A statewide effort to encourage homeowners to go green will happen on Saturday, October 1st, as people show off their homes in the annual Green Buildings Open House.

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A statewide effort to encourage homeowners to go green will happen on Saturday, October 1st, as people who've already done it show off their homes in the annual Green Buildings Open House organized by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.

Paul Crovella from SUNY ESF said, “They open their homes so people who are interested or curious, people who might want to kick the tires, so to speak, want to know the real function and performance of the system can visit to look at it and talk with the people who live with the system.”

This is one of the homes included in this year's open house. Owner Peter Cann uses a variety of systems to produce power and use it efficiently such as geothermal heat pumps, an array of photovoltaic panels and a wind turbine.

He uses passive systems, like the design of this room to capture heat from the sun in the winter while shading the room from the sun in the summer.

The mass of this brick wall around the wood stove is designed to store the energy when the stove is being used and give off that energy when it's not in use.

“This is an event that's happened many years and all over the state in the Hudson Valley, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, the Southern Tier, Ithaca and Binghamton. This year there will be open houses in the Syracuse area so there are plenty of places for people to visit throughout the state,” said Crovella.

This year it's being held on October 1st, a Saturday. The homes will be open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. On the website people can check locations nearby. The web also details the features of each home so people interested in something specific, like wind energy systems, or photovoltaic systems or strictly energy efficient systems, can go ahead and just select those.

The web site is nesea.org and the open houses are this coming Saturday.