You may have noticed the recent change in the temperature outside. Unless you spend more than 90 percent of your time outdoors doing something epic – and generating your own dang live free or die heat – you probably have a boiler, furnace or wood pellet stove burning away your holiday spending money. It’s that time of year again. The wool socks come out of the bottom drawer, the windshield scraper is sitting on your passenger seat and your thermostat is turned up to 68 degrees. Let’s hope the thermostat is programmable, because if it’s not you might as well stay home and reap the benefits of all those BTU’s burning away in your living room. But you can’t. You have to go to work to pay for that heat. And those holiday gifts.
The programmable thermostat is the most basic form of 21st century resource efficiency, and if your home or office doesn’t have one, you might as well give a few bucks every day to a random guy or gal on the street. Your hard earned money is going up in smoke –literally – every day you don’t install that programmable thermostat. The thermostat controls the box in your basement that kicks on the burners, that energizes the pumps or fans that move the heat created by the box to the space you call home. Every hour of every day, that thermostat takes a little more of your holiday spending money and sends it up the chimney faster than the rate of your wage increase. You program your calendar to remind you when you have meetings or who to call for that business lead – why wouldn’t you program your heat and save your holiday spending money for the family?
The recent change in temperature is going to last until April. That’s six months away. Say goodbye to those warm evenings driving home from work with the window down and the wind blowing your hair back. You probably won’t be able to roll your window down until March. So why would you keep your windows open in your house? All your windows are closed, you say? I’m willing to bet my holiday spending money that your house has holes that leak air equivalent to an open window. All that warm, expensive oil-heated, propane fueled, wood-fired air created by that 10-year-old, non-programmable thermostat is leaving your house faster than smoke from a bonfire. The crazy thing is you can easily find that hidden open window by hiring an energy auditor to tell you how to save your hard earned holiday spending money. Hire an energy auditor already!
An energy auditor is very much like a financial advisor. He/she can walk into your home and advise you how to invest your money for lasting returns well into retirement. This is good. Because retirement means fixed income and that means no more fancy coffee or cocktails downtown because you’re heating the whole state of New Hampshire. An energy auditor can show you how those returns increase with every price hike in fossil fuels. I bet right now your heating portfolio is heavily weighted with fossil fuel “stocks” (like Blackberry – a real dog!) and short on high return foam and insulation “stocks” (like Apple – a real winner!) But wait! There’s still time to get in on the ground floor of an amazing investment opportunity. Stop ignoring the no-brainer investment you encounter every single day – energy efficiency! You can invest in energy efficiency in your home as easily as you can buy a $5 coffee or $10 cocktail. There are more energy efficiency investment opportunities in your home then there are salons and banks along Main Street. An energy audit is going to cost you some of that holiday spending money, and so will the foam and insulation, but it means that you’ll have that much more next year to spend on gems and toys and i-thingeys.
Do you really want to keep throwing good money after bad every time that nonprogrammable thermostat kicks on the heat and the hidden open window freely wastes the heat? No? I didn’t think so. You’re no rube! You own a house. You also must be smart enough to have a job that pays enough to heat that house. Then why the heck are you not investing that holiday money in energy efficiency?
Hiring an energy auditor is fairly simple. Visit the Residential Energy Performance Association website (repa-nh.org/) and review the list of members. REPA members are energy professionals and any number of them can assist you with energy audit services.
The Concord Energy and Environment Committee contributes a monthly column to the Insider. The members of CEEC aim to inform and engage the citizens of Concord about energy, environmental, and sustainability issues and policies. CEEC works with city administration and the Concord City Council to identify and implement sustainability programs and strategies. If you have questions or you would like to become involved in the committee, please contact us at 225-8500.
