Green incentives in the stimulus plan. Let’s go solar… Part 2

This continues where the last post left off…

Ok, so you didn’t have a house designed to work with the site or the climate.  What do you do?

Well get somebody to analyze your house or building.   Where are you losing heat from and vice versa.  If you have more heating days then cooling, you need to find where you are losing the heat from to lower your energy costs.

Simple steps like caulking or using weather stripping helps.  Then step it up if your budget allows and replace windows or doors.  Look at the insulation in your attic and if you have any under your floors in a crawl space.  If you have a slab on grade, consider insulating the perimeter of the slab if at all possible.

Look at the insulation in your walls.  Does it have any? Remember though that it is always better if the house was built with high efficiency building components in the first place.  If you decide to refurbish your home after the fact, you need to carefully research what you put in the home.

There are plenty of businesses out there that will happily pump your wall full of insulation products.  Not all good for you.  You need to check the types of insulation and if it will off gas volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into your home for months or years after the installation.   You also need to find out if by adding the additional insulation you inadvertently cause the dew point (where condensation occurs) to fall somewhere within your wall cavity.

Huh? Why?

Well, moisture occurring in your walls helps mold thrive.  People tend to forget that they live and sleep in their homes.  If they don’t see anything, it’s not a problem.  Just because its built doesn’t mean it’s right.

Ok, that went off tangent a little, so let’s get back on track.  Button up your home (but do it right).

Consider other measures like planting deciduous trees that shade the house in the summer but allow in sunlight in the winter.   Build a trellis on the south or west sides of your home to shade it from the summer sun and reduce your cooling load.  If you are going to replace you roof because it just happens to be that time, consider using roofing materials that are lighter in color.

Then look at what you have in the house.  Replace old and inefficient appliances.  Your mental calculator is going off right now.  Well, if you consider the costs of installing a PV system, most of these efforts will costs far less and still save you money.  It’s far better to save money then to spend it if you are getting the same effort.  In today’s economy, we need all the help we can.

For the most part measures like these will help reduce the heating or cooling loads on your central air conditioner or furnace.  Compare your utility bills over a number of years to see if you have actually achieved any savings.

Now after all these efforts, if you still want to install the PV system,  you’ll find that it will probably be sized smaller than before you initiated all the other efforts.  Which in turn will costs you less.

That I guess was the whole point of this post.  Do whatever you can to make your building more efficient before throwing technology at it.  Sometimes simple measures can save you a lot of money.

This entry was posted on 23. February 2009 at 11:18 and is filed under Sustainable design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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