One of our newest locations, Washington Energy Services, recently posted some great tips on greening your Holiday season. Love the local focus here, nothing like supporting your community and also enjoying the season while you do it!
Please read on here, and if you are in the area, reach out to a part of the Green Team, you will be glad you did.
Happy Holidays!
Jason
In New England it is easy to see the seasons change. It’s a time of harvest and preparation for our comfort through the coldest part of the year. There’s plenty to do outside the home never mind on the inside.
For one thing it is time to tune up the furnace or boiler before the heating season begins. Preventative maintenance is a good thing and worth the minor expense to ward of a major one in the middle of the heating season. With a contractor you trust, that clean and tune may be part of a service agreement and can save you even more.
Your heating system is not the only thing that should get a tune up though. For many of us, it’s the home too! Even with the cleanest running furnace or boiler in your home, it is important to consider how well the building is insulated, resists air leakage, deals with moisture and provides indoor air quality.
Since heating systems and buildings interact with each other, it’s a great idea to consider treating them together. Seek out certified and experienced heating and cooling technicians, and the same for your home. Consider a BPI accredited contractor that will look at your home as a system and help you prepare for the coming season making it healthier, safer and more energy efficient.
Thanks,
Jason
It’s that time of year again, and although we have written about Energy Efficiency tax credits for 2011 before, if you had work done this past year, it might be time to review. You can also go to our learning center for solutions to common problems we fix in homes just like yours, as well as links to our franchise locations; they can provide details about incentives available in their area.
Many of the federal tax credits ended in 2011, but not all of them. What will continue for 2012, are credits for some renewable energy systems. Solar water heating and photovoltaic systems, small wind systems, and geothermal heat pumps, are all eligible measures through 2016. If you are thinking of alternatives, consider our interactive online home to get a better sense of whether or not these types of improvements are really what you need this year.
Alternative energy systems can be expensive, and it often makes the most sense to install them in homes that are very efficient from the start. You might be surprised by what some simple measures can save you money. Tax credit or not, insulation, air sealing and efficient heating and hot water systems can pay for themselves in short order. Simple measures that cost less and save you more!
Thanks,
Jason
Our very own Maggie Mauer form the Syracuse branch of GreenHomes America was recently featured in a Syracuse article on the R House that she now calls home. The R-House as it is called is a result of a design competition by local non-profit and University groups.
The home was built to Passivhaus standards. Very little heat is needed since it is so well insulated, and in Syracuse NY that is impressive. Passivhaus is an extreme example (and typically applied to new construction) of what we do with homes everyday: excellent insulation and air-sealing, reducing the heating loads, and controlling ventilation.
Maggie’s house was designed to include big windows which allows for the sun to heat the space quite well. It’s called passive solar and has been worked into design for many years…and is the reason you can usually find a cat sitting in a window on a sunny day. But in the R-House there was one oversight, those big windows help in the winter but It sure gets hot in the summer. Unbearably hot.
Home Performance can be needed even for high performers. To keep it cool, we installed a ductless mini split to air condition the space in the summer time, maybe not the usual approach, but it’s an unusual home!
There were a few other design and installation details that we had to correct, including a heating system that didn’t really shut off fully, inefficient lighting, and some leaky doors that allowed the cold winter winds to whistle through. And this is an award-winning house!
This goes to show, the the details matter. A lot! And it highlights why we’re called out not just to fix 100 year old homes, but those that are only a year or two old, too. (Maybe the should have called us in during the construction phase to help get it right the first time!)
photo from http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/projects/rhouse
Maine Governor Paul LePage has recently called for a 50% reduction in the use of oil for heating in the state. Maine is a heavy user when it comes to heating oil. 80% of our homes here are oil heated. To cut that useage in half by 2014 is an ambitious goal, for sure. LePage suggests doing this by switching to natural gas and wood pellets. 
There are efforts to move towards natural gas in the state, and I encourage it. It won’t be fast, however. While the distribution system is slowly growing, it is not there now. As for pellets, they are readily available, but if demand for them increases so might cost. Furthermore, most residential wood burning systems require the user to be hands on. The pellets don’t fill the stove themselves, and the ashes don’t empty themselves. This is the same reason why 80% heat with oil instead of wood, also abundant in the Pine Tree state.
What is missing in this discussion is our dependence on BTU’s. In other words, the focus should be on energy use, first, not fuel source. Switching fuels doesn’t solve the problem of inefficient leaky homes heating the great outdoors. It’s like an addict going from one fix to another because it’s cheaper, and they can get more for less. Fuel switching is treating the symptom and not the problem.
Weatherization efforts, increased efficiencies of heating equipment, and fuel switching when it makes sense, can have a much greater impact, and a much lower long term cost, than fuel switching alone. Efficiency Maine and the many contractors who have worked with these programs have been chipping away at this. Tux Turkel from the Maine Sunday telegram reported recently, “Maine residents slashed their heating oil use by 45% between 2004 and 2009.” We routinely save people that much off of their oil bills. Governor, we can do this, but let’s treat the real problem and break our dependence on wasteful heating.
Photo by David L Ryan boston.com
OK, one sign of halloween, as made clear from his zombie post yesterday, is that Jason has been watching (too many!) horror movies.
The ads are different this year, but the advice is the same--don't waste your money on the so-called "Amish" heater.
But the other sign, all too predictable over recent years, is that those darned full-page ”Amish” heater (the Heat Surge…or it is the Heat Scurge?) ads are running again. Miracle? No. But predictable and scary, maybe even scarier than one of those Zombie movies. And from the ad, it looks like Sears has joined the game.
And although they’re now advertising the ” Heat Surge HT” with their trademarked “Hybrid-Thermic” technology, it doesn’t change what we’ve talked before (see reviews and commentary here, and here, and here, for example). I won’t spend a lot of time on the retread except to warn people NOT to waste their money. A lot of hype, expensive ads, and a tremendously overpriced product. This gets my “Don’t Buy” recommendation once again.
In some circumstances, space heaters can help, but in most homes it’s usually less expensive to heat your whole house with gas or oil than it is to run even a couple electric heaters. And even then, you can find units that will deliver the same heat at a much lower price (albeit without the goofy ad). Save your money. Make your home more comfortable and save energy with both simple tips and more extensive–and smarter–home improvements like insulating and air-sealing.
Thanks,
Mike
Baseball fans, great technology comes to the World Series. In fact it’s the same technology we bring to your home. The AP recently reported That a number of Infrared cameras will be trained on batters in the upcoming World Series games. The cameras will be used to pick up the heat generated from friction, say when a fast ball skims off a bat or a glove. The Fox network is trying them out this year so they won’t be used in making calls, but they could be. Hey at least maybe we will get a glimpse of this great technology just watching the games.
At your home base, we don’t need to see the heat patterns of a knuckle ball off a bat to cry foul, but the cameras our advisors bring along in assessing your home do help you avoid the curve balls of missing insulation, moisture problems, dangerous wiring, and un-controlled airflow. Rest assured with the right technology and skills, troubleshooting your comfort problems with GreenHomes America will help you knock it out of the park!
Thanks,
Jason
Photo by Tyrone Turner, in this National Geographic 2009 article
We’ve provided the details on the federal home energy-efficiency tax credit a few times this year—for efficient furnaces, air-conditioners, windows, insulation, and the like. You’ve have access to the federal tax credit for existing homes for almost six years, in some form or another, including a bump up in the credit amount for two years as part of ARRA and then ratcheting back down this year.
But the time is running out. These federal credits disappear at the end of the year. To be eligible, qualified products must be “placed in service” (installed) by December 31, 2011. If you know you’re going to be doing something that qualifies, now is the time. I’m not betting that Congress will pull together and agree on much of anything, let alone pass something like an extension of this tax credit. So right now, it looks like before the end of the year, or kiss it goodbye.
Of course, if the time isn’t right for you, we always help our customers find any other incentives out there. Call us when you’re ready.
Thanks, Mike
Old light - New light
True to form as an American, my family is a hodge-podge of ancestry new and old, New Englanders that were Mayflower descendants, mid-western farmers who were horse thieves or ministers, to immigrants here for just a few generations scraping by working in mills. I don’t think they ever made it to America, or if they did the left, but somewhere on my wife’s side of the family tree are Vikings. I imagine they were probably good at plundering, lighting their way with a good oil soaked torch. It’s good to know where you come from.
In the lighting family tree, the baby of the bunch is the LED light attempting to unseat the CFL as the next best thing. I’ve mentioned some innovations with LED’s recently, Mike’s talked about Cree lighting and we know it’s important to conserve with lighting as well. But If I had to ask any of those family members from long ago if they would rather spend $1 or say $30 on a light bulb (accounting for inflation and converting it to the currency that makes sense, say Viking Pennigars) I can guess the response.
Over generations things change, for one thing, humans now tend to live past thirty. Light bulbs last a lot longer too, especially LED’s. That sure is a bonus when the fixture is way up there, and requires a ladder, maybe a really long ladder! As I think about the benefits of LED lighting, I thought it would be good to find out where it came from and how it works compared to other types of bulbs.
LED stands for Light Emitting Diode, a diode being a thing that electric current flows through. Electrons flow, photons are emitted i.e. light. They are small and efficient but expensive.
Most are familiar with Compact Fluorescent Lighting, a CFL has a phosphorus coating on the tube that lights up when the argon and mercury vapors inside get charged with electricity.
The old fashioned incandescent bulb is essentially a heating element surrounded by gas which produces light. In fact an incandescent bulb 90% of its energy is emitted as heat rather than light, not very efficient for lighting but great for heating except that for most electric heating is not very cost effective.
GE invented the first practical LED in 1962 those of a certain age will recognize them as the vibrant red of clock radios watches and pocket calculators (these things now come in smart phones almost exclusively, but that little flashing green light telling you there is a message is also a LED) They’ve gotten better since then.
So what’s good about a LED lightbulb? Longevity: some last 35,000 – 50,000 hours better than a CFL’s 7,000-10,000 hours or an incandescent’s 1000 hours or so. Very inexpensive runtimes, a draw of 10w or so, a variety of color, blending different colors manufacturers can get a light that pleases the eye. Unlike CFL’s it’s not recommended that you evacuate the room when they break, and LED’s are dimmable. Next week I will talk about a few LED’s on the market now as well as some coming out by the end of the year that promise to be even better. Much better than whale oil lamps and torches, that’s for sure. My apologies to any relatives still using those, but there is a better way.
Thanks,
Jason
image of Match and LED’s from Wikicommons
This brings back memories of the little baked cakes my sister would make. It amazed me that a little plastic toy with a light bulb inside could actually make a cake. Patience was always tried since it seemed to take forever, but I guess 15 minutes isn’t really that long though.
Surely a sign of the times, lights out for the 100 watt light bulb. In the United States, 100 watt bulbs will be the first to go by next year. So the easy bake oven gets a new retro design and a heating element like a regular oven. My guess is it’s not any more efficient, but hey it’s baking a cake! That’s important work. As matter of fact it’s a bigger baking area so I hope it’s at least better insulated.
What this really brings to mind is the importance of lighting and how we are seeing many new opportunities. CFL’s are a good option. LED’s are even better. We’ve talked about CREE lighting before. There are also LED light bulbs available, and by next year some promise a replacement for the burnt out 100watt incandescent such as Switch light bulbs. I guess we will see.
With major power outages now and then and the rising cost of everything and the increased usage of electronic gadgets, it makes sense to pay attention to electricity a little more closely. I think I might bake a cake celebrating the beginning of the end and also new beginnings.
