably cool in the living room of their historic home on the 200 block of South Elmwood Avenue in Oak Park.
During these dog days of summer, it is the first time the conservation-minded couple has had air-conditioning throughout their home, and they say it’s paying off in so many ways.
In July, a new geothermal ground source heat pump was installed down deep in their backyard, and a new unit now sits where the old, defunct furnace once was.
Year-round the new one will efficiently, and quietly, cool and heat their home, plus accrue energy and cost savings.
That was his objective all along, says Mac, a retired scientist from Argonne Laboratories. For a 5-ton system, the initial cost was $25,000, minus a 30 percent government incentive. The final bill was about $15,000, he says, and the installation took about four days to bore six holes 150 feet down and directionally over and up through the concrete to put it all in place.
“I’m in physics. I understand the problem,” says Mac. “Global warming is real. It’s the biggest problem humans have ever faced. Once you understand that, you have a responsibility to do something about it.”
Looking ahead
About 40 years ago, when they first moved into their 1891 historic Oak Park home, Mac ordered his first furnace from the Sears catalogue. The “kit system” came with instructions and tools, so he installed the furnace himself. Twenty years or so later, he installed the second one, and when that furnace recently broke, Mac went geothermal a year earlier than he had planned, and participated in the installation of the new clean energy heating and cooling system.
“I have a real concern about global warming,” he adds. “The new secretary of energy, after doing some analysis, said that if everybody in the U.S. had a white roof, it would solve the energy problem.”
So, the Robinets have begun showing their stewardship for the planet, one household upgrade at a time. Over the last five years they have installed a new energy-efficient metal white roof, three skylights, a tank-less gas hot water heater, and an energy-efficient vented, gas log fireplace.
In addition, they tore off the red asphalt siding of the home, restored and painted it. That process enabled them to blow cellulous insulation directly into the walls.
“Since we were in an historic district, we were told that we could get a tax freeze for doing it if we documented everything, and restored the house to how it was originally,” says Mac.
Upgrading old windows to energy efficient ones is also underway, and on deck could be solar panels.
Going green
According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Geothermal Technologies, now nearly 500,000 geothermal heat pumps are being used for heating and cooling in residential, commercial and government buildings nationwide.
In Oak Park, over the last couple of years up to 10 homeowners have installed geothermal systems, including the Robinets, says Steven Touloumis, chief building inspector for the Village of Oak Park.
Last October the new Walgreen’s on the corner of West Madison Street and South Oak Park Avenue installed the first geothermal energy system used in a chain drugstore in the country and last month, Euclid Avenue United Methodist Church at 405 S. Euclid Ave., became the first local faith-based community to install one.
A changing climate
In the turbulent 1960s, the Robinets began shopping for a home here so their children could attend Oak Park schools. Meanwhile, the young family was housed in a furnished University of Illinois-Chicago staff apartment. At that time, “Black people in Oak Park couldn’t get a mortgage,” says Harriette, an award-winning author of multi-cultural historical fiction for children.
To troubleshoot, good friends purchased the home and offered it to them. The friends never did live in the house, she adds.
“We assumed their mortgage. I had never seen the house until we pulled up in the moving van,” says Harriette, who has raised six children. “Mac had one walk through. Back then, when black people drove through neighborhoods, it frightened the neighbors. Those were crazy, crazy times.”
In regards to installing an expensive geothermal system at an advanced age, the Robinets say the decision was based mostly with the future of the environment in mind.
“When people say, ‘so how long is this going to take to pay off” I say, ‘at my age, maybe never,'” quips Mac, who adds that for people who are big energy users, the payback for going geothermal can come quickly.
“The objective with the geothermal installation has always been to reduce our impact on the environment,” says Mac, a second term member on Oak Park’s Energy and Environment Commission. “With our geothermal system, I expect to reduce our impact on the environment by 5,000 pounds, so whoever this house ends up with, whether my son keeps it, sells it, whatever, if it lasts for 50 years, there will be a quarter of a million pounds of carbon dioxide that will be avoided.”