Energy Audit
Tuesday February 24th 2009, 4:42 pm
Filed under: Drivel

Puget Sound Energy is currently offering a trial program where they will do a 2-3 hour careful examination of your home’s most private of areas and give you suggestions as to how you can make everything more efficient and save some $ on your energy bills – all for the bargain-basement price of $95.  I just had mine performed today, and survived to tell you the gory details.

Upon arrival, Dude explained the process and did a quick walk through of the house to understand the current situation and to let me express concerns I had about the house.  He then set up a sealed-door blower in the front door, to suck air out of the house, creating negative pressure, which let cold outside air come into the house through the various small leaks.

Methodically going around the house, he viewed every square inch through an infra-red camera, which showed the hot and cold spots.  Cold spots with clean edges represented places where insulation was lacking, and cold spots with streaked edges indicated air leaks, which you could easily confirm by sticking your hand on the spot.  You wouldn’t normally notice the air leak, since you don’t usually have a high negative air pressure in the house.

Areas which were leaking in our house were:

  • Chimney clean-out panel
  • Electrical breaker panel
  • Trim around windows
  • Baseboard trim
  • The giant hole in the wall from when I once considered fixing some plumbing

Dude pointed out areas on the ceiling where the rafters did and did not have insulation piled on top of them.  Real easy to fix, simply by adding just a bit more insulation, or just evening out what is currently up there.  He also explained how to fix the other various leaks.

Last, he went around and replaced every single incandescent light bulb with the proper CFL bulb (19 total bulbs, some spiral, others look like regular bulbs), and replaced the shower head with a low flow one (~40% more efficient, and has massage mode!)

After the excitement died down, he pulled up graphs galore of our past 2 years of gas/electrical use, and the expected annual cost savings which could be achieved by fixing various things – more attic insulation $44, wall insulation $20, crawl space $9, air leaks $200, CFL bulbs $?, and some other things which I have since forgotten.  Luckily, he’ll be emailing me a copy of the entire report, along with pictures from the IR camera.

In conclusion, I think it was a pretty swell deal, and I recommend you go sign up too.



Snow day!
Thursday December 18th 2008, 3:26 pm
Filed under: Drivel


Hello
Wednesday October 15th 2008, 4:51 pm
Filed under: Drivel

avatar-body



Cabo San Lucas
Saturday July 05th 2008, 1:36 pm
Filed under: Drivel

IMG_7037

Guess which one of us burned the worst that day…

 

IMG_7064

Heading out at 6am to go fishing.

 

IMG_7216

And we were successful!



Things to do before I die
Friday February 22nd 2008, 3:30 pm
Filed under: Drivel



Visiting the Shepherds
Saturday November 17th 2007, 5:13 pm
Filed under: Drivel



Our next home
Thursday November 08th 2007, 10:36 pm
Filed under: Drivel



Mt St Helens
Tuesday November 06th 2007, 8:25 pm
Filed under: Drivel

Big Picture



First Ink
Tuesday November 06th 2007, 2:58 pm
Filed under: Drivel



2007 Challenge
Monday January 29th 2007, 4:48 pm
Filed under: Drivel

If you’re bored, and love graphs relating to pushups and/or situps, I suggest you check out my 2007 personal challenge tracking page.