It's Easy Being Green

It’s warmed up to a balmy 17-degrees outside today but with the wind chill it feels more like 4-degrees.  It was bitter cold last night and the car wasn’t too excited about starting up for the drive home from work.  This morning the house felt more like a meat locker inside…making us realize just how truly un-efficient this rental house is.  If you’re faced with high heating costs or just the aggravation of trying to keep your house at a comfortable temperature, you should think about doing your own energy audit.

It’s pretty simple.  You just need to walk through your house and begin considering where you could be losing heating and cooling efficiency.  Unless you’re doing a remodel or buying a house, there’s not much you can do about existing insulation in your walls and ceilings.  However, if you can find out what the insulation value is inside your walls  you can determine the efficiency of that.  A lot of common home insulation is rated around “R-11″ or “R-19″.  The higher the number, better the insulation is.  Some homes will have r-values reaching into the 30’s or 40’s.  According to the Department of Energy, eco-friendly homes built with straw bale walls have an R-50 value!  You can read more about their test homes and the different insulation comparisons by clicking this link.

The biggest source of decreased heating and cooling efficiency is air leaking in and out of your house.  The home we rent is only outfitted with single-paned windows.  That’s extremely inefficient because there is such a rapid exchange of cold air through these windows into the house.  It’s the opposite for summer, with a rapid exchange of heat into the rooms.  The house is outfitted with honeycomb shades on most of the windows.  If lowered prior to dark and kept closed until the sun is well up, they seem to do a decent job of retaining heat and keeping the chill out.  But if the house was outfitted with double-paned, “Low E” windows it would feel much more comfy in here.

There’s also a set of French doors off the dining room and kitchen that are poorly sealed.  You can see the light coming through gaps in the frame and weatherstripping on the door.  About $10 worth of weatherstripping and caulking and a half hour of work could greatly improve the cold air that moves through these doors.  We also hang curtains over it to keep the cold draft out and place an old rolled up blanket at the base of the door to prevent that draft too.

If you’re faced with any of this dilemmas, you should check out the Energy Department’s Home Energy Audit.  It’s easy to click through and tells you all the potential trouble spots in your home.  Best of all, it’s something you can do in just an hour or two or even spread out over several days.  In the long run it could help you save money and keep your house a little more comfortable.

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Is anyone else even a little dismayed by the current administration in The White House? In case you missed it yesterday, oil prices hit the long-awaited $100 per barrel mark. It’s the highest dollar value the commodity has ever traded at. Granted, if you compare it to the oil crisis of the 1980’s economists say the $100 mark is still a dollar below the 80’s crisis point if it’s adjusted for inflation. There was a lot of speculation by economists last night that the only reason the oil hit that high was because a few lone investors really wanted to see it trade that high. After all, we’ve been awaiting this most glorious milestone for months now!

Well, it seems at first glance those lone few on the trading floors yesterday got to see their fairytale price point. But the implications of it are going to be more far-flung than just rounding another base. Already the economy is feeling pinched. While final numbers from the holiday shopping season aren’t out yet, retailers apparently had a dismal season. That’s no surprise really because it seemed like the writing was on the wall well before Black Friday ads were being leaked to the internet. Now retailers are slashing and dashing, trying to get people into their stores during a time of the year when people are just plain tapped out. It’s been reported that major U.S. restaurant chains are freaking out about the first financial quarter of the year. They’ve already seen huge decreases in the amount of people dining in their restaurants all because of a steadily rising cost for gas, energy used at home and a waning economy.

To trump all economic concerns with the oil climb, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino talked about how in order to stave off high gas prices, the U.S. needs to start more domestic oil exploration and production. It seems Perino really has been given a heavy dose of the Bush/Cheney crack infiltrating every Capitol Hill office! Do our oil producers really need to be given the green light to tromp around already protected areas of wilderness looking for more oil, especially when most experts say it wouldn’t be online for production for another 10 years? With the Dems in control in Congress it more than likely won’t happen. But the Democrats also want the government to start dipping into the strategic oil reserves to bring prices back down. I think that’s another incredibly bad decision when we’re already at the mercy of foreign, oil producing countries.

This is the time for our government to do something good. Quit giving the tax breaks to big oil. Quit giving higher fuel-economy and environmental standards the pussyfoot approach. With our presidential elections just months away, this is a great time for candidates to show what they’re made of in the face of an impending oil and financial crisis. In the meantime, I’m doing what I can to make myself knowledgeable and able to live in a time where oil isn’t always available or worth the cost. I just got the book Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life After Gridcrash by Aric McBay. It shows you how to plan for the future, surviving and thriving when the food, transport and energy industries sputter out after consuming their last drops of fuel. I also just stumbled on Cody Lundin’s book, When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes. I’ll let you know how the books are and maybe discuss them as I go along.

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While I can’t wait to put up the Christmas tree each and every year, I also can’t wait to take it down once it starts getting crispy and dropping needles all over the floor. Usually I’ll try and restrain myself from touching the tree until New Year’s (I feel obligated to keep the tree up until that time for some tradition unbeknown to me). But sometimes I just can’t help it. Once the tree comes down though, many wonder what they can do with the darn thing besides just throwing it out. The answer to that is pretty simple: recycle it!

The easiest way is through a curbside recycling program with your local city or municipality. If you haven’t already received info from your city on where to leave your tree or drop it off for recycling, you can check out the National Christmas Tree Association’s website. It’s as simple as punching in your zip code to find local programs. Some cities like Newburgh, New York have gone as far as making a family event out of tree-cycling by supplying hot apple cider, munchies and a bag for families to take home fresh mulch (courtesy the freshly chipped trees) for their garden beds.

This next idea may sound silly but it has some great benefits to the feathered friends hanging around your bird feeders this time of year. Simply take your tree outside and place it in the garden or backyard near the feeder. The tree will provide some shelter for the birds braving the winter cold. If you don’t have a bird feeder out yet, you can also turn your tree into a giant feeder. Hang orange slices from the branches and spread peanut butter onto pine cones and sprinkle with mixed seed. Don’t forget to remove all the tinsel before doing this! The birds will eat the tinsel which is very harmful.

If you happen to have a pond on your property, you can also sink the tree to the bottom of your pond. It’s a great habitat for fish and provides them with nooks and crannies to feed in. This year don’t just throw out your Christmas tree, recycle it!