Conservation
"Consumers don't want to buy electricity or fuel.
They want warm showers and cold beer !"
Amory
and L. Hunter Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
If you are upgrading your home or
business,
plan to make your house less leaky FIRST with a professional
energy audit so that you can save energy and money by buying (and
fueling!) a smaller solar system, furnace, water heater or heat
pump). Treat your house as a
whole system where each component affects the other areas for
comfort health and savings.
Conservation
is a kind of "Nega-Watt"
that puts health, comfort and wealth BACK into YOUR life with the watt never spent for the same comfort.
Air
leaks and infiltration (convection) can account for over a third of
your
heating and
cooling losses and unhealthy air. Window glass (conduction) only
accounts for one fifth.
Conservation does NOT mean pain.
 Conservation
by sweater and frozen toes is not necessary.
Those who have not yet
insulated and air sealed their home may find bundling up with three
dogs at night an effective strategy to save money.
However, you are wiser than that and are planning to or already have
sealed air leaks in and
insulated your attic and crawl space/basement.
The most
cost-effective way to reduce the bootprint of our energy usage
on
your wallet and our planet is to never
use that energy in the first
place!
Conservation DOES mean more efficiency and
pleasure/ $
Sealing
your
basement/crawl space and attic can also reduce
or
eliminate:
- outside
noises,
- outside
dust,
- pollen
- mice,
- snakes,
- crickets
- spiders
- roaches
(caulk those baseboards!)
- allergies
and illness from the moisture that leads to mold
and
mildew.
Remember
that a common myth is that "houses must breathe".
Houses
must stay DRY. You do the breathing.
Commonwealth Solar provides the service
of
sealing your basement/crawl
space after a proper audit.
Conservation DOES mean more life, liberty and
the pursuit of
happiness.
An insulated crawl space will maintain your internal temperature longer
and prevent pipe freezing during power outages becauses of natural
geothermal heat from the core of the earth.
Proper sealing of
your basement and crawl space after a thorough energy audit
can also reduce or eliminate the infiltration of radon.
Radon is a
radioactive gas produced by the granite typically under your house that
is thought by many studies to be the leading cause of lung cancer after
smoke inhalation.
End Cold Toes and sweaty arm pits
Tired
of
paying hundreds of dollars to "heat" or "cool" your house and then
STILL be uncomfortable?
Its all about managing the energy you
already have whether
that's your furnace, heat pump, the geothermal ground energy or the
sun's heat landing on your house and coming
in the windows!
The most cost-effective order of
action to greater comfort and health, less
critters, less noise
and less cancer-causing radon gas is ...
- Before
rushing off in the wrong
direction, get an energy audit.
Get the road map to the most cost effective path to health, wealth and
comfort.
Commonwealth Solar provides
energy audits.
- First, airseal
and insulate
your attic.
- Then Second,
airseal and Insulate your crawlspace/basement.
- Third
add weatherstripping,
- interior
storm windows, (especially if you have high winds!)
- cellular
shades (both
winter and summer) and
- exterior Shade Cloth
shading (summer).
- Only
FINALLY
THEN pay many times more to replace windows.
As a full service renewable and
efficiencies energy contractor
Commonwealth Solar performs:
- Professional Energy Audits (link)
- Airsealing and
- Blown cellulose Insulation for attics, basements/crawl
spaces, walls, (link)
- Installation of appropriate weatherstripping
- Construction and installation of custom storm windows
- Installation of custom airsealing Cellular Shades (link)
- Installation of custom Shade Cloth (link)
More
On why
windows
are not the first most
cost effective place
to invest your conservation money.
Why Energy Audits Come FIRST
Your Money Up A Proverbial (actual) "SmokeStack"
Due to something called the "Stack Effect", an air leak in
your attic or basement will literally turn your house into a kind of
"smokestack" where the money you paid to heat (or cool) the house
literally goes right out the roof.
In a smokestack, the heat causes the air to come in the most
at the bottom and exit the most at the top, not in the middle where the
windows are. The windows are only more noticeable especially with high
winds.
You can feel the outside replacement air (along with moisture,
insects, dust and pollen) coming in at the baseboards,
lower electrical outlets, under the doors and lower window sashes and
of course through the floor if you have a crawlspace or basement.
More On
"Stack Effect"
Catch The Energy Thieves
You can find the leaks
several ways:
- Feel. You can wet
your hand and feel where the air comes
IN at the
lower part of the floor or house. You could also grab a bit of cobwebs
from an abandoned spider web and hold it still near a suspected leak
and see if it moves.
A common leak point is the access
hatch or door to the attic, edges of vents in ceilings and
inside the walls where pipes and wires penetrate
the top of the wall into the attic (check around light switches,
outlets etc.).
When checking for ceiling leaks, use the smoke stick since the
air leaving will not be felt on your hand. This is a more difficult
area to detect leaks. A professional energy auditor uses a blower door to create a calibrated vacuum in the house and so can feel the air leak coming in the ceiling during the audit
- Spiders. Spiders
like to eat flying insects which means
they put
their webs where the air flows by. So a leaky ceiling can often be
identified by a plethora of spider webs, especially in
 corners! You can
check this by taking something that makes a smoke, such as incense
(though there are less smelly sources) and watch if the smoke bunches
up at the ceiling or disappears into a crack. These cracks can be
hairline (especially in 100+ year old plaster) and not noticed until
you are within inches of them.
- Crickets. Crickets
need a lot of water and that tells you
that there
is a leak and/or a lot of moisture is coming into your house through
the exposed ground under the house. This can exacerbate mold and mildew
and the health effects from that.
And finally the BEST way:
- GET A PROFFESSIONAL ENERGY
AUDIT
.
A professional energy audit treats your entire house as a whole
system of energy management and applies knowledge to use specialized
tools such as an "Blower
Door" to test the actual AMOUNT of air loss in a building's shell and
ductwork. Energy Auditors also know where your energy thieves often
hide from immediate view!
Proof Of Performance ...
If the same team performs the energy
sealing as did the energy audit you can have another audit after the
work is done to measure the effectiveness of the effort.
A professional energy audit is a bit like hiring a detective. But
instead of finding people who have robbed you of life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness by taking your wallet or life ... the Energy Audit
detective seeks to find those air leaks often hidden behind walls and
outlets, that take your life's savings, freedom to go on vacation or go
back to college, and your pursuit of warm toes and ears.
Be careful of "free" energy
audits as the cost is paid by someone who must sell something to
sustain the service!
What are they selling to pay for that "free" energy detective?
So once the energy detective has found your health, comfort and money
robbers, the same staff can then seal the leaks and apply insulation
that WORKS.
As a full service renewable and
efficiencies energy contractor
Commonwealth Solar provides:
- Professional Energy Audits (link)
- Airsealing and
- Blown cellulose Insulation for attics, basements/crawl
spaces, walls, (link)
- Install appropriate weatherstripping
- Make and install custom storm windows
- Install custom airsealing Cellular Shades (link)
- Install custom Shade Cloth (link)
Our goal as energy advisor is to
develop a roadmap to the most cost-effective ways to meet your goals
and generally to be comfortable and healthy as you save energy and regain your freedom from high energy prices and insecurity.
If you have
any
further questions, please email and ask so that we know what we need to
add to this appendix !
Contact via email
Note: Last Update 06/04/2021
CommonWealth Solar, LLC
12433 Autumn Sun Lane • Ashland VA,
23005
• (804) 216 5371
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