In the early days of manned space flight they had a major problem of how to enable astronauts to write on paper in a zero gravity environment. NASA spent millions and came up with the ball point pen.
The Russians gave their cosmonauts pencils.
If you have money to spare on upgrading your house there’s no shortage of contractors, builders or remodelers who will gladly spend it for you. Nine times out of ten they make more money on the project than you’ll ever get back in lower utility bills.
The one question you need to ask is, “What’s the payback?” If you spend $10,000 more on a hybrid car than a standard model, and it saves you $1000 a year in gas, the payback is 10 years.
Payback is the return on your investment. If you invest $10,000 in stocks and they return $500 a year that’s a 5% return, about average. The $10,000 investment in the hybrid equals a 10% return, but you don’t actually start making money on the hybrid deal for ten years.
Contractors will tell you about energy efficient metal roofing, insulated siding, double pane low-e windows and high efficiency air conditioning. Most of these are a good idea if you’re building a new house, but they are much harder to justify for an existing home. Unless you need a new roof, AC unit or siding anyway, in which case you have only to justify the added cost of the high efficiency choice and not the cost of the entire project itself.
Contractors will make you feel guilty about your “carbon footprint,” dazzle you with numbers and percentages; the whole nine yards. They’ll tell you about tax rebates and utility company rebates when you install high efficiency products. Don’t get sucked into that trap. Rebates only hoodwink you into believing it really is a good deal. It probably isn’t.
Major changes to an existing home are incredibly expensive for what they save in energy. Here’s a rough estimate of payback for different projects:
PAYBACK IN YEARS – PROJECT
10 – double paned windows
15 – siding
12 – roofing
8 – high efficiency air conditioning
If you have just a little money and you want to spend it the most efficiently, add insulation to your attic. Most areas of the continental U.S. need about R-30 (roughly 10 inches of insulation). You can add fiberglass batt insulation yourself, or have a contractor blow it in for you. It will cost roughly $1000 for a modest-sized home. If you have 6 inches in the attic right now, add six more, and you’ll recover that $1000 within the first year on your lower heating and cooling bills. That’s a 100% return on your investment.
The further north you get, the closer you need to get to R-50 in the attic. Heat rises, and it will go right through the roof unless you slow it down with insulation.
If you have R-11 in the exterior walls of your 3×4 stud wood framed house, you’re already stopping ninety percent of the heat. “Energy efficient” siding might stop 93% of the energy flow, which is a nominal gain for the cost.
Triple pane windows are a total waste of money. Venetian blinds in a window with the blades tilted up or down 45 degrees gives a double pane window about the same R-value as a triple pane window. Likewise, blinds at 45 degrees give a single pane widow the same R-value as a double pane window. (The higher the R-value the less heat flows through a surface.)
NASA would have you throw all your money away on high tech windows, elaborate roofing systems, and super efficient AC units.
Russians know how to deal with the cold – add an extra layer of long johns.
And Cajuns know how to deal with the heat – camp out under a ceiling fan and don’t be bashful about sweating a little. Evaporative cooling is the most efficient technology of them all.
THINK before you waste your good money on useless projects. Get opinions from several contractors. Do your own research on the web. Ask tough questions of the contractors, and they will be less inclined to mislead you. Be a good customer!
