Energy Tip- Are Your Pigeons Warm On Your Roof?

Earlier this week we had a nice brisk morning and I was running a little early to my 8am sales call. I decided to drive around the neighborhood I was in to check out some of the homes roofs near my appointment. Why in the world would I want to look at a roof at 7:30am? Well, believe it or not you can tell a lot about the insulation of an attic, ventilation of an attic, air leaks and possibly discover some other issues within a home by checking out a roofs frost patterns.

The frost pattern or frost on a roof is different than the snow on a roof, so this little bit of advice wont do you much good with the snow on a roof. You see the air inside your attic is considered outside of your building envelope, or outside of your home, therefore the temperature in your attic should be at or close to the same temperature as the outdoor air temperature. This is only true, however, if your attic is properly insulated, vented and sealed off from your living space below. So in the early morning hours before the sun is out you should see no difference in the frost pattern across the roof. Once the sun hits the roof it is hard to see the trouble area since the frost will melt quickly.

There was a few homes in this neighborhood with some major issues. The biggest issue that I found was with the two story home to the right in my photo. As you can see, there are two large sections of frost on the shingles, but no frost at all towards the top of the roof line. This home has the same layout, or design, as the other two homes in the photo, so in reality they should all have a fully frosted roof. I am guessing that on the upper home, with the issues, the two sections with frost have rolled insulation in an attic or ceiling space and the bare spots are probably blown in insulation above a ceiling. This troubled home probably has several air leaks from the second floor into the attic such as can lights, bathroom exhaust, vent pipes and may have leaky ductwork in the attic as well. Whatever the case may be they are spending alot each year to not only heat their home but also to heat their roof.  

So the next time you look out your window, before the sun comes out and see frost on the ground, slip on your warm slippers and check out your roof to see what you may discover. You may find that just doing a little insulating or sealing can help save you some big bucks and keep your home more comfortable year round. Hey, don't worry about the pigeons, they can go to your neighbors roof to stay warm.

Thanks and have a great Holiday Season!

James Gallet

  

Energy Tip-No To Plastic/Solar Water Heating

So where in the world did October go? Well for me October was filled with lots of running around trying to get caught up or not get any further behind, one work trip to Lubbock, TX and then a nice week long vacation with my lovely bride to Maui.

I could go on and on about how beautiful Maui was, from the scenic hikes we took, to the snorkeling and so on, but instead I am going to tell you about some other bits of information about the island. I found it fascinating that the entire Island had no plastic bags on it! That meant when we went to the supermarket for some snacks, bought souvenirs or whatever the case you were not carrying out your stuff in plastic bags.

We visited a Walmart (imagine that, they had a Walmart there) and at the check outs they had the bag carousels but no plastic bags. When we bought items at small shops the items were put in paper bags and we were not given a paper or plastic option. It seems that the Island of Maui in January of this year took away all of their plastic bags so you either bring in your own recyclable bags or you just tote your shopping cart out to your car and unload the items one by one into the floor. I thought this was a pretty neat idea and wish the rest of the US would adapt this.

Another neat thing was that our hotel room had no liner in the trash cans and the room even had a separate trash container for recyclables. There were recycle containers located beside most trash containers in almost every public place and you could just tell that they people just had recycling and reusing as a way of life. 
 

So whats this solar stuff in my title? Well another thing that I found to be of interest was that solar water heating was huge over there. I saw more ads and advertising about solar products (mainly water heating) than I did for any other service. It was weird driving around and seeing a water heaters sitting outside of the homes but it was really cool to see all of the solar panels installed that were preheating the water that fed these water heaters.

Coincidentally enough the week that I returned from Maui I was already registered to attend a solar water heating class so I was anxious to learn more about the design and installation of these products. I learned that solar water heating is quite a bit more expensive to install than conventional and hybrid water heaters so it may not fit your budget, even with the big tax credits available. There is however a market for solar water heating, so it could be something to investigate if you are looking to save on fuel and plan on staying in your home for several years. The way that a solar water system typically will work is that the solar panels (generally located on a roof) will heat the water as it passes through the tubes. This preheated water then travels to a storage tank that can be a standard water heater or tankless type water heater and the hot water that you use in the home pulls from the storage device. If you need more hot water than the solar panels can provide for you then the storage tank or backup source will kick in and heat the water for you.

I can see several advantages and disadvantages in using solar to heat the water in a home. The main

advantage is that the sun energy is free, so the monthly energy cost will be lowered in a home. The main disadvantages are the initial cost is high and when most people use the biggest bulk of hot water in a home (morning and night) the sun is not out so you will be likely pulling from your backup source.

So if your in the market for a new water heater here is yet another option for you to consider, but I urge you to do some homework first and find a company that has installed several solar systems that can give you solid referrals if you go the solar route.

PS lets get the rest of the world on board with Maui and do away with these plastic bags, if you want I will send you a free reusable grocery bag to get this fad started. Just shoot me an email at jamesg@envirotechks.com with your mailing address and I will send one to you.

Until next month, thanks for reading have a great week and a Happy Thanksgiving!

James Gallet

Energy Tip- "Give Your Water Heater a Blanket"

I was sitting in the kitchen this morning when my 8yr old came strolling in with a big blanket wrapped around her (I remember those days when I would eat breakfast with a warm blanket around me). For some reason this got me thinking of water heaters on my way into work. I am a big believer in the tankless or hybrid water heaters, however some homes and businesses are better off with a conventional tanked water heater as opposed to the tankless or hybrid models. So if your water heater is one that is a conventional tanked model then you need to give that "girl" a blanket.

Here in the Kansas City area most of our water heaters sit in a basement or garage. The water heaters are constantly losing heat to the air around them. Think of your water heater as a biog thermos with a built in heater, as the "big thermos" losses heat to the air around it the built in heater automatically heats it back up. This is why you always have hot water ready to go at your faucets. This lose heat then reheat cycle is repeated over and over again through the course of the water heaters life. Unfortunately it is even repeated when we are not using the water heater like over night and when we are away from our homes.

One big thing that you can do is to wrap your water heater with a insulation blanket specifically designed for water heaters. You can purchase them at nearly any hardware store and they cost around $25. They are easy to install and this $25 investment will end up getting recouped in utility savings over just a couple of months.

Here are a few other things that you can do to improve your water heaters efficiency and help cut back on your energy usage:

1. Turn down the heat setting a bit, do you really need it set as hot as you have it now?
2. Insulate your hot water pipes in addition to your heater itself, again you can get pipe insulation at most hardware stores.
3. Fix any leaky faucets, this one little drip can cause not only high water bills but also high gas or electric bills if it is on the hot water side.

4. Insulate the room the heater is in, most of the time the water heaters are located in a cold area or basement room possibly even a walk out basement.

5. Turn it off or use the vacation setting when you are out of town.

I hope that you found something in this article helpful. Please feel free to call or email me any suggestions, comments or questions. 

Thanks

James L. Gallet

Envirotech

Energy Tip- Light The Natural Way

In the past I have written about using CFL or LED lighting for your home. Well there is another solution to lighting your home and guess what, its free! Before the widespread use of electric lighting architecs and builders constructed buildings to take advantage of natural light. Well this way of thinking and building has gone by the wayside and in its place we want homes that are pretty and people seem to not worry so much about effeciency and lighting (at least until we open our utility bills anyway).

What can natural daylight do for you and your home? Natural lighting will not cost you anything in utility bills for one, but sunlight also help aid in relaxation and happiness and helps reduce seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as the winter blues. Natural daylight has also been proven to improve students test scores, double retail sales in stores, and boost factory workers productivity.

What will it do for our planet? If we all reduced our electric lighting in our homes by 25%, natural daylight could save enough energy to power 17 million homes a year. WOW!!!! 

Who do you call? Here in Kansas City we have one of the best daylighters in the business. Sam Kane with Solar Solutions can install a tubular skylight and bring in the natural daylight for you and your family. Sam and his crew have great knowledge and look at each home on an individual basis to determine where natural lighting would best be served. They can install one tube if you would like and build onto it from there. To get in contact with Sam visit their website at http://daylightkc.com/. They also have some other great products available.

Check out the two photos below of a before and after shot that Sam and his gang took on one of there jobs. Please feel free to pass this along to others and let me know if you have any energy or green tips to pass my way.

Thanks

James Gallet



Before Natural Daylight




After Natural Daylight

 

Comfort Tip- Mini Split A/C & Heat Pumps

What is a Mini Split? Well if you have ever traveled to Europe or Asia (I have not but have had a good customer and friend of mine inform me of this) you have probably had your hotel room or living quarters heating and cooled with this type of system. I know that most Asian areas have very limited amounts of space, therefore this system is perfect for tight areas with little or no space outside or on the ground. If you are not into traveling abroad, here in the US the mini split systems are catching on due to their high energy efficiency and also for space conditioning of hard to heat rooms, rooms with no access to duct work, room additions, attics and spot heating and cooling.

Fujitsu Outdoor Heat pump Unit

Did you know that as much as half of the energy used in our homes and offices are for heating and cooling purposes? Out of that we lose up to 30% of the efficiency in a standard heating and cooling system through leaky duct work, improperly sized or improperly installed equipment. The top of the line air conditioning units today being installed are rated at 16-18SEER, I like to compare SEER (or Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating) to miles per gallon on a car. The higher the SEER the better your MPG or utility usage is. The Mini-Split systems can achieve upwards of 26 SEER.....WOW!

The most common type of Mini Split that we install are the wall hung heat pump models. There is no duct work for this system and it will heat as well as cool. We have grown to love the quietness, ease of installation and operation of the Fujitsu brand systems. Some of the jobs in which we have installed the Mini Split systems are room additions, sun rooms (formerly a screened in porch), upstairs master suites, computer server rooms, finished basements with no duct work access, master bedroom additions and office spaces.

If you would like to see a video of one of our installs please visit the Envirotech Youtube page. I will be posting a newer installation in the coming months of a job we are doing now that is under construction. We are installing two outdoor units with five indoor units, so what that means is there are two heat pumps outside and a total of five indoor spaces with their own independent temperature controls. You can also view some photo's of the installs on the Envirotech Facebook page.

Please call me if you have any questions, comments or energy savings tips.

Thanks

James Gallet

Energy Tip-"Seal Your Ducts"

Right now we (Envirotech) are in the middle of our air conditioning clean and tune season. We are in several homes and businesses each day getting their systems ready for the summer heat, if it ever shows up. One item that we look at as part of your comfort system clean and tune is your ductwork. The ductwork can be overlooked by many as I know that homeowners pay no attention to it, in fact they would probably prefer not to have it at all. The ductwork serves a crucial role in delivering the proper amount of cool air in the summer and the warm air to our living spaces in the winter. When new ductwork is installed there are certain items that need look at to determine sizing, location and length. Unfortunately most ductwork installed is not sealed so this is something that has to be done after it is already hung.

This is Really Bad Ductwork!

A typical home contains about 180 linear feet of duct work. Nearly 30% of a home's conditioned air leaks out of these ducts, wasting energy in the process. Sealing the ducts will save you a significant amount of energy and money and also improves the indoor air quality in a home. Ducts accumulate more than 40lbs of household dust each year. Leaky ducts spread that dusty air throughout the home, while sealed ducts deliver cleaner and better air.

Your home might have leaky or bad ductwork if you experience high utility bills, if you have stuffy rooms that never seem to be comfortable, if you have rooms in your home that are difficult to heat and cool or if you experience alot of dust problems. If you look at your homes ductwork and see dirt streaks or lines at a seam or joint, this is a leak.

If you have leaks in your ductwork you can seal them yourself using a mastic seal or metal tape. The old grey duct tape wont due the trick, it tends to dry up over a few years and peel off. We can also provide this service for you if you would like. If your ductwork is located in an attic or crawlspace, it not only needs to be sealed (so you are not heating your attic in the winter and cooling it in the summer) but it also needs to be insulated. In our climate if your ductwork is located in a basement or within the conditioned space it can typically just be sealed and not insulated.

If you have questions on this please give me a call and I will happily answer them.

Thanks and have a great day!

James Gallet

Green Tip "Toilet Water"

This weekend we got the opportunity to enjoy some fantastic weather, it was a reminder that spring is almost here. I enjoy this time of year when everything is blooming, the sun shines into the evening, grass turns from brown to green and the kids get to burn off their energy outside.

One thing that I do not look forward to about spring and summer, at our home, is the higher demand for water. This not only causes our water bills to go up, it also makes me feel a bit guilty of the waste that seems to take place at times. The increase in water use is due to watering flowers, watering areas of the lawn, the kids 4H project animals and so on.

Last spring I installed a rain barrel and this really helped cut down on some of our water use. But the rain

barrel basically got shut down over the winter in fear of it freezing and causing downspout freeze issues. So during the winter months the rain barrel was no help to me and my water consumption efforts.

I recently ran across a few articles on what you can do to save or conserve water inside your home and found one that talked about toilets. Did you know that most toilets in the US will use over 3.5 gallons of water per flush? There are however some low flow toilets in some of our homes however they still use almost 2 gallons per flush. On average toilets account for 26% of your homes water usage, WOW! 

So what can you do to help? Well one thing you could do is install a dual flush toilet. A dual flush toilet has two flush buttons, you push the #1 button if you go #1, which uses very little water, or if you go #2 then press button #2 which uses more water (for obvious reasons). This option would require you to replace your current toilet.

Another option is to adjust your tanks fill level by either adjusting the float inside your tank or using what I am recommending which is an empty one gallon milk container or two liter pop bottle. What you do here is fill the empty container with a few rocks or sand and then fill it the rest of the way with water (preferably water from your rain barrel). You then take the tank lid off of your toilet's tank (the tank is the upper part of the toilet where your flush handle is located) and place the container in the tank. Make sure that you place the container as far away from the valve or any moving parts as you can. You will need to flush the toilet to get the water to run out of it in order to get the container in without making a big wet mess. The container should sit up by itself and should not interfer with any of the moving parts inside the tank. After you verify that it is in a good upright place, put the lid back on. You now saved yourself almost a gallon of water per flush. Add that up and in a weeks time and that could be several hundreds of gallons saved!

The photo above shows what a one gallon milk jug looks like inside one of our toilets at our office. Just a quick note is to make sure your container fits into the tank before you place it in there. One of our toilets at the office would not allow a one gallon milk jug to fit without interfering with the float assembly so I had to use a two liter pop container. 

Please share this with others and share any of your "Green Tips" or ideas with me.

James 

Cool New Management Device- Ecobee T-Stat

Here is a question for the ladies reading this: Have you ever left the house and wondered if you left your curling irons plugged in, the clothes iron plugged in or the stove still on? More than likely you answered yes to all of the above. In the past, I know that my wife has done this, heck we have even pulled back into the driveway a time or two so she can go check these items.

Today, I cant help you with the curling iron, iron or stove issue, but what I can help you with is the other question that people ask themselves when they either go out of town or just leave for the day. What is the thermostat set at?

I know a lot of people own setback thermostats that change the temperature in their homes at certain times of the day, but lets face it our schedules are constantly changing. I encourage you to use this setback feature on your thermostat, if you have one that allows this, and you will save money on your utility bills. In reality most of the setback thermostats are set to HOLD, which means it is just set at a certain temperature and left there. So today I want to introduce you to an even cooler, more up to date way to control your homes temperature from anywhere in the country.

I recently installed an Ecobee thermostat at my home as a way of trying it before we offer them to our customers. We love it! The Ecobee smart thermostat is by far one of the coolest new thermostats I have seen. This thermostat is Internet based and can be controlled remotely from anywhere you have Internet access. It also works with you iPhone or Android using the Ecobee App. I have been meaning to write about this new thermostat for a while and we have been testing ours so I could give you some great feedback and answer questions if you had any. Well my buddy, Daniel Sinclair down in Lubbock, Texas beat me to it. He blogged about this last week so now I am sure I will have to hear from him about me being a follower, instead of the leader (just kidding Dan).

The Ecobee thermostat is a WIFI enabled thermostat that has tons of features on it. You can operate this thermostat on your phone just like when you are at home and there are no additional monthly fees for this service! The photo above is my lovely bride controlling our home thermostat from here I-Phone. Pretty Cool, Right? Also you can setup a program for your home comfort system from any computer on the Ecobee website. Another really neat feature about this thermostat is that you can look at reports that show everything you would ever want to know about your home comfort system and thermostat. You can see run times, temperature fluctuations, humidity levels, and be alerted (by email) when something is wrong or needs attention.

One of the coolest things that I personally like is the weather button on the thermostat. I can walk up to my thermostat and see what the current weather condition is outside or I can push the weather button and get a 7-day extended forecast. So if I miss the news and don't see the weather report I just walk a few feet and push a button and there it is.

For the commercial customers, if you own several different businesses or one business, you can access this thermostat at any time! You can set temperature limits and even lock out the thermostat (passwords can be enabled) if you want. This can help you save money with your energy bills and know that you still have some control over what happens at your business.

This thermostat has so much more to offer with the phone applications, web portal, and reporting.

If you have any questions about this Ecobee thermostat you can either visit their website or give me a call.

You can also view Daniels blog site for more information. 

Make it a great day!

James Gallet

Energy Tip-Window Coverings

Do you ever get drug into the middle of an arguement or discussion between two friends? Well last week I got drug right into the middle of a discussion between some friends my family.

They were discussing if they should leave their blinds open in the winter to let some sunlight (heat) in or closed to keep the cold out. That is a really good question and if you do some research you will get different answers I am sure. Well I shared with them my "green" opinion, which was to open their South facing blinds in the day time and close them at night.

Well this ended up not being my buddies opinion, but rather that of his cute wife (so another win for the girls). I hated to take a side in this discussion and hope that just because my advice was not the one my buddy wanted to hear he wont write me off as a friend (haha).

There are several different window coverings out there and alot of the newer blinds and drapes actually seal off pretty tight to reduce drafts. The heat that you will gain through the glass during a sunny day will offset any heat that you may lose through the glass or window from the blinds being open. Of course if you have bad windows or leaky window frames then you may want to purchase a few tubes of silicone or caulk to cut down on the drafts around the window seals or even have the window replaced.

So my suggestions are:

1. Make sure your windows are not excessively leaky, if they are leaky you can do wonders with a couple tubes of caulk or call me and I will get you the name of a company that we refer for window replacements.

2. On Sunny winter days open the south facing blinds and use that big ball of energy in the sky for some free heat. This also gives you free room lighting and will lower the need for lights to be on in those rooms.

3. Close your blinds at night to add some extra insulation value to your windows.

If you have any green ideas or tips please share them with me.

Thanks

James