A Little Bit of Good News About a Lot of Snow

By now most of us are channeling our way through mountains of snow following snowmageddon (I’m taking a short break to warm my frozen hands after shoveling for two hours this morning). Building up so much snow against our bungalow caused me to return to a question I have every time we get dumped on like this by Mother Nature: do the heavy banks of snow against a house's foundation act as a kind of insulation, helping to retain heat? Or does the snow act more like ice in a cooler, chilling the house?



I'm inclined to believe the snow insulates more than it chills. It's tough to find a very scientific answer to my question, but these two blog write-ups on the subject seem logical enough: "Using Snow to Insulate Your House" at self-reliance-works.com and "It's cold! What difference does snow make?" from scienceandsarcasm.com. The conclusion is that snow does have an insulating quality, though I would suspect it's minimal -- foundation snow berms and a little roof top snow help, perhaps, but unless our homes are totally buried they're not insulated all that much.

That said, I haven't found a source yet that says snow chills a house. So keep shoveling! There's nowhere else for this much snow to go anyway, other than against our homes. Hopefully it's helping to keep our houses a tiny bit more insulated so that when we return inside from shoveling, we're a little warmer.

Hom Energy Inspection: Part Three

As you may recall from previous Blue Bungalow blog posts, we had a home energy inspection in late 2010, conducted by Tim Guillama of Beyond Energy, LLC. A house is inspected to determine how much conditioned air is typically cycled through in an hour. A draftier home will have a higher "air change rate" than a well-sealed home and, thus, higher heating and cooling bills. When our home was inspected this December, Tim determined that our air change rate was about 13.8 per hour.

Following the inspection, Tim suggested that we have our house and attic insulated. We couldn't afford to do it all at once, so we decided to start by sealing and insulating our attic and basement. We also had our old house exhaust fan replaced with a more energy efficient model. After we had this work done by Insulation Technologies in Milwaukee, Tim returned to our house and again conducted his blower door test to determine the air change rate. It improved from 13.8 changes per hour to about 10.

Our latest WE bill arrived one day after Tim's second inspection, on Tuesday, Jan. 12. The bad news is that gas prices are on the rise again, and this was reflected in our bill. The good news is that the amount of therms we used last month went down from last year, from 761 to 665 (the average temp was one degree warmer this year, which may account slightly for the decrease in therm usage – it went from 23 degrees F last year to 24 this year).

I'm also pleased that our overall energy usage is much lower than average, as evidenced by the following graphic provided by WE:



All in all I'm very happy that we're bringing our therm usage down as prices are rising. We'll still probably pay a great deal to heat our once-drafty old bungalow, but perhaps not as much as we might have.

Much of our home energy efficiency endeavors were made possible by our friend Mike Arney, who is quietly and ardently working to inspire Tosans to go green. He has helped us and he can help you, too: get involved with the new Green Neighbor program (the brain child of Mike Arney and John Bahr). Click on the Green Neighbor checklist to learn about measures you can take to make your home more energy efficient.

There are still several things, both large and small, that we'd like to do to reduce energy consumption in our household. I plan to write about them here – stay tuned.

What measures have you taken to green your home?

Question about Home Inspections

This morning I want to share a question from a friend in Tosa re: home inspection and insulation, as it's something I am frequently asked:

Heather,
We're looking into the whole home inspection thing because like you, we have a drafty old bungalow and are paying out the ears each month. I was wondering how much your assessment cost? Did you do the blanket assessment or did you pick & choose individual testing to be done? Was it a lot of do the air seal and insulation? And you said that there is a marked difference?
Karri

Karri,
I think the inspection cost around $300. Generally they run from $300 to $500, depending on the size of one's home. We did the whole assessment, for which the inspector looked at the home's air flow as it relates to heating and cooling. FYI, the inspector doesn't look at, say, lighting, or water usage, or appliances. These are things a consumer can easily assess on one's own. Air flow is much harder for a consumer to assess, and it's important to assess, as heating and cooling account for a majority of a home's energy usage -- which can be A LOT if one lives in a drafty old bungalow. Our first February in Wisconsin the We bill blew my mind. I could simply did not expect to pay $400 or $500 a month on energy each winter when I had been paying closer to $200 a month in Urbana, Illinois.

BTW, the company that inspected our home is Beyond Energy, llc. You might want to contact your neighborhood association to find out if any of your neighbors are interested in getting an assessment. Many energy inspectors offer group rates.

Following the inspection we had our attic air sealed and insulated. We also insulated our basement. The cost was about $3,500 – this is a significant expense for us, but we felt the cost is worth it for the following reasons, in no particular order: (1) improving the comfort level of our home (2) saving money (in the long run) (3) preserving energy and protecting the environment, and (4) preserving an old home while bringing it up to twenty-first century standards. I haven't seen a full month's We Energies bill since we had the work done, so it's too early to analyze cost savings, but the house does feel warmer. Based on estimated savings, my husband figures it'll take us about five years to recoup inspection and insulation expenses.

We were pretty happy with the company who did the work: Intech, located in Milwaukee. They've specialized in home insulation for decades and have had thousands of happy insulation customers, so we knew we were in good hands. They also offered us the most attractive price. The were pleasant and professional, didn't use sub-contractors, and completed the work in one day.

Heather

My Gardening and Sustainability Year in Review

As I prepare for the start of a new year, I've taken a few moments to reflect on some of my accomplishments and failures in home and garden, and on what I plan to do in 2011.

Five Accomplishments

Helping a neighbor compost. My partially-sighted neighbor frequently walks by my house. She knows I'm into composting, and one day as she passed by she mentioned an interest in composting. She asked me if she could bring over kitchen scraps to dump in my bins. I agreed. Every few days throughout the summer she walked over her little cool whip containers full of coffee grounds and corn cobs. It was a fine arrangement that, alas, won't continue, mostly because her daughter moved home from New York and will help her compost from now on.

Sharing our car. Our sustainability-minded neighbor Mike Arney wanted to sell his family's second car. He bikes almost everywhere so he doesn't have need for a car on a daily basis. However, he wanted assurance that, should his wife need their only car, he would have access to a car if necessary. So Mike drew up a little contract stipulating terms of our "car sharing program" and we all signed. Mike has a key to our Toyota Sienna. He pays us a small amount of money every time he uses the car to cover gas, insurance, wear, and tear.

Insulating our home. After last year's debacle getting our home inspected by Keith Williams and then never hearing back from him after repeated requests for info, we finally had our home inspected again. This time the inspection was conducted by Tim Guillama of Beyond Energy, LLC. Mike Arney graciously paid for the inspection. We learned, among other things, about channels leading heated air from our basement up and out of our uninsulated attic. After Guillama's inspection we paid a local company to air seal and insulate our attic and basement. As the workers were installing insulation we noticed a marked difference in the warmth of our house. This is very exciting for us -- we're hoping our house will not only be more comfortable but will finally be more energy efficient.

Planting hazelnuts. The bare root hazelnuts I ordered last year from Gurneys turned out to be duds, and when I requested new ones they told me they had none left and simply refunded my money. So this fall at the Village Green Street Fair I ordered two hazelnut shrubs from the Victory Garden Initiative. This in addition to my red and black raspberries, blueberries, red currants, white and red grapes, apples, cherries, strawberries, and arctic kiwis. In a few years I hope my yard is an edible Eden.

Signing up to become a master gardener. As stated in my last post, I've been meaning to do this for some time now. Classes start on January 13. I cannot wait to begin.


Five Failures

Trying to grow veggies next to a black walnut. I finally concluded this last summer that the reason three quarters of my square foot gardens struggle to produce anything is because they are situated within close proximity of a black walnut tree. Black walnut toxicity is a known cause of failure of many plants, due to the tree's secretion of the chemical juglone. Juglone is potent and toxic to many plants and may be the reason I've had so much trouble growing anything nearby other than hostas. (My compost bin is next to the black walnut…now I'm wondering if I should move it so that juglone doesn't get into my compost as well. Ugh.) I can't bear the thought of removing the tree – it is perhaps the most beautiful thing in my yard. I also had hopes of someday attempting to harvest the nuts.

Killing ants with pesticides. One of my square foot gardens was infested with ants. I decided out of desperation to place some ant motels made for gardens in the bed. I hate using chemicals of any kind and regret this. I also hate killing creatures recklessly. However, I wasn't sure what other options I had. I considered a few natural methods (e.g. feeding them cornmeal) but read online that most of them don't really work. I also placed a praying mantis egg pod in the garden but nothing seemed to come of it.

Throwing away old fiberglass insulation. We pulled a great deal of old insulation out of our basement. It was doing more harm than good according to Tim Guillama. Trouble was getting rid of the stuff. We might have given it to Restore, but much of it was positively filthy, due to the mouse problem we've had for years. So Steve bagged it and sent it to the landfill.

Watching my apple tree die. I do not know what the cause was, but my adolescent Cortland apple tree exhibited signs of stress in late July, when the leaves started curling. Then in August the leaves browned completely. I don't know if the tree was sick and went dormant or died. I'm going to see what happens this spring but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Not preserving the harvest. I am ashamed to admit that I have let intimidation of canning get the best of me. I have not yet tried canning seriously. I have many of the tools – a boiling water canner, tongs, and a number of used mason jars. But I'm afraid of botulism. I have a bit of germ phobia. I'm afraid that if I can I'll do something wrong and everyone will get food poisoning when they eat my canned goods.

Five Things I'll Try in 2011

Planting a rain garden. After last year's July flood Steve and I started talking about installing a rain garden. The trouble is figuring out where to put it so it's most effective, as well as getting permission from the city. I hope we will make time to participate in Tosa's http://www.wauwatosa.net/index.aspx?NID=774 rain garden program in 2011.

Learning how to properly fertilize. I want to get more serious about organic fertilizing methods. I am optimistic that doing so will increase my harvest. To date all I've simply spread compost in May when I plant seeds and seedlings. I want to see if I can try to fertilize throughout the season, as well as learn about soil maintenance.

Moving my veggie gardens. I want to eliminate the three square foot beds next to my black walnut and replace them with fruit-bearing shrubs compatible with black walnut. Then I will grow my gardens on the very sunny patch of land right next to my driveway where I've successfully grown pumpkins in the past.

Selling seedlings. For a while now I've been thinking about buying a farm. While that plan is a long way off, I want to work toward making my dream a reality by slowly saving up. One way I might do this is by starting annuals, perennials and herbs in March and then selling them, garage-sale-style, in May.

Taking a step closer to beekeeping. I desperately want to try beekeeping but still don't know how I will make it work. It's not really legal here in Tosa, other than at the county grounds, where I believe you need to participate in the http://urbanapicultureinstitute.org/ Urban Apiculture Institute in order to keep bees there. Though I may not actually keep bees for a few more years, I want to spend some time reading about bees and observing the actions of beekeepers.

Blessings to you and yours in 2011. Happy gardening!

Home Energy Assessment: Part Two

In Part One of my home energy assessment write-up, I mentioned that our 91-year-old house is very expensive to heat during cold weather –- it can cost us roughly $350 for gas alone in January and February each year. To locate the source(s) of the inefficiency, we had an energy audit in November, performed by home performance consultant Keith Williams.

Keith arrived at 9 a.m. on November 19. The inspection lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes. When he was done with his inspection, I asked Keith several questions about my house, as well as about home energy efficiency in general.

First, I asked Keith to explain his work as energy auditor. He likened his role to that of a doctor. "We give houses physicals because they're energy sick," he said. After an inspection, he sends the homeowner his "prescription" for how to make a house "energy healthy." He also refers the homeowner to "specialists" (insulation contractors, etc.).

Unlike window, insulation, and HVAC contractors, who may inspect homes and write estimates for ways to make a home more energy efficient, a home energy consultant's inspections and recommendations are unbiased because a consultant does not sell products or services (other than the service of inspecting a home, of course).

Keith's inspection consisted primarily of air pressure and wall insulation tests, including an infrared scan and a blower door test. He told me that our house's air change rate per hour is 7.5. That means our house needs to be re-heated about seven and a half times every hour. The goal should be fewer than three.

The main problem with our home, he said, is a few uninsulated walls, particularly one he identified in our upstairs that opens into the attic. Conditioned air is flowing out of the top of our house, causing our home to be drafty, inefficient, and dry.

Incidentally, Keith said the 92% efficiency furnace we bought two years ago will only works at 92% if the house is properly sealed.

Keith has yet to send us his formal report, but in our informal conversation he said adding insulation to the uninsulated walls will be key to tightening up our home and improving our air change rate per hour.

As soon as I've received Keith's final report, I will begin getting estimates on insulation. Then, once we've made certain changes to our home, Keith will come for a follow-up visit to inspect work and verify safety (there are risks that go along with making a home more air-tight, e.g. carbon monoxide poisoning and mold/humidity problems). Keith's inspection fee of $375 covers both his first inspection and his follow-up visit.

With Keith's report he said he will send me a list of consultants who can make necessary changes to my home. In order to be on Keith's list, consultants must meet certain standards; underperforming or unethical companies don't make the cut. Keith said he receives no money from the contractors he refers.

FYI, if you're wondering about the efficiency of your lighting and appliances, home energy consultants don't typically assess these things. Their focus is on home heating and cooling, the most significant part of a home's energy bill.

Here are some other things I learned from Keith during his visit:

On saving money while making a home more energy efficient: Keith said that it's hard to pin down exactly how much money can be saved from making a home more energy efficient, mostly due to fluctuations in temperature, price of fuel, and resident lifestyle (how warm individual families keep their homes). While some changes may cause a homeowner to save money, those changes can be costly, so the ultimate goal of energy efficiency isn't to save money – it's to reduce energy consumption. Generally, though, consumers who make recommended changes to a home can expect approximately 20 percent savings in fuel/cost.

That said, there are many tax incentives that can bring down the high price of retrofitting a home to make it more energy efficient, and having a formal energy audit can make a consumer eligible for some of these incentives.

On fireplaces as a manner of heating a home: Keith said that anything that uses a chimney to generate heat is not energy efficient, as the chimney will suck warm air from the house. Plus, radiant heat from a fireplace doesn't spread very far. A fireplace consumes 20 percent more energy than it produces. Bottom line: don't use a fireplace to heat a home. Use it for entertainment. And remember to keep the flue shut when the fireplace is not in use.

On replacement windows: replacing windows can make a home more energy efficient, but this improvement should be low on the list. Changing windows from an R-value of 1.5 to an R-value of 4 will cost $30 per square foot, whereas changing walls from R-4 to R-19 costs about $2 per square foot. You'll get much more bang for your buck by adding insulation.


As soon as I hear back from Keith I hope to share his verdict and discuss our future plans. In the meantime, have a merry Christmas and a happy, blessed 2010!

Home Energy Assessment: Part One

Four winters ago we lived in Urbana, Illinois, in a tri-level home built in 1964. Our gas bill circa January of 2006 was roughly $125 for the use of about 119 therms to run a gas furnace, water heater, and range (the biggest percentage of gas going toward home heating). The average daily temp that month in Urbana was about 33 degrees.

When we moved to southeast Wisconsin in October of 2006, we were stunned by our first Jan/Feb 2007 power bill. The price to heat our 1918 bungalow with roughly the same square footage as our tri-level was nearly 2.5 times what it was in Urbana.

Here's a comparison of our gas usage/cost in January, 2006 in Urbana and January, 2007 in Wauwatosa:

House Size

Urbana: approx. 2200 sq. ft.

Wauwatosa: approx. 2200 sq. ft.

Gas Cost

Urbana: $1.06/therm

Tosa: $1.14/therm

Avg. Temp

Urbana: 33 degrees F

Tosa: 22 degrees F

Therms

Urbana: 119

Tosa: 270

Total Cost

Urbana: $125

Tosa: $310

Being further north and in a slightly colder climate we expected higher gas bills. Plus, gas prices were about 8 cents per therm higher between winter of 2006 and winter of 2007. Still, math isn't my strong suit, but I'm venturing a guess that the difference in temperature and the price of gas weren't significant enough to increase the use of therms from one house to the other by 250%.

With only one income and three little mouths to feed (four if you count our beastly, all-consuming golden retriever), we were strapped for cash our first year in Wisconsin – and continue to be. After all, at about $500, our average January power bill rivals many folks' rent payments.

To offset the huge cost of winter heating, we made a decision not to run our A/C in the summers. Suffering through some infernally hot summer days without air conditioning brought our monthly budget payment (the average of all 12 months' gas and electric usage) to about $280.

That wasn't good enough for us. So we began cranking down our heat in the winter. Unfortunately, even keeping our thermostat set in the mid-60s didn't bring down our wintertime bill significantly. All it did was make our fingers and toes a lot colder.

So two years ago we replaced our old heater with high efficiency (92%) gas furnace. Then, one year ago, All American Window & Door installed triple pane, argon filled replacement windows on the second story of our home. We programmed the thermostat with a conservative schedule and, on nobler days, sucked it up, put on sweaters and turned down the heat a few more degrees. We turned down the temperature on our water heater, too.

While every little bit has helped, to our dismay the current gas payment continues to be about $310 to $387 during the coldest months. That's about of 270 to 340 therms at the current cost of $1.10 per therm.

Colder weather aside, there's another factor that explains the huge difference in heating our Urbana home versus our Wauwatosa home: "house health." Our practical tri-level in Urbana was a solid, well-insulated construction with brand new windows added in roughly 2002. Conversely, our partially-insulated blue bungalow is drafty and inefficient.

We love our impractical blue bungalow, so our goal is to help it use as little energy as possible. In that spirit we struggle onward, trying to determine what more energy savings we can squeeze from our house.

Thankfully, this fall we were offered a special opportunity. The Wauwatosa Home Energy Efficiency group offered us a free energy assessment in exchange for us opening up our home for experimental purposes. At $300 to $400 a pop, home energy assessments are not cheap, but a good one can provide accurate, unbiased information on how to make a home more energy efficient.

We learned the hard way the cost of the kind of biased "energy assessments" that are currently being offered by various enterprising contractors. Windows, siding, insulation, HVAC and other contractors are all vying for consumer and government dollars ear marked for "greening up" residences and businesses. We were wooed by window contractors' promises of energy efficiency into spending thousands for what amounted to nice windows that hardly saved much energy or money at all.

I don't exactly regret replacing windows in our home – our upstairs is much more attractive and comfortable now – but was this the most effective energy saving technique? Not by a long shot.

Our home energy assessment was conducted just before Thanksgiving. The inspector was Keith Williams of West Allis, a "home performance consultant" with nine years' experience. Keith was one of the first consultants in the state of Wisconsin. Prior to working as a consultant he ran his own insulation contracting business for 22 years. He's a certified building analyst, a certified energy rater, and is nationally recognized as a trainer.

In part two, I'll talk about Keith's visit and what he told us about our house.

My New Toy

If you know me at all, you are aware of my coffee obsession, evidenced by the hefty stash of fair trade whole beans on my counter and the coffee plants growing throughout my house. Now I have a new coffee-related toy, and I couldn't be prouder: it's a lovely coffee grinder I got from an antique store in downtown Waukesha last weekend.

A few years ago I relied on my large combination coffee/espresso machine to make a latte for myself every day. But as I became interested in relying less on fossil fuels in my everyday existence, I started boiling water with a very heavy duty, 1950s tea kettle and using a French press to brew my daily caffeine fix. In the summer I can use my wood-burning stove outside to boil the water, but until recently I could not go completely off the grid with my coffee because I still used an electric coffee grinder to prep my beans for the press.

I stumbled upon hand coffee grinders while looking online to see if such a thing as hand paper shredders existed (they do -- I bought one, which I use to create bedding for my vermicomposter). That's when I saw my first hand coffee grinder and it occurred to me that I could probably find one at an antique store. Sure enough, there are plenty of them, in many styles and a variety of prices. Mine was about $40, which, to me, is worth it, not just because it enables me to grind my own coffee off the grid, but because it is a beautiful work of American craftsmanship. Compared to my late 1990s coffee grinder, which looks like a dull kitchen robot, this grinder is so pretty I just can't take my eyes off of it. Don't you agree?





The down side is that it now takes me about five minutes of uncomfortable grinding to make my daily cup. Also, instead of getting a good course grind suitable for a French press, this little mill grinds the coffee so fine it tastes more like espresso or Turkish coffee when brewed. Which actually isn't a big problem, because I like my coffee in the thick-as-mud range.

Now if I could just find a hand-crank TV set...