Westbrook Solar House & Nature Preserve

10/23/2025

Inside Climate News just published a story on our house:

Paul and Elena Westbrook’s house uses 75 percent less electricity than a comparable Texas home.

10/03/2024

This Sat (Oct 5th) we're on the National Tour of Solar Homes. Drop in anytime between 10am-2pm for a free tour - passive solar design, solar water heating, ground source heat pump, solar PV panels, storage battery, and more. My website has plenty of info including a map link to 440 Lakewood Dr, Fairview, TX 75069: https://enerjazz.com/house. Here's a story about the house: https://greensourcedfw.org/articles/nearly-30-year-old-solar-home-open-tours-oct-5. Caution: Learning and lower energy costs might occur!

The Westbrook Home is one of two North Texas homes on the National Solar Tour this year.

07/03/2024

The Illinois Bundleflower grows thick on one section of our land. It has small flowers, followed by leathery green seedpods. These seedpods then turn crispy brown.

05/19/2024

Starting to heat up outside. This walking stick is trying to get in the house to cool off. And the Lemon Mint (aka Lemon Beebalm, Horsemint) is blooming.

04/30/2024

The trees are all leafed out, and the attention turns to the wildflowers - and the bird nests.

04/18/2024

On one small area at the edge of our property we have these giant yellow primroses. I've never seen them anywhere else - they are about 2x the size of a regular primrose. We also have this nice penstemon blooming right now.

03/26/2024

Our little native forest preserve reveals something to us every day, if we just choose to take a short walk and look/listen/smell. Coral Honeysuckle is today's gift from nature.

03/22/2024

Spring continues the unveiling on our property with the rusty blackhaw viburnum and the Mexican buckeye.

03/07/2024

I enjoy observing our forest in the spring. The trout lilies are the first to bloom, taking advantage of the sunlight hitting the soil. Then, the short understory plants bloom, or start leafing out while they have access to sunlight. The tall trees are still a couple of weeks from leafing out and shading everything else. The forest leafs out sequentially from bottom to top. The photo is a volunteer peach tree on our property.

02/22/2024

Solar water heating - too bad the US abandoned it. My system (with panels made in 1978) is cranking out some serious hot water on a sunny February day. Return from the roof at 190ºF, and my 85 gallon tank is up over 170ºF.

02/05/2024

The hawk was back this morning. It sat on a branch over our small pond for almost an hour, hoping a fish or frog might appear.

01/01/2024

I know you've all been wondering when I would post my 2023 house utility use summary. Wait no longer. Our house website has a ton of info: https://enerjazz.com/house/. If you want to go straight to the utility report, it's here: https://enerjazz.com/house/files/Westbrook_House_Utility_Use_2023.pdf. And the graphic below is all of our energy use, including charging Elena's Plug-In Prius. We only paid base fee in 2023 - ZERO energy charges.