Rocket Scientist

Nearly four months after Hurricane Ike wandered through this area knocking over fences, ripping of gutters and tearing roofs (including mine) to shreds, our lovely insurance agency finally coughed up money, which, of course, had to go through our mortgage company so they could dole it in dibs and dabs so, finally, I could get the new roof everyone wants me to have.  Damn, I so love insurance companies.  Not.

Them: I just set up a new metal roof using enameled metal that looks like tile.  It’s very cool [reading cutting edge] but a little pricy.
Me: I prefer anodized metal so I can get the corrosion resistance but still have the metallic sheen.
Them: Uh, right.

They mentioned solar shingles which I did research on about four years ago and then we started talking about steps one can take to reduce energy usage.  They said one can start changing to compact fluorescents and we were able to show the difference betweemcompact fluorescents and LED bulbs (which, although we’d replaced all the incandescents with CFLs, we have found a source for some LED bulbs too now and are moving in that direction).  So, we ended up telling them the best place to find energy efficient light bulbs.

So, yes, I’m going to talk about energy efficiency again, today.  I could tell you it was strictly for global warming, which, in my opinion, is a serious concern and well worth making an effort to address, but not everyone is willing to accept the scientific consensus.  I, however, do.  I might add that, while our local oil companies, particularly Exxon, are still refusing to acknowledge the danger and still pay millions to keep up the “doubts” prevalent in the public’s eye, oil producing nations in the middle east are investing millions, even billions,  into green technologies and new research for renewable energy resources.  I applaud that thinking but it makes me a little worried.  I, for one, would like to cut our dependence on outside nations for energy.  Don’t you agree?

But, that’s still a nationwide issue.  There’s another one, that I find to be compelling: it saves money.  Where I live, air conditioning throughout eight months of the year is quite costly, not just because of the temperature but because of the humidity.  Our closed European type housing (which is more practical for a colder climate) makes forgoing air conditioning desperately uncomfortable and downright dangerous for the potential for mold.  So that means, my house, at 2800 square feet, had electric bills ~700+ dollars a month in the summer (which was only ~100 dollars less than when I lived in a rental house at 1/3 the size year round - an electric heat pump appears to be less than effective in this climate).  We changed to Green Mountain energy (which uses 100% renewable sources), but also changed to programmable thermostats, added solar screens for two of our worst windows, and changed out all the light bulbs in my house with high efficiency ones.  These small changes save us between $100-200 dollars a month during the summer.  That means, for the cost we invested last year to do these, we paid them all off in two months.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a heck of a good reason to make things more efficient (and we’ll be doing more work on windows this year).  Next house, we’ll be picking something built smarter or building it ourselves.

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