Painting the Town Red!
Jim went out on the town one night recently with our MIT buddies and their super new high resolution thermal camera.
Here's a Hyde Park panorama, showing the riot of energy life in a typical urban street after dark! Remember that lighter colors in the scan are higher temperatures: if all the homes were well air-sealed and insulated, they would show up as boring blue. The brighter the yellow, the more that area is radiating expensive heat from the home into the night.
Points to notice:
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Some of the brightest areas in the home in the center are foundation exteriors
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Windows are obviously a generic weakness: but compare the (relatively cool) windows on the home in the center with the "white hot" windows on the next house but one to the right: that house had single pane windows with no storms!
- The front wall of the home in the center needs some extra insulation
Watch out for further images from around the city in this blog!
High resolution version here.
Cash for Caulkers? Not Anymore.
"Not to tip our hand too much, but one of the things I would be surprised if we don't end up moving forward on is an aggressive agenda for energy efficiency and weatherization.”
- President Barack Obama, December 3, 2009.
Irony is the only way to describe the fact that just as the notion of “cash for caulkers” is gaining momentum in Washington -- championed by such boosters as Uber Venture Capitalist John Doerr, President Bill Clinton, and now President Barack Obama -- Massachusetts’ own existing successful “cash for caulkers” program is coming to a screeching halt. Ending just as the heating season begins and energy costs are rising.
For a number of years, residents of Massachusetts, specifically those homes that heat with gas could participate in a program that would pay up to 75% of the cost of weatherizing their home up to a maximum of $2000. In real terms, this meant that the average home would spend about $3000 on such steps as caulking, weather-stripping, insulation and the like and then receive a check back for $2000 from the gas company.
As our experience shows and energy experts will tell you, such a program can have dramatic results, slicing energy costs from anywhere to 10 to 40 percent per household. Savings that continue indefinitely, and lay the ground work for future energy-saving steps.
Yet, inexplicably this program ended December first, to be replaced with … no one really knows for sure. Despite a negotiation process between the state and the various utilities that is months if not years in the making, the only progress that has been made is to kill the existing program and to argue about what comes next. Our hope was at the very least the current program would be extended until the end of the year, but that has yet to happen.
The result for our company -- and the entire Massachusetts weatherization industry – is a deep freeze. No work is getting done, as customers are waiting for clarity on just how much, if any funds, they are likely to receive.
In our queue are some 30 homes waiting for our services, yet – rightfully – all of these customers are holding off until it is clear what the future rebate will be. The current situation is the worst case scenario for us. On the one hand, if there was a rebate program, this work would obviously get done quickly. Conversely, if there is no program -- and never will be -- some portion of this work would still get done, as the average homeowner recognizes its excellent return on investment and its short payback period.
But this current situation of confusion and paralysis means our work is stopped cold until the state and the utilities decide what the next step will be. Whether this process takes two weeks, two months or two years, until the rebates are sorted out all weatherization work, insulation, and the like is on hold.
So now we are wondering what to do. What do we say to these thirty customers who are ready to make their homes more energy efficient? What do we say to our nine employees that see the work drying up? What do we say to the future employees we could be hiring if there was just some clarity around the rebate programs?
What do we say? We don’t know, we are just waiting.
Learn to Love Your Attic.....
As home energy auditors we often re-introduce our customers to places in their home they would prefer to forget. The basement crawl space with no vapor barrier, the original window that has been cracked open so long that people have forgotten it isn't closed, the water heater with storage boxes stacked all around.......and so on. But it's the attic, which for many is truly the land that time forgot. "I haven't been up there since we moved into the house over 20 years ago" one homeowner told us recently about his highly accessible attic - "and quite frankly I don't intend ever to go back." Yet when it comes to energy efficiency, saving money, reducing carbon and making your home less drafty and more comfortable, you have to learn to love your attic - because it is the first place to look for quick wins. Your expensive conditioned air likes nothing better than to move up and out of your home. And most homeowners, if you take the time to look, will discover that you are making it easy for that expensive air to blow out of your roof: there are gaps and cracks around pipes and ducts and chimneys and wall partitions - and sometimes there are literally 18" square open spaces where you can shine a flashlight and see down to the basement. Oh yes, there may be a thin layer of old rockwool or fiberglass insualtion - but the air moves right through that with little or no problem.
So fall in love with your attic. Get some help to seal up and block out all those cracks and gaps and holes: and then get yourself some real insulation. Blow in a thick, and I mean thick, luxurious carpet of cellulose or, if you can afford it, consider putting icynene foam on the slopes. It may never be your favorite place to hang out, but if you make some fairly modest investments (especially after rebates and tax credits) you can make your whole home cheaper to heat and less drafty.
