Mike & Holly Trapp
Building the future without gas lines
Highlights
| Year built: | 1949 |
| Year renovated: | 2017 |
| Location: | Sunnyvale, CA |
| Type: | Custom Single Family Ranch |
| Details: | 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2,000 sq. ft. |
Features
Induction cooktop
Cook better, faster, safer and healthier than gas without releasing harmful pollutants into your home
Sun Tunnels
Allow natural sun light into rooms that normally don’t get any and save energy from not turning on lights in the daytime
Dual zone thermostat
Automatically redirect air to specific zones in your house to optimize temperature comfort and save energy
Whole house fan
Create a cooling indoor breeze so you run the A/C less and reduce your energy costs
Spotlight
Going all-electric wasn’t Michael Trapp’s original intention when he started remodeling his house. But then PG&E told him they would be shutting off the gas during the entire renovation period of several months.
“That was a problem because my family still wanted to have hot water. So I decided to give electric a try. I replaced my tankless gas water heater with an electric heat pump unit. It worked great and was very efficient, and since I didn’t need gas anymore for the water, I decided to keep going and replace my gas heater with an electric heat pump AC/Heating unit. Then we bought an electric induction cooktop because we have pets and wanted the safest cooktop available. And that turned out to be more energy efficient than our old gas stove.
“After that I realized I might not need gas lines coming into our house anymore. Which meant I could tell PG&E to stop any plans to re-pipe any gas into our home or property, saving us at least $10,000 on the gas redelivery system. So to complete the transition, I installed an electric washer/dryer, sun tunnels for natural daylight, a whole house fan to lower AC use, a ‘smart’ oven that reduces cooking time and solar panels on the roof.
“When you add SVCE’s clean energy to the solar I’m generating on-site, I ended up reducing our carbon footprint dramatically without any change or compromise to our lifestyle. It’s great.”
MICHAEL TRAPP / Homeowner
