I just read a great q+a on the Green Home Guide about soy-based spray foam and whether it’s a good option for a heretofore uninsulated attic in a 1920s home. If you are currently investigating insulation or weatherization be sure to read the whole thing, including the comments at the end. I think it’s a [...]
Dear Mr. Energy, I want to know how to make my home Energy Star so I can get credit for my utility company. Do I get an energy audit? My house is only about ten years old. Because it’s fairly new shouldn’t my house easily qualify? –Bargain Shopping in Benson Dear Bargain, Isn’t it great [...]
A couple of months ago we audited a historic home inside the beltline in Raleigh in conjunction with Preservation NC to create a video showing the benefit of an energy audit and weatherization for historic properties. When asked to do the audit, we jumped at the chance because this is truly our passion: making older [...]
A couple of months ago I wrote that Home Performance NC was selected to do an energy audit of a historic home as part of a contest sponsored by the Raleigh Historic Districts Commission, Preservation North Carolina, Sustainable Raleigh, and us! The end result is a video targeted towards people who own historic properties. We [...]
Dear Mr. Energy, My wife and I are renovating an older home and I am wondering if there is any way to get an existing structure rated “green” or “energy efficient,” etc. LEED and Energy Star only apply to new construction, right? That doesn’t make sense to me – isn’t reusing an existing structure the [...]
Caulk Caulk Caulk Caulk. That’s the answer to one very effective way we’ve made our 100 year old rustic Carolina farmhouse more energy efficient. To weatherize our home after our disastrous 1st winter in which we heated all of lower Pittsboro, North Carolina, we caulked and caulked and caulked some more. Oh – did I [...]
This is a great little list by Peggy at Energy Circle: Ten reasons to have a home energy audit I especially like #6: 6. You will understand the interconnectedness of your house. Learn what no contractor working on your house ever told you – that every action you have ever taken has caused a reaction… somewhere in [...]
In my last post I explained what we did to initially improve our house (or rather, what we thought were improvements), and the resulting exorbitant energy bills. By adding central heat and air to a house that was essentially, a giant colander, we were wasting tons of heat and tons of money. After that first [...]
This will be the first post of several about what we’ve done to our 100-year-old Carolina farmhouse to make it more energy efficient. We’ve made some really stupid mistakes along the way, but we’ve learned from our mistakes, and trying to create a comfortable, safe and energy efficient home that was built in a different [...]