Posts from — November 2009

I just ran across this great little podcast on The Brian Lehrer Show, which features David Leonhardt, New York Times economics columnist and staff writer for the magazine. The podcast covers the idea of “Cash for Caulkers” – which is an economic stimulus idea for people to weatherize their homes. The first 10 minutes or so (minus a little at the beginning w/the host) are on this proposed program.

Here’s the direct link.

In case you can’t listen, or my link doesn’t work, here’s what he says:

• Cash for Caulkers (also called HOMESTAR, although this isn’t referenced in the podcast) is a program supported by former president Clinton, who is proposing it to President Obama as a way to stimulate the economy.
• The great thing about this idea is that it will stimulate the economy, create jobs, and will have long-term benefits to the homeowners. By having an audit and weatherizing their homes, people will reap $ benefits for years to come.
• But weatherization is more complicated than you’d think. Mr. Leonhardt just had an audit on his house and he’s not sure exactly what he’ll do. His audit suggested weatherization that will have a 10-year pay-out, and he is not sure he’ll be in his home 10 years. He’s also not sure that the future buyer will value a weatherized home, so he may not get the $ back when he sells, either.
• He suggests that the cost of weatherization be added to the property tax bill and be billed to the homeowner over time. This way the cost of the energy upgrades will convey with the house, instead of being all on the homeowner who originally did the work. The current homeowner is splitting the cost with the future homeowner.
• Cash for Caulkers would create incentives for large box stores (like Home Depot and Lowe’s) to get involved with the project.
• Weatherization is “the perfect kind of stimulus,” although complicated. It needs to be simplified for homeowners.
• The Obama campaign promised a lot of green jobs, but once everyone got to Washington they found that it’s not a simple matter of flipping the switch from lost jobs to green jobs – there aren’t as many opportunities out there as they thought.  The stimulus package didn’t create as many green jobs as were promised. Something else needs to happen (like the Cash for Caulkers idea) if we want to create green jobs. The stimulus funds sent to states prevented a lot of lay-offs (like teachers and police officers), which was definitely a stimulus to the economy, but not the stimulus that they’d originally discussed. Leonhardt feels that if they’d put the money towards “caulkers” instead of teachers and police officers this would’ve been a mistake on many levels, but they could’ve done more to support those original goals.

Here at Home Performance NC we obviously think this is potentially a wonderful idea. It will directly impact our company if this kind of thing comes to pass – but what kind of impact has yet to be seen. If there isn’t a clear call for full-scale energy audits by a qualified professional as part of this program, it could be disastrous for us. You’d think that because there is an industry complete with national guidelines and training and tests and independent verifiers in place that a national program like this would recognize this and take advantage of this. On the other hand, if all control is given to Lowe’s and Home Depot – I don’t know what will happen. Will Lowe’s and HD show some of their employees how to do a blower door test in a 2-day training and send them on out? Will they have a simple checklist and stick to that, instead of evaluating each home separately, as professional auditors do?

Or will there be acknowledgement that trained professionals already exist?  And the best way this whole thing can go down is to take advantage of the HERS raters and BPI analysts – stimulate their companies so they can expand and hire people to do weatherization in the most effective way possible?

Hopefully it’s the latter. It only makes sense. Because if the audit and weatherization is tied to the property tax bill there needs to be some assurance that the work was done properly. I certainly wouldn’t want to buy a house that any random handyman had weatherized…especially if I was still paying for the repairs the previous homeowner had arranged.

Let’s hope that if this program comes to pass they’ll get it right.

For more details about the program, please see Leonhardt’s columns in the NYTimes, here, and here.

Ed Begley is an actor-turned-green-activist whose reality TV show based on environmentalism is going to be out soon, so he’s doing a bunch of press appearances, book promotions,  talks, and various other attention-getting activities.

Last week or so he spoke at his alma mater, Los Angeles Valley College, about his work as an environmentalist. The moderator asked him what would be the one thing he would do for people if he had a magic wand, and here’s what he said:

“A home energy audit for every home in America that wanted it,” Begley replied. “Today’s home energy audit with the blower door, with duct blasting; with an infrared camera so you can really look and see.”

That’s right, Mr. Begley. We think so too.

A while ago I stumbled upon wordle.net, which is a nifty little tool for making tag clouds. You can type in your own words or you can put in a blog’s rss feed, which is what I did for this blog. You can see the results from the feed – words with the greatest frequency come up largest – energy, house, and audit came up the most often, obviously, but then there are words like “interconnectedness,” “tight,” and “Peggy.” Um, Peggy? When did I mention someone named Peggy?

Anyway, I like the way it turned out. I’ll do it again in a couple of months to see if it looks any different. But I think it pretty much sums up what we’re all about here at Home Performance NC – except for Peggy.

In a previous blog post I wrote an explanation of how replacing your windows was not the smartest way to spend your energy efficiency budget. Green Building Advisor, a wonderful, comprehensive website on all things green-building related, has published an article that backs me up on it.

Here’s what they say:

Window replacement isn’t the best place to start in energy upgrades. When planning energy improvements to an existing house, replacing windows should show up toward the bottom of the list. It almost always makes sense to improve an existing home’s air tightness and add insulation to the attic and basement. Replacing an old furnace or refrigerator can also be cost-effective. But if the windows work well, it’s usually best to put replacing windows lower on the list. In a cold climate, the best way to improve single-glazed windows is to install exterior storm windows with low-e glass.

Now, note that they don’t say that windows don’t matter at all. In new construction it’s very important to consider types of windows as well as installation methods for energy efficiency. But they are saying that replacing existing windows, even replacing single-pane windows with double, low-e windows, does not pay off in the long run. There are better ways to spend your money.