To Arms! To Arms! Warm Your Fanny, Not the Climate!

Mom used to say "Close the door. Are you trying to heat all of Colorado?" Chances are that your house is leaky and you're trying to heat your state - and PAYING for it. And adding to Global Warming. Here are simple cheap ways to save money, energy and the

By: Nicolette | Oct 21 2009 | | (0) Comments | Add Comments | Share

In solidarity of spirit with international Blog Action Day, I'm issuing a call to arms on climate change and asked the loyal readers of my Living in Comfort and Joy blog to pack some heat literally.

Not long ago, I wrote Saving My Energy for a Greener Tomorrow, a post about how I harnessed the firepower of the lowly caulk gun to dramatically warm my house and cut my energy bill. I spent about $500 on the whole household warming-and-efficiency process, including the purchase of a low-power convection heater. I saved around $40 per month on my utility bill. Best yet, my humble caulking and sealing efforts added up to something very tangible that I could do to fight global warming.

Best Investment Around - Energy Efficiency!

Recently, I heard Panama Bartholomy, who works for the California Energy Commission, when he spoke at the West Coast Green building conference. Panama said something very witty and quite profound: he compared our attitudes about how to green up our energy use and cut down on what we add to global warming to the attitudes of teenage males looking at two teenage sisters. We focus on solar technology, the glamorous sister, he said, but don't spend much time looking at energy efficiency, the smart sister!

The humble but powerful caulk gun

The bottom line on Panama's presentation was this: when it comes to curbing climate-changing energy emissions over the next twenty years, caulking and weather sealing will save $40 per ton and solar panels will cost $24 a ton!

To underscore the point, Panama whipped out a slide that showed the McKenzie Curve, an economic analysis of the costs of a whole passel of energy-greening measures. (That's where the figures cited above come from.) The Wall Street Journal recently wrote an article about all this. It was provocatively entitled Packing Heat: The Firepower of the Lowly Caulk Gun. That article included a chart version of the McKenzie Curve; I encourage you to click this link and take a look at the price tags attached to our energy choices.

Act Locally: Start with Your Windows!

While thinking globally about the problem of global warming, I also encourage you to act locally � maybe in your bedroom. You could start by improving the performance of your windows. Most of the windows in our California homes were installed long before energy was an issue. They hold single (rather than double or triple) panes of glass. The glass is not coated for energy efficiency, and it has been stuck into the frame with no thought of sealing the drafts that come in around or through the frame. If those same windows were to be specified now, for a new building, the local housing officials would tell you that they are illegal under Title 24, the California energy efficiency act that applies to new construction.

Infrared image of a house leaking energy

As the image at left shows, most homes bleed energy. You can see the heat leaking around the windows here; it's orange. There's also a lot of heat leaking out of the attic, and that's common too.

Federal figures show that US homes consume 21% of all energy used by the whole country more than cars,  planes, or even offices and they waste around 30 percent of that energy.

About one-third of that loss could be stopped by caulking and insulating! In addition, you can cut a good bit of the heat that is lost through window glass by adding an energy efficiency film to the window. These films are actually plastic  covered with a very thin, invisible layer of metal; it's metal that causes the reflection of heat that gives newly manufactured glass for windows its energy efficiency quality. Here, instead of having the metal added at the factory, you smooth it onto the window yourself after the fact.

I did this myself recently. It was easy and fun. The process involved cutting a sheet of plastic so that it was about 1 inch bigger than my window (which is about 3 feet square), then wetting the window and applying the film with a squeegee. I used a laundry spritzer to apply the water, which was lubricated with a drop of dish detergent. The film slid right on, and I carefully squeegeed out the bubbles, then trimmed the margins with a very sharp Exacto knife.

A day later, when the film was dry,  the film was truly invisible. (I called in my neighbor Alexei, had her look at my filmed window and a twin window nearby, and then asked her if she could see any difference. She couldn't even figure out why I was asking!) While the visual difference was imperceptible, there was a noticeable tactile difference an absence of the customary blanket of cold air that hung around the inside of the window.  I could feel quite a difference when I did an unscientific test by placing my cheek about an inch from both the treated and untreated windows.

Ways to Warm Your Fanny, Not the Climate

NASA photo - the earth at night showing artificial lights in the USA

There are, of course, sophisticated tools that can be used to find energy leaks in buildings: infrared guns and heat sensitive meters that measure drafts. When energy commissioning is done on commercial buildings, an engineer runs the HVAC systems with the windows all closed and then measures how and where the pressure changes, and s/he uses a truckload of gadgets to do it.

You're not likely to try that at home, but I know of some simple low-tech ways to find leaks too. The most interesting one I have heard of was a fellow who rented a fog machine the kind used in theatrical productions and then used it to fog up the inside of his house. He kept the windows closed, and after an hour or so, he walked around outside and looked for the escaping clouds.

Draft stopper doggy from Oh Dee Doh - to learn how to make it, click on the image

If you have bigger leaks, you may find them by walking around your house carrying a lit candle, standing here and there, and watching how the movement of air bends the flame. You can also hang lightweight gift wrapping ribbons over doorways and watch which way they bend, then track the breeze back to its source. You can track the breeze by licking your finger, the same way people do to determine which way the outdoor wind is blowing, and then walk toward the cool side of your finger. Not very scientific, but it all works.

Then again, you might just go to the likeliest leakage spots and start plugging away. Your local hardware store will have a variety of weatherstripping and insulation products. I suggest that after you've found the holes, you go ask your helpful hardware man (or woman) to tell you the best way to plug them. Here are half a dozen likely places to look for leaks:

Alexei and Nicolette model the ultimate in Eco winter fashion. Snuggies are in - there are big Snuggie parties and pub crawls here in San Francisco

1. Around drafty windows
2. Drafts around and under the doors to outside (seal and weatherstrip)
3. Through internal doors from rooms you're currently not heating or using (Use one of those little draft dodger cloth blocking devices and close the door!)
4. Around plumbing penetrations (the holes where pipes go in and out of the house)
5. The attic it may be easy to blow in some insulation there
6. Uninsulated walls  (it's hard to add insulation to finished walls, but there are some insulating paints. Putting cork paneling on the wall can help. There are even insulated tapestries that you can hang on the wall in the winter; that's something that was commonly done by people who lived in cold climates centuries back. It's ancestral wisdom that we have forgotten.

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