Green Tip-Electric Cars Are They Really Coming?

One of my favorite commercials on TV right now is the latest one that Nissan has rolled out. In this commercial it shows a polar bear (Aggie is the actual bears name in the video) sitting on a melting ice berg. Aggie then swims to shore, walks through town and goes up to a guy getting out of his new Nissan Leaf, an all electric car Nissan is manufacturing, and gives him a big hug. This commercial in my opinion is creative and also makes me think about My global footprint. The commercial also seems more realistic since we recently witnessed one of the largest oil spills or "oil gushes" in history. The images of the wildlife, beaches and businesses that suffered from the "oil gush" was horrible.

Well I do not know if electric cars are going to take over and replace the gasoline vehicles we drive today, but I do know that there is a lot of talk going on and Nissan is not the only player in the game. Electric cars are not a new idea by any means, in fact back in the early 90's California had a program going with GM and there were thousands of these cars on the roads. Where did they go? Well I am not sure but there is a real interesting documentary called "Who Killed the Electric Car". I have not found or seen any videos that represent any other opinions on what happened to the electric car program in California, so until something surfaces you will just have to draw your own opinion. If you don't want to watch the full 2hr version of the documentary, you can view a short portion of the video by clicking on this link: Who Killed The Electric Car, Youtube 

The negatives about the Electric cars, from what I have found has been the batteries and ability to charge the vehicles. A few weeks ago I attended a networking breakfast and ran into a guy who is with Lily Pad EV. Lily Pad is a distributor of Coulomb Electric Vehicle Charging Stations, they sale and install the charging systems that actually keep the electric cars going. Lily Pad has charging units that range in the ability to be mounted in your homes garage for a single vehicle, charging units that can be mounted at an office for multiple vehicles and also charging units that would have the ability to do a quick charge, just like we fill up our cars today. You can view their products on their website at LilyPad EV

So are electric cars really coming? Only time will tell, but for the sake of Aggie I sure hope they do.

If you have any energy or green tips you would like to share, please send them my way.

Thanks and have a great day,

James Gallet
Envirotech

Energy Tip- Clean Your Furnace

Did you know that your furnace and air conditioner accounts for up to 60% of your home's utility bills? Did you also know that if you equipment is dirty or slightly running a little rough it could be costing you additional money each month? Each heating season you need to have your furnace professionally cleaned by a licensed service company.

There are a few things that you as a homeowner can do to help with your system such as replacing you air filter at least every other month, visually inspecting the burner flame (it should be blue in color, yellow is bad) and also keeping items clear from the front and sides of the furnace. However a professional company will dis-assemble the furnace and clean it properly, inspect the heat exchanger, inspect the flue piping and fittings, test the ignition, ensure proper burning, inspect the electrical components, test all the equipment safeties and perform a carbon monoxide test.

I would say that utility savings is probably the second best reason to have your furnace cleaned and inspected every year, the first reason is safety. Each year over 500 people die from carbon monoxide poisoning, many which could have been prevented with a furnace clean and tune.

OK so most of my post are related to saving you money, conserving energy and helping the planet. Well this one is no different it is aimed at doing the same thing. However, in addition to conserving energy this post is directly related to my business as well (Envirotech Heating & Cooling), so if you decide to follow through with my advice on this post, just give us a call at 913-268-6700 or visit our website at www.envirotechks.com to schedule an appointment.

Here are some additional Safety Tips for you from the US Department of Fire Safety. 

• Never discard hot ashes inside or near the home. Place them in a metal container outside and well away from the house.

• Never use a range or an oven as a supplemental heating device. Not only is it a safety hazard, it can be a source of potentially toxic fumes.

• If you use an electric heater, be sure not to overload the circuit. Only use extension cords which have the necessary rating to carry the amp load. TIP: Choose an extension cord the same size or larger than the appliance electrical cord.

•Aviod using electrical space heaters in bathrooms, or other areas where they may come in contact with water.

•Frozen water pipes? Never try to thaw them with a blow torch or other open flame, (otherwise the pipe could conduct the heat and ignite the wall structure inside the wall space). Use hot water or a UL labeled device such as a hand held dryer for thawing.

•If windows are used as emergency exits in your home, practice using them in the event fire should strike. Be sure that all the windows open easily. Home escape ladders are recommended.

•If there is a fire hydrant near your home you can assist the fire department by keeping the hydrant clear of snow so in the event it is needed, it can be located.

FINALLY . . .

•Be sure every level of your home has a working smoke alarm, and be sure to check and clean it on a monthly basis.

•Plan and practice a home escape plan with your family.

•Contact your local fire department for advice if you have a question on Home Fire Safety.

LET'S ALL HAVE A SAFE AND HEALTHY WINTER.....James Gallet

Energy Tip- Recessed Can Lights

Have you ever been to a seminar or meeting and when you leave you are so pumped up to make a change in your life that you feel like someone has just refueled your engine?

Well I got my energy tank re-fueled last week when I got a visit from my good friend Dave Robinson. I have known Dave for several years now and see him as one of the sharpest guys I know.  He is definitely one of the most energy conscious guys I know, and has been a real cheerleader for me in my energy audit ventures. Dave sits on the California Energy Commission and is a local and national speaker in the "Green World". His latest business is purchasing old homes and making them energy efficient and them reselling them. His mission is to "Save the Planet, One Foreclosure at a Time". You can check his work out and follow his travels at www.greenearthequities.com

Dave and I were up into the late hours looking at energy blogs, websites and sharing our recent energy or lack of energy experiences. I got some great ideas and was put in contact with some items and tools that I have not been able to get my hands on in the past.

One item in particular is a recessed or can light cover. In the past, when performing energy audits I have suggested replacing old leaky can lights with airtight versions. Well I now have found a source for an airtight light cap that is placed over your recessed light in your attic. You can then insulate around and over the top of the light and eliminate the huge air leak that you get with the old style recessed lights. I have ordered a dozen of these covers and will be happy to share my experience with the product after they are installed next week.

Just a side note, when I perform an energy audit the biggest source of air leaks in a home are usually attic fans, can lights, fireplaces, cracks around doors and exterior wall electrical boxes. 

Thanks for the help Dave, and for putting up with the three crazy Gallet kids. We all look forward to breaking bread with you again soon.

Green Tip- School Lunches

So the kids are now back in school and the summer is winding down. That doesn't mean that our lives get any less hectic though, it just means we have a new set of task and obstacles ahead of us. I don't know why but the other day I was thinking about school lunches. I try to visit the kids at school and eat with them a few times a year and I recall alot of waste and trash that gets accumulated during lunch time. I am not just talking about food waste, which there is alot of, but also the trash that cold lunch or lunch from home can accumulate.

So I have came up with a few tips on how you can help reduce waste when you are packing your kids school lunch. So here are my recommended ideas: Eliminate plastic bags, plastic utensils, disposable containers, paper napkins and those brown bags. Instead use a reusable lunchbox, pack your kids a thermos or some type of reusable drink container, and try to send cloth napkins and silverware (I know they may no make it back home and this idea is pushing it).

From what I have seen and researched, by using reusable items you could save as much as $250 per year and over 80lbs in waste. WOW!!!!

Let me know if you have any "Green" ideas that you would like to share, I would love to post them on the blog.

James Gallet

Energy Tip-Ceiling Fans

Do you know which direction your ceiling fan should turn in order for it to do its job and be economically efficient?

Just the other day I had a friend of mine ask me this question, she was wanting to know for her house about the direction of her ceiling fan. I thought I knew the answer, but did some research to verify.

My short answer was this: During the summer, you should run the fan so that the breeze blows downward. This will create a wind chill effect, just like you get when you roll down your car windows while driving to cool you off. During the winter you should leave the fan off.

Durning my research I did however find some ceiling fan manufacturers websites suggesting that you run the ceiling fan so it blows downward in the winter. This idea is based on the fan mixing the warm air collecting at the ceiling and moving it back down to the perimeter of room in the winter, which would make the room warmer and need less heat from your furnace. But not trusting this advice, (remember ceiling fan manufacturers want the fans running continuously so they will eventually fail), I dug on and found some information on consumer reports that suggest that the draft caused by the fan can have a chilling effect on people in a room, in the winter. This leads to them turning up the thermostat and using more energy. So they too recommend that you not bother to reverse the motion of your fan—just leave it off during heating season. Note that there might be some situations where reverse operation would be beneficial, such as in a room with a wood stove running or a very high vaulted ceiling.

If you’re looking to lower your energy bills during the cooling season, use ceiling fans in rooms you are occupying and turn up the temperature on your A/C a few degrees and let the fan go to work. Remember that ceiling fans cool you and not the space you’re in, so turn them off when you leave the room for an extended time so as to not waste electricity.

Here is a ceiling fan shopping tip I ran across: Consumer Reports found that while the pricier fans did have fancier finishes, they didn’t necessarily provide better performance. What’s more, most fans performed similarly in their air-movement tests. I will tell you though that my kids' rooms have cheaper fans and very rarely get used due to the noise factor, where as my living room and bedroom fan gets used quite often and are very quiet in comparison.

Thanks Marsha for making me do some research; I hope this is helpful.

James Gallet
Envirotech Heating, Cooling and Energy Solutions

Green Tip- Beverage Packing

Well summer is here and a lot of times nothing sounds better to me than a nice cold drink. This is also a Holiday weekend so I thought I would share some interesting information that I found out about beverage packaging.

Did you know that the energy required to produce a single twelve-ounce aluminum can from virgin ore (new aluminum) is enough to produce nearly two new twelve-ounce glass bottles. That's right it takes twice as much energy to make a can versus a bottle. So the next time you buy a six pack of your favorite frosty beverage, opt for glass bottles over aluminum cans. The manufacturing energy conserved could power my Brother-in-Laws television setup through two Sunday, NFL game days. If 10% of beer drinkers replaced a six-pack of cans with six glass bottles, the energy saved could fly thirty thousand US Soccer fans to South Africa to watch the USA take on Ghana. Maybe then with all those extra fans the US would have came out with a victory.

So if you are planning on stopping by my house this weekend and want to treat me to a drink, Coors Light (bottles) will do.

Have a safe and happy 4th.

James

Energy Tip- Clean Your A/C

OK so the past two weeks have been crazy busy for us at Envirotech Heating and Cooling. We had a nice stretch of warm weather that caused everyone to finally turn on their air conditioning systems. Well guess what, alot of the air conditioners decided that they were not ready to run yet, so that meant hot houses and lots of business for us. Well my tip this week is pretty simple you need to change the air filter in your furnace and wash out your air conditioner with a hose if you have not already done so. This is one of the most important things that a homeowner can do to not only save on their home utility bills but also prevent future service calls to us.

Here is a fact for you, over 80% of all the service calls that my company runs could have been prevented with a little routine preventative maintenance.  So please change your filter and wash the outdoor unit or better yet have us come out and do it for you. We (Envirotech Heating & Cooling) has several maintenance options available. From a simple and affordable one time cleaning on your air conditioning system or if you would like we can set you up on a full yearly maintenance plan which would include us returning in the fall to clean and check the furnace. The full yearly plan is our "Energy Savings Agreement" and it gives you some additional benefits such as, 20% discount on repairs if they are needed, no overtime charges, priority scheduling and even replacement equipment discounts.

So weather you do some minor maintenance yourself or have us professionally clean your system either way is a great way to assure that your home comfort system is running as efficiently as it can and also will help avoid future breakdowns.

If you would like to schedule an appointment you can do so by calling our office at 913-268-6700 or schedule online at www.envirotechks.com

Thanks

James Gallet

Green Tip- Lawn Irrigation

OK this post may be a bit strange since we are in the middle of our monsoon season. Last week I attended a meeting where a business friend of mine, Karl Schottler with Paramount Landscaping, spoke about lawn irrigation systems. His company installs and designs irrigation systems and after listening to his presentation I now have a greater understanding of what is entailed in the design and make up of the systems. Paramount looks at each project separately "no two jobs are alike", they take soil samples, shading considerations and type of vegetation and or grass that the system will be serving. All of this makes sense when you sit down and think about it.

I have a personal tale of how shade will affect plants, tree's and such. Just about 12 years ago my wife and I planted four Bradford pear tree's in our yard. There is one tree that has fully shaded roots (due to a privacy fence) another one who's roots are partially shaded and then there are two that get no shade at all. Well the biggest and fullest of them all is the one with full shade, and the two that get full sun (no shade) are drastically smaller. Just goes to show that the way the sun hit the tree roots did affect their growth.

So what does a tree have to do with lawn irrigation, well Karl brought up a great point, lawn irrigation is really more than just throwing a sprinkler and a few hundred feet of hose around your yard. In addition to Paramount taking the above steps that I mentioned, they also use this device called a "Solar Sync." The Solar Sync measures the sun's rays (hence the tree story), air temperature, rain and also the amount of water you are using. The device then can determine if you need the irrigation system to run or not.

This device is definitely something that I would suggest, it seems very affordable and will save some of our earths water from being wasted. I cant tell you how many times I have seen a sprinkler system running while it is raining outside, that sounds a little wasteful to me. Too bad Paramount didn't design those systems!

To find out more about Paramount Landscaping visit their website at www.paramountkc.com  or to check out more on the Solar Sync go to www.hunterindustries.com/Products/Sensors/solarsync.html

James Gallet
www.envirotechks.com

Energy Tip- Laptop vs Desktop

Sometimes you make environmentally wise decisions without even knowing it. This was the case with me about a month ago when I had to replace my wife's work computer. She works a couple days a week at my office and when her work computer died we opted to replace it with a laptop instead of a desktop unit. We did this mainly for convenience on our part; she can now take her laptop with her anywhere she goes, she is also able to get some work done at home and not necessarily come into the office in case an issue would arise. I personally tote a laptop with me everywhere I go and use it daily in my line of work, so I know the benefits of being able to work on a laptop anywhere. I also like the fact that I can still do some work at home, if needed, and still be in the presence of my family and not off in a corner or office by myself while I work.

So why is this "Green" you ask? Well according to a recent article that I ran across, here are some key benefits to replacing your new computer with a laptop or notebook instead of a desktop: Laptops require fewer materials and less energy to produce than desktops and use a fraction of the electricity to run. If you choose a laptop over a desktop, you'll save an average of 220 kilowatts-hours per year and about $20 on your annual electric bill.

If one in twenty-three households made its next computer purchase a laptop instead of a desktop, the energy saved could keep the lights on for every household in the entire State of Rhode Island.

Please share my blog with others and share your energy tips with me.

James Gallet

Energy Tip- Garden Hoses

Well summer is here or at least the signs of summer are here. The grass mowing has started, trees are filling out and flower beds are starting to shape up nicely. There is another sign of summer at my house and that is the garden hose being left out, not rolled up and laying in the yard (wife uses to water flowers). I don't know why the unrolled hose drives me batty but it does. So I am usually winding up a hose on a regular basis through the summer, one bonus is that this year one of the hoses is attached to the rain barrel that we recently installed :)

OK enough about that, my venting is over for now and here is my tip: Install an automatic shutoff, spray nozzle or whatever you use that will shut the water off when it is not in use. People have the tendency to turn on the hose, leave it running, use it for a bit, put it down, reuse it some more, put it back down and then walk to turn it off. During all of this use the water constantly runs out the hose unless you have a shutoff or wand of some sort. If you do this you will save up to 6.5 gallons of water per minute. If just 10 percent of US households attached shut-off nozzles to their hoses and the average reduction in hose usage was just 30 seconds per week, the water saved would fill over 128,000 bathtubs every day, WOW!

Lets try to conserve our water and install a shut-off or better yet a shut-off and a rain barrel together.

Please share this with friends and keep passing energy tips my way.

James Gallet

Green Tip- Plastic Bags

Over the past weekend my wife and I had a child free night, so what did we do? We went grocery shopping (I know how romantic). Well I ended up turning this adventure into a learning situation for myself. This school year my kids have been learning alot about waste and things we can do to help eliminate landfill waste. One thing that has been addressed was the plastic bags we get at the stores and how many we waste. My wife has recently added two reusable grocery bags to the stuff that is floating around in our family vehicle, you know the ones I am talking about they come in several different colors. Well I had no idea how much one of these bags can hold, each bag probably had equivalent to two or three plastic bags worth of items in it. I also was not aware that some stores will actually give you a credit for using the recycle bags as opposed to using theirs, cha-ching$$$.

These reusable bags got me asking some questions and doing research. I already knew that plastic is bad for landfills and is not biodegradable, but here is what else I learned in doing my research: U.S. households dispose of nearly one hundred billion (that's right 100 Billion) bags annually, millions of which end up littering the environment and harming wildlife (just take a look at the side of the highway next time you are driving and I bet you will see a few). If you reduce your plastic bag consumption by just two bags a week, you would throw away at least 100 fewer bags a year. If everyone in America did this and we tied all of those bags together handle to handle we would make a rope big enough to wrap around the earth 126 times. WOW!

I know that sometimes plastic is great so if you do use plastic bags, please recycle or reuse them somehow. You can take your plastic bags back to many stores where they have recycle bins for them. I propose the new question should be: Paper, Plastic or Reusable?

Please pass this along...James

Green Tip- Rain Barrel

I just recently installed a rain barrel at my home and love the thought of collecting rain water to reuse for gardening and outdoor use. I purchased my rain barrel for less than $90. After seeing how simple the rain barrels are I believe I will look into making my next one or at least pricing out the option of doing it myself.

Last week we recieved less than 1/2 inch of rain and my rain barrel (57 gallons) was full! The type of downspout diverter that came with my rain barrel puts the rainwater back into your gutter system when the barrel fills, this is so the barrel wont overfill. I dont know how long it will take me to recoup my $90 in water savings but I enjoy the feeling that I get knowing I am trying to conserve our earths water and help prevent wasting water. I am not excited enough to start drinking the rain barrel water, but what if I came up with a water purifications system, hmmm? On second thought no thanks, my wife would probably frown on this idea.

Please share your energy savings ideas with me and share mine with your friends.

James Gallet
http://www.envirotechks.com/

Tax Free Holiday On Energy Star Appliances

I am excited to announce that next week, April 19-25, Missouri's 2010 Show-Me Green Sales Tax Holdiay takes place. Homeowners can purchase Energy Star qualified appliances and equipment during the holiday and not have to pay state sales tax on their purchases.

All of our York Heating and Cooling equipment is purchased through a distributor in Missouri so We can offer an additional 5% off the installation of Energy Star labeled furnaces and air conditioners. Not to mention there are other rebates and incentives that can save you thousands on a new home comfort system. If you are in need of a new system give me a call at 913-268-6700 before this deal passes you buy. 

Other items that you can purchase (in Missouri) tax free are:
Washers
Dryers
Dishwashers
Refrigerators
Freezers
Water Heaters
Furnaces
Air Conditioners
Heat Pumps

Energy Tip- Unplug Your Power

Ten percent of the electricity used in your home is burned by communication devices and appliances-when they are turned off! If every household in the U.S. just unplugged it's computers and cell phone chargers when they are not being used-or put them on a power strip-collectively we'd save over $100 million-or enough to provide free health care to every low income child under the age of five in the state of California.

Energy Tip-Car Washing

Well it is that time of year again, we all wantto be outside enjoying the weather. The grass isnt quite tall enough or ready to be mowed so we look for something to do. Before you trun on that garden hose, fill up the soapy bucket and bust out the sponges kee this tip in mind: Washing your car in a commercial car wash is better for the enviroment than doing it yourself. Commercial car washes not only use significantly less water per wash -up to 100 gallons less- but they often recycle and reuse rinse water. If every American who currently washes a vehicle at home chose instead to go to a professional car wash -just once- up to 8.7 billion gallons of water could be saved, and some 12 billion gallons of soapy polluted water could be diverted from the country's rivers, lakes, and streams.

"Your Comfort is My Business"

James Gallet