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01/27/2012
I stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in the mountains on a chilly weekend this fall and they had insulated cellular window shades that the owner swears by. Do shades like that lower heat bills enough to make them worth the price? It’s tough to say. These shades do reduce the escape of indoor heat through windows and they help you feel warmer. The amount that they lower heat bills depends on how much you’re able to turn down the house thermostat as a result, and that depends on how drafty/cold your windows are without shades. (The leakier the windows are, the more of a difference the shades will make.) It also depends on something immeasurable, which is the temperature that feels comfortable for you. So, I’m sorry that I can’t give you an exact answer about whether or not you’d get savings that would outweigh the shades’ purchase and installation costs in a reasonable time. Whether you use insulated window treatments or just heavy curtains, covering a window is just one way to increase your comfort near windows. Here are some others: Repair any cracked panes and glazing, run a bead of caulk around window frames, and use side-mount sash locks to hold windows firmly in place. Block drafts through sash-weight pulley openings by using pulley seals. Use inexpensive window weatherization kits, available at hardware stores. Thanks for writing in and stay warm! Li Ling for The Home Team
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01/20/2012
This is my first winter as a homeowner. I grew up in a house where my parents saved money on heating by shutting off the heat to unused rooms in the winter. I’ve been doing this in my house, but a friend told me that it can damage a house somehow. Is this a good idea or not? Well, it depends on the house and how cold it’s allowed to get. Some houses are fine, while others will develop problems like frozen pipes, cracked plaster or drywall, and wetness on the inside of the home and the outside. As notable is the potential problem of condensation forming on cool surfaces. Without enough heat to dry them out, these surfaces can become ideal spots for mold and wood rot. This may happen where you can see it or where you can’t -- within the walls, floors, or attic. The colder a house becomes, the more risk. The temperature at which problems happen depends on a number of factors, including the home’s insulation, air leakage, and humidity levels. If you decide to turn heat down or off in a room, be sure there are no pipes running through it (or in its walls, ceiling, or floor). Then, monitor how your house responds. This will alert you to problems you can see and to cold spots where condensation may form. Thanks for a question about something that lots of Vermonters wonder about. Li Ling for The Home Team
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01/13/2012
Is it a good idea to move a freezer outside for the winter, to save energy? My new father-in-law wants to do it, but it’d be my husband and me who’d do the grunt work. Is it worth it? The appliance will run for shorter times when the temperature of the air outside of the freezer is close to the desired temperature inside the freezer. However, the mechanical parts of freezers are designed to work at room temperature. If you place a freezer in temperatures below about 45 degrees, the components may fail prematurely. A good compromise, if possible, may be to keep the freezer in the basement year-round. If the basement is colder than the kitchen but stays above 45 degrees, you get the benefit of slightly lower electricity costs without creating as much risk for valuable components of the freezer (and components of your husband and your backs, from all that lifting). Li Ling for The Home Team
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01/06/2012
After the snow melts, we’re converting our attached garage into an apartment for my folks. We planned to put hot-water baseboard heat in there, like in the rest of the house, but my mom is set on radiant floor heat. Is this a cheap way to heat? For readers who aren’t aware: Radiant floors provide heat via hot-water tubing or electrical heating elements installed in or under flooring material. As for the cost of keeping a space warm this way: It’s likely to be similar to non-radiant heat using the same kind of fuel. Proponents of radiant floors suggest that this system uses less energy because it allows you to stay comfortable while keeping your thermostat lower. In fact, most homes with radiant floors are set at the same temperature as comparable homes without radiant floors. If you’re looking to lower your heating costs, the best approach is to reduce the amount of fuel you use. That’s done by keeping your heating system well-maintained and seeing that your space is properly air-sealed and insulated. I suggest talking to a Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® contractor about your garage conversion project. These contractors are specially trained and certified to conduct energy audits, to make recommendations, and to do home improvements that lower energy use by up to 30%. Efficiency Vermont offers up to $2,500 for energy-saving home improvements that have been completed by one of these contractors. Learn more and see the list of Vermont contractors. If you decide to go with radiant floor heat, keep in mind that electricity is typically one of Vermont’s most expensive heating fuels. Hot-water radiant floors are likely to cost less to use than electric systems. Best of luck making a comfortable new home for your parents. Bob for The Home Team
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12/30/2011
My house consists of two bedrooms and a bathroom off of a big, central room. I heat it all pretty well with a woodstove, so I use a lot of wood. I recently saw an ad for a device that recovers waste heat from the chimney and returns it to the room. Does this work? I’d only buy it if it adds enough heat to the house to allow me to burn less wood. These devices can present a safety concern. If you reclaim heat from the gases exiting the stove, you cool the gases. Air in a woodstove exhaust pipe or chimney needs to be warm in order to rise and exit the house. If this air is too cool to rise, toxic carbon monoxide can become trapped in the stove and then enter your house when you open the stove door. Also, cooler flue gases can result in greater creosote formation. As for your question about the potential for these devices to reduce the amount of wood burned, the answer is different for each stove. It depends on such things as the length of your stovepipe, the stove’s design, the temperature you bring your stove to, and how seasoned your wood is. Because it’s tricky to accurately predict this heat-reclaiming device’s consistent wood-saving potential, and because of the safety considerations, I recommend considering more reliable approaches to reducing wood use. I strongly suggest looking into ways to tighten up your home, in order to reduce the leakage of cold, outdoor air into the house and the loss of warm air. A good job of air sealing and insulation can make a significant difference in heating costs, no matter what kind of heating system you use. The most comprehensive approach is to consult with a pro. A Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® contractor can do a whole-house assessment to find and fix the causes of high energy bills. Efficiency Vermont offers up to $2,500 in rebates for improvements completed by these specially trained and certified contractors. Visit our Home Performance with ENERGY STAR section for a list of contractors and more info. Good luck and stay warm! Bob for The Home Team
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12/16/2011
Are LED (light emitting diode) Christmas lights worth buying? I heard they use very little electricity, but I'm not sure it makes sense to spend money to replace lights that only stay on for a month or so. Your energy savings would depend on what kind of lights you'd be replacing, how many strands you'd use, and how long you'd keep your lights on. To give you an estimate, let's say you have 300 bulbs and you keep them lit five hours each day for 45 days. At a rate of 12.5 cents per kilowatt hour, you would spend about $34 to light large, non-LED bulbs and around $3.40 for mini non-LEDs. The cost of keeping LED bulbs lit for the same amount of time would be about 85 cents. Another financial consideration is replacement cost. LED Christmas lights can last 20 years, so from a purchase-price perspective, they're cost-effective. I'll also mention that LEDs don't use a heated filament to produce light, so they run cooler, reducing fire risk. Whether you decide on LEDs or not, have a great holiday season. Li Ling for The Home Team
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12/09/2011
In your column, you recommended ENERGY STAR® bath fans for saving energy. Isn’t the best way to save energy and ventilate just to open the bathroom window? In ideal conditions, sure. Unfortunately, those conditions aren’t available every day or in every home. Some bathroom windows are positioned on a side of the house or in relation to other windows in a way that doesn’t provide sufficient air exchange. Sometimes the outside air is still, so open windows wouldn’t remove excess moisture from your bathroom. And on most winter days, you would pay a lot more to heat that outside air than it would cost to use a bath fan. My advice is to take as much control over indoor air as possible to prevent problems that excess moisture can cause. Those problems can include unhealthy indoor air from mold and mildew, costly wood rot, and more cosmetic problems like damage to paint. ENERGY STAR qualified baths fan are energy-efficient, run quietly, and give you the ability to effectively control the airflow in your home. If you decided to install one of these fans, you can ask the folks at your local hardware store if they stock them or if they’d order one for you. Kathleen for The Home Team
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12/02/2011
Q. I’ve seen TV ads for portable electric space heaters that lower your heating bills because they use an infrared quartz lamp. It sounds too good to be true. Can you tell me the facts? A. Glad to. A portable heater of any kind can conserve energy under certain conditions, but it doesn’t necessary lower your energy bills. You see, a portable heater can save central-heating fuel (for your furnace or boiler) when you use the portable heater only in the room you occupy and you keep your central heating system thermostat low so that the rest of the house stays cool. However, the cost of staying warm with a portable electric heater can be as much or more than the savings from keeping the majority of your house cool. This is because electricity is typically more expensive than fossil fuels (gas, oil, propane). Also, keep in mind that heating your entire home does more than keep you comfortable; it helps prevent frozen pipes. How do infrared-quartz lamp heaters compare to other portable electric space heaters? Well, all electric heaters deliver the same amount of heat per dollar spent. What makes infrared-quartz lamp heaters different from some (but not all) heaters is the way they deliver heat. These heaters give off radiant heat. This means that they warm objects rather than air. When you’re within range of a radiant heater, you feel warm. Conversely, a convection heater (such as a furnace or boiler system or a non-radiant portable heater) warms the air, which means you don’t need to stay near the heater to be warm. If you’re finding the need for supplemental heat, your house may have larger efficiency issues. It may be more cost-effective to pay to fix the causes of those issues once rather than to pay every winter to overcome the symptom (a cold house). A Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® contractor is specially trained and certified to do a home energy audit, find the causes of cold rooms, and make recommendations about improvements that will make the house warmer and will lower your heating costs by up to 30% for years to come. Efficiency Vermont offers rebates of up to $2,500 toward the cost of home improvements that have been completed by one of these contractors. You can learn more about these rebates and find a list of Vermont contractors at www.EfficiencyVermont.com. Low-income Vermonters can get similar services for free at www.helpforvt.org. Li Ling for The Home Team
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11/25/2011
Q. I’m retired and I moved out of state but my son and his sweetheart now live in my house in Vermont and I’d like to give them an energy audit for a holiday gift. Is it possible to do an audit in the winter? How do I find a good auditor for them? All the best to the Home Team from the sunny south! A. Thanks for the warm greetings! An energy audit can be done at any time of year. In fact, there are advantages to having the audit done in the colder season; the auditor may be able to see snow- and ice-melt patterns on a roof (indicators of heat retention or loss). Plus, the cool temperatures make it easier to see where heat is escaping when the house is viewed through an infrared-imaging device. Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® contractors are trained and certified to conduct energy audits, to make recommendations, and to do home improvements that lower energy use by up to 30%. Efficiency Vermont offers rebates of up to $2,500 toward the cost of home improvements that have been completed by one of these contractors. You can learn more about these rebates and find a list of Vermont contractors at EfficiencyVermont.com. Thanks for a great gift idea! Bob for The Home Team
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11/18/2011
Q. A friend of mine says I can get free hot water if I connect my hot-water piping to my woodstove. Does this really work? A. Some woodstoves are manufactured with water heater connections, and some are designed only for space heat. This is an important distinction, because it can be dangerous to convert a space-heat stove into one that also heats water. I’m all for do-it-yourself jobs, but retrofitting a space-heat woodstove isn’t one of them. The system must be engineered, installed, and inspected by a professional. Extreme care must be given to the installation of any kind of woodstove water-heating system to prevent overheated water, which poses an explosion hazard. In order to be safe, any such system must have its own expansion tank and pressure relief valve, as well as circulating pumps and a way to dissipate the water heat if the hot-water tank’s aquastat has been satisfied. Another risk is that improperly diverted heat can mean that toxic gases in the stove may become cool enough to be unable to rise up the chimney under certain conditions. Those trapped gases enter your house when you open the stove door. If you’ve got a stove that’s designed by the manufacturer to provide both space heat and water heat, yes, it will work. But it’s a bit misleading to call the hot water free; it costs you, just as the hot air from the stove costs you, in wood. You see, there’s a fixed amount of heat produced by any heating system. If you redirect some of it for a different use (hot water), you’ll need to produce more total heat to make up for the loss to the first use (hot air). I hope this answers your question. Li Ling for The Home Team
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