Spring is here, and Ms. Green’s green thumbs are itching! The right one itches because it’s time to garden, and the left one is itching because it’s the perfect time to think about saving money by saving energy. Have you seen that billboard on 15-501 heading north to Chapel Hill? The one with the sand [...]
The 2012 Ms. Green Energy Quiz – Do you know your energy efficiency facts? Readers, Ms. Green feels like she’s always hammering you over the head with the same basic information about energy efficiency, and yet she is worried that while many of you nod your heads when reading her informed and charming responses to [...]
Dear Mr. Energy, You give a lot of advice for homeowners who want to save energy and money on utility bills, but as a renter, what can I tell my landlord? My bills are really, really high and I want to find a way to convince my landlord that energy efficiency improvements won’t only benefit [...]
More than cutting down on your meat consumption, more than any re-use or reduction of various products, more than recycling, composting, or growing your own organic produce, more than driving a hybrid vehicle, and more than saving the rain forests! Seriously. Not that the previously mentioned efforts are bad things to do. Au contraire. We [...]
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, You are always going on about sealing this, sealing that. Seal your ducts! Seal your attic! Seal your escutcheons (whatever those are)! Is it possible to seal too much? –Wondering in Wendell Dear Wondering, The answer to your question is no, it is not possible to seal too much. But it is [...]
I wish I could tell you that Cash for Caulkers was going to be retroactive from the beginning of this year, or even last year. I wish that the plan was a little further along in the process and we knew more details. This would help homeowners make decisions about what they can do now, [...]
Here is the link to the fact sheet presented by the White House on Cash for Caulkers. Finally! We’ve been waiting for this for a while. We are still interested to find out exactly how this will all go down, but the basics of the program (cut and pasted directly from the fact sheet) seem [...]
Up until now we’ve been telling you that an energy audit and subsequent weatherization will pay for itself in 2-3 years. We have years of data from Energy Star and the Low Income Weatherization program to back this up. But now it’s time to give you real examples of ways that our clients have saved [...]
Check it out: When a home energy audit pays Thank you. Thank you very much. We do have a slight disagreement with the article, or maybe with Cash for Caulkers. It’s hard to tell where this is coming from. ”This” being the amount of money they’re budgeting for weatherization retrofits: …getting all that work done [...]