Top 5 Pre-Winter Energy Savings Measures

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Most people would prefer to live in a more sustainable house, but many think they either can't afford to make the changes they need to make, or don't know where to start. The good news is that there are very viable, relatively inexpensive and simple changes you can make to your home or apartment to increase its energy efficiency and save yourself real money on your energy bills (and help to save the planet, while you're at it.) Because winter is quickly approaching we'll concentrate on things you can do now to reduce your energy bills during the coming winter. Energy usage in winter is dominated in most parts of North America by heating, we'll focus on those things you can do to keep that expensive heat inside and keep the cold outside, where it belongs.

Here are five things that you can get started on today to prepare your house for the winter heating season:

1. Get a home energy audit
2. Check your attic insulation
3. Repair leaks in duct work
4. Check the weather stripping on your doors and windows
5. Replace or clean the air filters in your furnace

1. Get a Home Energy Audit - Before you set out to fix a problem, you first have to identify what that problem is. That's where an energy audit comes in. An energy audit is performed by a trained and licensed technician using specialized equipment to discover where your house (or apartment, condo, whatever) is wasting energy. The auditor will check your insulation and duct work (if you have ducts) and will scan the various "penetrations" in your house to see where you might be leaking energy. "Penetrations" are such things as your windows and doors, outlets, switches, attic hatches, etc. -- basically anywhere that there is a hole in your wall. He or she will look for air leaks that can let heat out (and cold in) so you can take corrective action to plug these leaks. The auditor will also inspect most of the other sources of energy usage in your house such as furnaces and boilers, lighting, appliances, etc. You will be provided with a customized report detailing the auditor's findings, which usually also includes advice about what you should do to improve your house's efficiency. Energy audits aren't that expensive -- a few hundred dollars at most -- and they yield a treasure trove of good information you can use to fix your house's energy problems. It's quite possible that you'll recover the cost of your audit with the energy you save in the first year.

The US Department of Energy has a decent web site with advice on where to find an energy auditor and what to ask them. Also, be sure to check with your local municipalities to see if they have a subsidized energy audit program; if they do, it could cut the cost of your energy audit in half.

2. Check your attic insulation - If you live in a house or townhouse that is more than a few years old then it's likely that you could benefit from additional insulation in the attic. Almost all houses built before the 1990s have inadequate insulation, as are many houses from the 1990s and 2000s - even if your attic insulation meets current building codes! That's because building codes in most of the country are simply inadequate when it comes to insulation. The U.S. Department of Energy recommends that attics in most of the country be insulated to R-49, which is equivalent to about 14-16 inches of blown cellulose insulation or fiberglass batt insulation. So if you have less than that in your attic, have some more insulation added. Of course, insulation in walls is also very important, but adding insulation to walls is generally a much more complicated operation, since your walls are sealed from all sides (i.e., you have to somehow get inside the wall to add insulation). In contrast, most attics are accessible so it's usually a relatively simple task to beef up attic insulation. So, concentrate on the "low hanging fruit" of your attic first, and we'll focus on what to do about your walls in a later post.

3. Repair leaks in duct work - Ducts are notorious wasters of energy. It's not unusual to have half or more of the air flowing through your ducts escape before it gets to its destination because of leaky duct work. Sealing your ducts, therefore, targets a major energy waster by ensuring that your expensive heated (or cooled) air gets to where you want it to go, rather than being leaked into your attic or inside your walls. Sealing your ducts can be very easy or very difficult, depending on the configuration of your home and where your ducts run. If you have a one-story house with a unfinished basement and/or attic and the duct work running along the basement ceiling or in the attic, it's easy. However, if your house is two or more stories with duct work running through the walls, it's obviously much more complicated. But, you can usually access some of your duct work, particularly near the furnace, and even if you seal just the little bit you can reach you'll have a positive impact. How do you seal your ducts? NOT with duct tape! There is a saying in the industry that you can use duct tape for just about anything EXCEPT on ducts. Instead, you'll use duct mastic, a thick, sticky, gooey substance that you brush on the joints of your ducts, where it hardens and completely seals the ducts. It flows into the cracks of the joints and forms a tight, permanent seal. You can find mastic at many hardware or home improvement stores and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) supply stores.

Hint: Wear rubber gloves and old grungy clothes when you're using this stuff, as it will, for sure, get on you. Also, buy a few of those cheap disposable brushes called "chip brushes" to apply it with because whatever brush you use to apply it will get destroyed. Better to destroy an 89 cent chip brush than a $15 paint brush.

4. Check the weather stripping on your doors and windows - Despite that this is perennially one of the most common pieces of energy saving advice, and one of the easiest to undertake, it's surprising how many poorly sealed doors and windows still exist out in the wild. For doors, a very simple way to check if you need new or better weather stripping is to stand outside at night and close the door while someone inside shines a lamp or flashlight around the edges of the door. If you can see light leaking around the edge of the door, you have a leak where warm air can escape and cold air can get in. Windows need weather stripping also, though the correct type of product depends on the window type and material - ask your local hardware store for advice. There are literally dozens of weather stripping products you can use to seal the door, from very inexpensive foam rubber tape that might cost you $3.50 to vinyl gaskets to felt strips to copper flashing. Some products are better than others, but suffice it to say that anything is better than nothing. Again, the US Department of Energy has a good web site with advice on weather stripping.

5. Replace or clean the air filters in your furnace - If you don't have forced air heat or cooling you can ignore this one, but if you do, then do yourself a big favor and either clean or replace your filter often. A clogged furnace filter causes the fan in the furnace to run harder and longer, wasting energy in the process. Most filters are the type you simply change out and throw away, but some are reusable after you clean them (while we'd normally tend towards anything re-usable rather than something disposable, unfortunately the re-usable filters are often not as effective as the disposable ones). In either case, ensuring you have a clean filter can cut $10, $20 or even more from of your energy bills each month, depending on the size of your system. You might be tempted to just yank out the filter altogether, figuring that you can't have a clogged filter if there's no filter there to clog. But avoid that temptation! If you do, all that dust will just end up in the delicate mechanisms inside your furnace, which will eventually cause it to wear out and fail. Obviously it's much cheaper to replace a $5 filter than a $4,000 furnace. Also, note that ASHRAE (The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers) recommends a filter with a Minimum Efficiency Rating Value (MERV rating) of at least 6. As higher MERV rating means that a filter will filter out smaller and smaller particles.

While some of these suggestions might not apply to your situation (i.e., you don't need to replace the air filter in your furnace if you live in a house with radiator heat) there is probably something in this list that can benefit you this winter. No matter what, you should get an energy audit -- that's your first step, the step that will highlight where you need to focus. From there, it's as simple as TAKING ACTION on what the audit brings up. If you can't do what is suggested in the audit yourself, call in a qualified contractor or consultant to do it for you. The savings you realize from improving your home's energy efficiency will quickly offset any costs you incur by taking these measures, and remember that energy improvements to your home will keep paying you back year after year.

Andy Mazal
Inhabit - Green Building Consulting
www.inhabitconsulting.com

Doom, Gloom and Green

So, apparently the sky is falling. Surely you've heard the news. The USA - the World!!! - is, right now, at this very moment, in the midst of the apocalypse! Or, if things maybe aren't quite that dramatic, at least we're facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, to hear the powers that be tell it. During this highly charged political season blame is flying around like the meat loaf in a college food fight.

As the guy at the helm of a small business launching itself into the world at perhaps the worst time to launch a small business since ... ever ... well, the whole thing just gives a guy pause, that's all.

Friends, family and colleagues have been asking me what I think about what's going on in the country, and what it means for my decision to launch a brand-new business at this time. Hmmm... Pause.... Well, after thinking about it for a minute, I'm jazzed. Call me crazy, but for anybody swimming in the green building waters, this whole economic meltdown thing might be just the thing to move our industry forward and into the mainstream.

How could that be? Simple: Green building is better, more efficient building. It uses materials more efficiently, increases the efficiency of the things you're building, and saves you money in the short and long term. (Oh, yeah... and it's better for the Earth, too.)

OK, so let's pretend for a moment that you, dear reader, are a real estate developer. You're presented with two choices for your next project:

1. Build a building that is less durable, will rent for less, will take longer to sell, is less healthy for its occupants, and will cost more to run and uses more energy over its (shorter) lifetime, or...
2. Build the same building, but it will last longer, will rent for more, will sell faster, is better for its occupants and costs less to run and uses less energy over its (longer) lifetime.

Oh! One more thing: #1 and #2 cost basically the same to build.
I would choose #2. You can make your own choice.

As a green building professional, I know that the biggest hurdle to mainstream green building adoption right now is perception: the perception that building sustainably is much more expensive, is strange, is for tree-huggers, is ugly, is not mainstream, is left-wing, or whatever. I am fully aware that my biggest barrier to success in this industry is not in overcoming reality; rather, it's in overcoming perception.

That's why I'm almost glad we're staring into economic gloom and doom -- well perhaps "glad" is not the appropriate word here, but suffice it to say that I do see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the green building community worldwide to re-focus the green building conversation from die-hard historical perceptions to present-day ECONOMICS. Like it or not, in a profit-driven, capitalist world, economics drives all things forward. Green building will continue to be a relative niche until the perceptions of the past catch up with the economic truths of the present. Which is to say, at the end of the day, building green costs LESS than building conventionally, when all of the aspects of putting up and maintaining that building are considered as a whole.

We can talk all day about global warming, polar bears, climate change, rising sea levels, carbon footprints, melting glaciers, Hummers vs. Priuses, clean coal, nuclear, drilling offshore or in ANWR and all that. But frankly, in my opinion, when it comes to moving green building into the mainstream -- we're wasting our breath. We need to talk about economics. All the rest will take care of itself once the profit motive is aligned with what is right for all the rest.

The message is simple: Building green is good business and it makes sense economically. Period.