Cuckoo in the nest

Peltz: smiling fraud We have received a complaint about an old article which allegedly contains inaccurate information about Solar installer Jay Peltz, and his partner Lauris Phillips.  The complaint accuses Peltz, from Northern California of falsely claiming credit for solar installations that he did not carry out, and of being a “smiling fraud, ” who has operated “without a contractors license.”

The complaint comes from Lauris’s former partner John Hulburd who says he worked for five years restoring their off-grid home near Garberville, while his wife worked in town as a masseuse. Peltz was hired and ” when he came up to help me with the installation, he took a liking to my wife, and they began a secret affair at that time,” Hulburd claims.

Peltz  later moved in and Hulburd says he was ejected from the house he had built (see details below).  Peltz tells interviewers and prospective clients  that the system installed there cost $23,000, but that is false according to Hulburd.  “All up, we spent about $4000 on both entire systems, not 23 grand as Mr. Peltz claimed.”

Calls to Mr Peltz were not returned. If he or anyone else wishes to comment please call 877 706 7423

Here is Hulburd’s statement: “Lauris Phillips and I moved to Garberville in 2000. We found a 40 acre property up on Pratt Mountain, east of town and 2000′ higher; above the winter fog line. It was a place developed by hippies in the 1970’s, and had been pretty much abandoned for 15 years. The upper cabin of the two was in fair condition, but needed all the thermopane windows replaced as well as all the T111 siding on the south side. The solar and hydroelectric systems had been disassembled years before, but the wiring, and pipes from one of the upper ponds were still there. The only power source was from a gasoline generator behind the shed (common in many “off-grid” situations, unfortunately). The other house, a 35×35 three story octagon, was a total wreck.
All the south facing walls were rotten and filled with woodpecker holes, none of the systems worked, the roof was shot, the hill above the house had slumped into the bottom floor and most of the windows were milky white, due to the thermopane seals having failed long ago. We spent two years getting the upper cabin fully fixed and functional. I reused the old 45 watt solar panels and locally made DC hydroelectric generator on a new pedestal, installed six L16 6-volt batteries and a Trimetric meter to monitor the system. After realizing that the old Heart Interface inverter was dead, I found a used Trace 1500 watt inverter to add in, along with an Ananda Power Systems display power panel we bought at a clearance sale from Real Goods in Hopland. So it was a mixed AC/DC system. Simpler but sufficient, with the 25-year old Dometic RV fridge mounted in a kitchen wall, no dryer, DC lights and wood heat only. It was wonderful!
Since Lauris had to get back to work in town as a massage therapist, I kept working on the Octagon. It took three years of full time work to finish, but there was an incredible amount to do: most of the south side walls had to be replaced entirely, the roof pyramid (the “third floor”) replaced (with 4 tricky dormers), the basement floor replaced on the south end, new entry deck and roof, deck railings, all new windows, remodeled bathroom and kitchen, new madrone flooring and carpets, new sheetrock and texturing, etc. We had to have all that mud slumped against the east lower wall excavated and we built a heavy rock wall to stabilize it. We also recontoured and planted the garden, greenhouse and orchard, fencing and drainage swales (grey water to bamboo too).
I removed hundreds of feet of DC cable from the Octagon (still have most of it), and upgraded all the AC wiring so the entire house would run off the used 2500 watt Trace inverter I installed over a new battery box filled with 8 Trojan L16 batteries. I had found 8 used 65 watt solar panels from a “Y2K” nut in the Santa Ynez Valley (where we previously lived) for cheap, which I installed on a rack bought through Jay Peltz.
I installed a used (although not rebuilt, as had been claimed by AEE in Redway, where I bought it) pelton wheel, and hooked it up to the old  two inch pvc pipe coming down from the upper pond (the property had three ponds!). In the winter, I had more power than I knew what to do with. The rest of the year, the small panel array provided enough power, even with a Kenmore energy star AC refrigerator. I rebuilt and installed an ancient but very reliable DC propane generator in the garage, but only used it to equalize the batteries in the fall, before the rains came, bringing hydropower back as well.
It was NOT “expensive”. I went down to Long Beach to work on David Crosbys schooner the Mayan for 2 months, and during that time Jay Peltz moved into my home, my wife hired a really nasty lawyer in order to force me to give up my ownership share of the property, which is pretty much what happened. When I returned, she threatened me with arrest if I set food on my own property (amazingly, this is legal and not uncommon in California). I eventually was given a week to collect my belonging, given a check for far less than half the real value of the property, and after five years of hard work, love and devotion to create an off-grid paradise, I was on the street; unable to afford to buy property in Humboldt County, since prices had gone up so much. This is why I feel deeply hurt by these articles which boost Mr. Peltz claims to reporters that he installed those systems, and how expensive it was, etc, etc. It’s all a bunch of lies designed to promote his image as some solar guru. The joke is, he had been operating illegally for many years, installing systems without a contractors license (he used a friends license from Eureka for permits, which are often not applied for in Garberville)! He is a charming, smiling, fraud; unliked by his community. None of that really matters, of course. I just want to have the record corrected, and his false statements removed from the internet. “

The original interview with Peltz was as follows:

A typical off-grid setup, with solar and wind systems, costs thousands of dollars. An upscale system in a house of 2,000 square feet, for instance, costs more than $23,000 to purchase and install.

That’s how much Lauris Phillips, 48, and Jay Peltz, 46, paid to power their house in Redway, just outside Garberville.

“It can be expensive, but the equipment pays for itself after several years,” said Peltz, standing under a canopy of solar panels in a patch of sunlight. Peltz is an acclaimed solar-panel consultant who recently set up a biological-research center in Ecuador.

Technology aside, Peltz said, the movement owes itself, in part, to texts like Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden,” the classic 1854 study of self-sufficient living. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” Thoreau wrote. The same is true of many off- gridders, but while self-reliance is its own reward, Peltz emphasized, the biggest appeal is cost: After several years, you save more than you’ve spent.

“I’ve saved $200 a month for the last 20 years,” Parkinson said. “That’s my kids’ education right there that I would have given to PG&E.”

Passive solar buildings have been in use since the 1940s, when World War II quickened an energy crunch that led Americans to seek out alternative power sources. In 1954, Bell Laboratories invented solar panels to strengthen phone signals, but the technology didn’t reach homes until the ’70s.

Although the United States is the birthplace of the off-grid movement, Japan is the top producer of solar technology, and Germany also invests more heavily, which Peltz believes will reduce those countries’ trade deficits, produce jobs and lessen their reliance on oil imports.

Lobbying from solar advocates will help the United States retake the lead, Peltz said.