Ain't No Stopping Us Now, We're On the Move!

The Denver Post reported today that Fort Collins reduced it's green House gas emissions by 11 percent in the last five years.  I have to admit it feels pretty good right now to be the leading Home Performance Contractor in the Leading Residential Efficiency Program in the country.  This just goes to show that when you design a program based on building science and offer people practical solutions along with outcome based incentives and rebates, YOU GET RESULTS!  This is what we have believed all along.  When you deliver services that are within reach of the middle-class you get huge gains because the services are being widely used across the community.  I love to see solar panels on homes and businesses just as much as the next guy, but one set of solar panels on one roof in a sea of inefficient homes won't make much of a difference relative to the big picture.  And I have to say we owe much of this success to four groups of people, the Voters in Fort Collins who asked their utility for a Residential Efficiency Program, the people at the Utility who designed a results driven program with high accountability, the homeowners who took a leap of faith and signed up for a home energy audit, and last but definitely not least, the crews who spent the better part of the summer in 125 degree attics getting the work done.          

"127 Hours" Mountaineer Aron Ralston and This Efficient House Team Up to Save Energy!

We have just completed extensive energy-saving improvement work to Aron Ralston’s new residence in Boulder.  The beautiful historic 1,800 square foot home was built in 1890 and features four large wood framed gabled-end rooms upstairs, a large front porch with columns, and double brick walls with lathe and plaster on the main floor.  Original wood-framed single paned windows are throughout the home as well.

 

Unfortunately for Aron’s new family, the home was a freezing in winter and sweltering in the summer.  The boiler consumed nearly 500 therms of natural gas per month this winter. The bedroom and bath floors over the porch measured 38 degrees one cold morning, brrrrr.  Specific areas of concern were high energy use, uncomfortable bedrooms upstairs, and as I mentioned ice-cold floors upstairs and in the kitchen. 

 

From start to finish here’s what we did:

1.      Attic Insulation: Re-aligned existing insulation to increase its effectiveness, loose insulation taken from the top and placed beneath large fiberglass batts to eliminate air gaps between ceiling joist. Also had to jack up and brace sagging upstairs ceiling.

2.    Coffered Ceilings: Blew insulation into empty sloped ceiling cavities from attic, blocking off the bottom of each bay.

3.     Dead-End Corners: insulated by cutting access panels through lathe and plaster walls in closets.

4.    Gabled-Ends: Insulated Walls with Drill-n-Fill method, removed and re-installed original wood siding.

5.     Porch Ceiling/Bedroom Floors: Insulated w/Drill-n-Fill method, removed and re-installed historic captain’s bead ceiling.

6.     Main Floor: Sealed around windows, doors, outlets and baseboards.

7.     Basement: Insulated crawlspace, installed radon barrier, radon venting, and insulated inaccessible kitchen floor by tunneling under foundation wall.  Also hired a sub-contractor to pour a basement concrete floor.

 

Homeowner hired Home Depot to add loose-fill insulation to the attic prior to EnergySmart, but unfortunately the sub-contractors merely blew over the top of existing fiberglass batts, which had been placed perpendicular to the ceiling joist, leaving a large air gap between the joist and the ceiling, and open on either end, allowing air to freely travel between the conditioned space and the insulation.  I figured this out with an infrared camera from inside the house on a cold day, with lots of cold blue patches showing up on the camera.    

 

In addition to the work we performed, Independent Power Systems installed a 4KW solar system and a swamp cooler was installed in the attic.  Lastly, Phoenix Historic Windows will be providing a quote for historic looking thermal-pane wood-framed storm windows (double-pane, low-e, argon, weather-stripping).

 

This was a very rewarding project where we could put many of our more advanced skills to work.  The home should see a dramatic decrease in energy use as well as a dramatic increase in comfort. Aron’s family and the folks at EnergySmart were great to work with and we look forward to doing more of these old town projects in the future. 

Hydrofracking Contaminates Ground Water in Colorado and Pennsylvania

Extra Extra Read All About It!  The New York Times just sampled 200 wells in Pennsylvania and found carcinogens like Benzene and radioactivity at 10,000 times the levels considered safe by the EPA.  I hate to say I told you so. Back in 2007, I sat through a presentation in Del Norte, Colorado where ranchers from the Western Slope were going from town to town telling the story of how "hydrofracking" polluted the 3500 acre family ranch ground water supply to the point they had to abandon the land that had been in the family for over 130 years.

The rancher's wife even explained that she had been the chairperson for the Republican party in southwest Colorado and was completely black-balled when she raised her voice in opposition to what Halliburton was doing to her livelihood and way of life.  If you could have seen the "crocodile tears" running down the weathered ranchers faces as they watched a slide show punctuated by dead and dying calves poisoned by the fouled waters.

Amazingly, a handful of determined locals convinced the all republican county commissioners to issue a 6 month moratorium on drilling and the Rio Grande National Forest temporarily withdrew the 144,000 acre lease, which was just long enough to send the prospectors packing.  Score one for the right-wing-rancher-left-wing-liberal coalition.  Just goes to show you how hard it is to wash down profits with poisoned water.

And they say natural gas is cheap, sure it is, if you don't own the land where they do the drilling or live downstream from the contamination. To learn more about conserving natural gas in your daily life, go to www.thisefficienthouse.com to learn more.

 Here's the link to the NYTIMES article:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html?src=me&ref=homepage

 The attached pictures are of the watershed in Del Norte where the auction for leases was to happen.

Global Weirding

Being my first year in Colorado, I have been told this winter has been quite mild.  However, as we near spring, freezing temperatures surround us, while back home the east is having historic snowstorms.  Its winters like these that make people believe global warming is a hoax. They ask themselves, how can the globe be warming when we are experiencing this kind of weather?  Can people take global warming seriously with weather like this?

Thomas L. Friedman an internationally renowned author, reporter, and columnist, challenges us by asking, is “global warming”, or “climate change” really the right expression to explain what is happening?   Instead he tells us to use the term “global weirding”, because that’s what happens.  Over the years we have been experiencing more violent storms, more intense floods, longer droughts, the hot climates getting hotter, and the wet climates getting wetter. 

The NOAA report shows 2010 tied with 2005 as the hottest year on record, this year’s past events, such as the Pakistan floods affecting 14 million people, and Russia’s worst drought in 130 years helps persuade us that the climate among the globe is getting “weird”.  It’s not the fact that it’s just weird; it’s the fact that our extremes are becoming more extreme and abnormal.  If these extremes are the consequences of the rise in average global temperatures, how much more abnormal should we expect these events to get, and how concerned should we be?  On the other hand, it’s not only weather events that are acting “weird”; we are seeing unusual trends in the animal kingdom.  Species are changing range and their timing of migrations has been altered in the past years. 

So ask yourself, is global warming the right word?  How about Climate Change, or is climate change just too bland and less freighting then “global weirding”?  What is the right phrase to describe what is going on with our climate?

Wall Street Journal: "US Sees Thin Cushion of Coal" and Rising Prices!

U.S. Foresees a Thinner Cushion of Coal

Well it looks like once again conventional wisdom turns out to be completely wrong. US coal reserves, which were originally estimated 100 years ago, thought to be a 240 year supply of coal, were widely "over overconfident". The problem turns out to be two fold. First, we have used the coal at a much faster rate than ever predicted. For example "Some 1.2 million short tons leave the Powder River Basin field in Wyoming daily, a river of coal filling more than 75 trains of 125 to 150 cars each." Secondly, according to the Wall Street Journal article by Rebecca Smith, the Powder River play, where 20% of the US coal production occurs, has no more than a 5 to 6 year supply that can extracted at a profit at today's prices.

"We really can't say we're the Saudi Arabia of coal anymore," says Brenda Pierce, head of the USGS team that conducted the study.

The article goes on to state that world wide estimates for proven coal reserves were downgraded by over half since 1980.  A more recent WSJ article explains that China has just become a "net importer" of coal and that Powder River Basin will be sending coal by train to ports on the west coast for export to China.

Congratulate Ken Salazar for Doing the Right Thing!

We just want to acknowledge the wise decision by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to maintain the moratorium on new oil and gas drilling off the coast of Florida and on the East Coast from Maine to Florida.  Born and raised myself in Northern Virginia I spent many a summer at my aunts beach house on the Outer Banks. We would caravan with friends and family to just about every beach and campground from Cape Henlopen, Delaware to the Florida Keys.  The thought of watching those countless estuaries destroyed like those on the Gulf Coast was almost unbearable.  It looks like don't have to worry, for now anyway. If only there was a public bus system, like the one in Mexico, that could take you from one beach town to another for 20 pesos.  

51 Homes Retrofit in the 4th Quarter of 2010!

'This Efficient House' crews completed 51 projects in the last three months of 2010.  The majority of these were in the Fort Collins area, as this program has the highest conversion rate from home energy audit to improvement.  Thanks to all the folks who signed up for work last year.  We are thankful for all the wonderful feedback.  What we are hearing time and time again are things like, "finally, after 20 years of living in this house, it's warm" and "your crews were very friendly and knowledgeable" and "we want to thank you for your attention to detail and thorough clean up".  My personal favorite was from customers of ours who live in a historic farm house that said, "our propane bill has gone from $600 a month to just over $200".

It looks like we are saving our customers about 200 therms per heating season which corresponds to a reduction in green house gas emissions of roughly one ton per year.  We are proud of this accomplishment.  I guess a warm and cozy house doesn't hurt either.