My new direction: renewable energy
Thought I'd share a few reflections on CU's Sustainable Practices program from my personal perspective.
Long story short, my first class -- a two-day "Energy Solutions for Existing Homes," this past Aug. 14-15 -- was a great way to start.
First, I'm a homeowner who wants to use all resources wisely, particularly the costly ones such as energy that I need to run my home. You know the drill: fossil fuels are finite, carbon-emitting and the cause of global conflicts. And as a journalist/writer, I don't have money to burn heating or cooling the great outdoors -- it's costly enough just making the "building envelope" that is my active living space into a comfortable shelter. Conserve energy, save money, help stabilize the environment -- what's not to love?
As "we" -- you and me, our country, global citizens -- seek the right mix of energy sources, the biggest single act we can undertake to reduce demand on fossil fuels and lower our carbon footprint is energy efficiency at home. That fact comes from many sources and there's no need to justify it or parse it here. And energy efficiency at home has the best return-on-investment of many things one can do.
Professionally, as a journalist, I'm transitioning into the RE (renewable energy) and EE (energy efficiency) fields, after many years covering public affairs and technical areas such as wireless technology and drinking water science, as well as cultural heritage. Making my home more energy efficient and, say, adding a solar PV array is my plan for getting familiar with the concepts and technologies on the market.
In pursuing my own RE and EE profile, I plan to take some of the uncertainties out of my future access to and cost of energy -- certainly one of life's big expenses apart from health care and carousing on Saturday nights. That should make me less dependent on forces I cannot control. When you multiply the possibilities in energy savings at my home by the 130 million existing homes in the USA, you begin to see how our democracy could be preserved, oil demand that supports petro-dictatorships could be reduced and sustainable practices become a way of life.
The cost of the "Energy Solutions for Existing Homes" class ($330) should be recouped over the coming year in savings on my utility bill -- say, $25/month. That's predicated on a much tighter home, active ventilation and the fact that my cat hasn't (yet) figured out how to jack up the thermostat when I'm out. And I can share this knowledge with neighbors and friends, spreading the gospel and the savings.
In the class, instructor Bill Lucas -- energetic, knowledgeable and passionate -- ran us through a home energy audit the way his company, GB3 Energy Solutions, would do it in intensive style. Without spending money on an audit ($125 for a subsidized audit by Xcel, $425 for a comprehensive audit by your friends at GB3), however, Lucas pointed out many basic steps that homeowners can take to ensure energy efficiency.
"Seal it tight, ventilate right" is the mantra. Even a tightly sealed home is rarely more than, say, 75% airtight. But for air quality and health reasons, you'll want to actively ventilate the house so that its total volume of air gets turned over several times per day. The trick is to control that ventilation rate so that warm or cool air, depending on the season, is exchanged with maximum efficiency -- not too fast (wasted energy) and not too slow (poor indoor air quality).
Briefly, here are a few highlights you might want to consider:
Begin in the attic and ensure that where the walls meet the roof, there's little or no airflow. Use caulking for 1/4-inch gaps, foam for larger gaps and rolled strips of insulation in plastic bags to address these areas. Dirty insulation and spiders who prey on insect traffic are the signs you've got leaks.
Seal all the "penetrations" too, where ceiling appliances allow air flow out of the building envelope. Make sure that light fixtures and such are rated "IC," for safe insulation contact. Make sure the attic space is ventilated to some degree so that that attic air isn't radically hotter or colder than the air inside the envelope. Blow a foot to 18 inches of cellulose insulation evenly across the floor of the attic. R-38 is code, R-50 is recommended. Hit every door and window that needs it with weather stripping. Fix any holes in your home's drywall, seal inside light switches and outlets. Use foil tape on holes in your heating ducts and use mastic goop to seal duct joints. Insulate the first five feet of pipe coming out of your hot water heater. Crawl spaces under the home must be treated as well to control airflow, unwanted moisture and any possibility of mold development. Buy those dang carbon monoxide detectors you've sworn you were going to get; put one outside the furnace room and others by bedrooms. Get the furnace serviced before cool weather sets in.
Okay, there's just a few thoughts in a laundry list of techniques, materials and targets presented in this class that will make your home more energy efficient. (Two more: central AC and your clothes dryer are the two biggest carbon emitters. Use them sparingly.) This is mundane, un-sexy stuff that carries the biggest payoff, folks. Most of it you can do yourself, though several independent sources assure me that there's little savings in doing your own attic insulation.
The bottomline here is that once you've taken this "Energy Solutions" class, you realize that your home is a creature that lives and breathes -- it may be wheezy and leaky, it could be excessively huffing and puffing. And it's costing you money and possibly good health to ignore it.
While there was a wee bit of kumbaya over larger ideas such as global climate change as this two-day course got underway that didn't need rehashing, Bill Lucas really gave us the benefit of his passion and knowledge and we applied it to a volunteer's house in Boulder one afternoon. We were all clucking like experts over the home's lack of attic insulation, etc., after just one day in class.
My fellow students all had valuable perspectives and backgrounds to contribute, so there was solid networking and camaraderie to boot.
I'm back for "Grid-tied Solar Photovoltaics" on Sept. 11-13 with Namaste Solar Electric. Can't wait. Meanwhile, I'm hitting the Colorado Renewable Energy Society's conference on Aug. 28-30 in Golden, capped off by a Bonnie Raitt/Taj Mahal concert at Red Rocks. Talk about renewable energy...
Long story short, my first class -- a two-day "Energy Solutions for Existing Homes," this past Aug. 14-15 -- was a great way to start.
First, I'm a homeowner who wants to use all resources wisely, particularly the costly ones such as energy that I need to run my home. You know the drill: fossil fuels are finite, carbon-emitting and the cause of global conflicts. And as a journalist/writer, I don't have money to burn heating or cooling the great outdoors -- it's costly enough just making the "building envelope" that is my active living space into a comfortable shelter. Conserve energy, save money, help stabilize the environment -- what's not to love?
As "we" -- you and me, our country, global citizens -- seek the right mix of energy sources, the biggest single act we can undertake to reduce demand on fossil fuels and lower our carbon footprint is energy efficiency at home. That fact comes from many sources and there's no need to justify it or parse it here. And energy efficiency at home has the best return-on-investment of many things one can do.
Professionally, as a journalist, I'm transitioning into the RE (renewable energy) and EE (energy efficiency) fields, after many years covering public affairs and technical areas such as wireless technology and drinking water science, as well as cultural heritage. Making my home more energy efficient and, say, adding a solar PV array is my plan for getting familiar with the concepts and technologies on the market.
In pursuing my own RE and EE profile, I plan to take some of the uncertainties out of my future access to and cost of energy -- certainly one of life's big expenses apart from health care and carousing on Saturday nights. That should make me less dependent on forces I cannot control. When you multiply the possibilities in energy savings at my home by the 130 million existing homes in the USA, you begin to see how our democracy could be preserved, oil demand that supports petro-dictatorships could be reduced and sustainable practices become a way of life.
The cost of the "Energy Solutions for Existing Homes" class ($330) should be recouped over the coming year in savings on my utility bill -- say, $25/month. That's predicated on a much tighter home, active ventilation and the fact that my cat hasn't (yet) figured out how to jack up the thermostat when I'm out. And I can share this knowledge with neighbors and friends, spreading the gospel and the savings.
In the class, instructor Bill Lucas -- energetic, knowledgeable and passionate -- ran us through a home energy audit the way his company, GB3 Energy Solutions, would do it in intensive style. Without spending money on an audit ($125 for a subsidized audit by Xcel, $425 for a comprehensive audit by your friends at GB3), however, Lucas pointed out many basic steps that homeowners can take to ensure energy efficiency.
"Seal it tight, ventilate right" is the mantra. Even a tightly sealed home is rarely more than, say, 75% airtight. But for air quality and health reasons, you'll want to actively ventilate the house so that its total volume of air gets turned over several times per day. The trick is to control that ventilation rate so that warm or cool air, depending on the season, is exchanged with maximum efficiency -- not too fast (wasted energy) and not too slow (poor indoor air quality).
Briefly, here are a few highlights you might want to consider:
Begin in the attic and ensure that where the walls meet the roof, there's little or no airflow. Use caulking for 1/4-inch gaps, foam for larger gaps and rolled strips of insulation in plastic bags to address these areas. Dirty insulation and spiders who prey on insect traffic are the signs you've got leaks.
Seal all the "penetrations" too, where ceiling appliances allow air flow out of the building envelope. Make sure that light fixtures and such are rated "IC," for safe insulation contact. Make sure the attic space is ventilated to some degree so that that attic air isn't radically hotter or colder than the air inside the envelope. Blow a foot to 18 inches of cellulose insulation evenly across the floor of the attic. R-38 is code, R-50 is recommended. Hit every door and window that needs it with weather stripping. Fix any holes in your home's drywall, seal inside light switches and outlets. Use foil tape on holes in your heating ducts and use mastic goop to seal duct joints. Insulate the first five feet of pipe coming out of your hot water heater. Crawl spaces under the home must be treated as well to control airflow, unwanted moisture and any possibility of mold development. Buy those dang carbon monoxide detectors you've sworn you were going to get; put one outside the furnace room and others by bedrooms. Get the furnace serviced before cool weather sets in.
Okay, there's just a few thoughts in a laundry list of techniques, materials and targets presented in this class that will make your home more energy efficient. (Two more: central AC and your clothes dryer are the two biggest carbon emitters. Use them sparingly.) This is mundane, un-sexy stuff that carries the biggest payoff, folks. Most of it you can do yourself, though several independent sources assure me that there's little savings in doing your own attic insulation.
The bottomline here is that once you've taken this "Energy Solutions" class, you realize that your home is a creature that lives and breathes -- it may be wheezy and leaky, it could be excessively huffing and puffing. And it's costing you money and possibly good health to ignore it.
While there was a wee bit of kumbaya over larger ideas such as global climate change as this two-day course got underway that didn't need rehashing, Bill Lucas really gave us the benefit of his passion and knowledge and we applied it to a volunteer's house in Boulder one afternoon. We were all clucking like experts over the home's lack of attic insulation, etc., after just one day in class.
My fellow students all had valuable perspectives and backgrounds to contribute, so there was solid networking and camaraderie to boot.
I'm back for "Grid-tied Solar Photovoltaics" on Sept. 11-13 with Namaste Solar Electric. Can't wait. Meanwhile, I'm hitting the Colorado Renewable Energy Society's conference on Aug. 28-30 in Golden, capped off by a Bonnie Raitt/Taj Mahal concert at Red Rocks. Talk about renewable energy...
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