Conservation Pros, Asheville and all of Western North Carolina

So what if you didn’t make the improvements, claim the tax credit anyway!

Apparently, the IRS has no way to properly police the Energy Efficiency Tax Credits.  According to an article in Bloomberg, "Auditors sampled 150 tax returns and found no record of homeownership associated with 30 percent of that group. The auditors also found instances in which prisoners or people too young to purchase a house were claiming the credits."

I'm not actually suggesting, of course, that you should bilk the government.  I just thought it was a catchy enough title to get your attention.

Read the rest of the article here.

Solar Energy Headed Behind the Woodshed

So the Obama administration did its best to get incentives for energy efficiency but failed miserably.  Now, support for solar energy and other forms of alternative energy is also in jeopardy.  

Apparently, venture capitalists are running scared from all things solar.  Why?  It's a business model that's entirely propped up by federal dollars.  Were it not for the incentives, there would be no solar industry in this country.

Alternative energy firms have been the darlings of silicon valley for the last few years, based on promises made by Obama to create a "green economy".  VC's are now worried that, with the efforts to cut the budget deficit consuming DC, the fed may not make good on financial promises it's made in the past, or will make in the future.

In the 70's, solar was the promise of the future, Carter installed solar panels on the white house and electric cars were going to save the world.  Does any of this look familiar to you, dear reader?  It looks like we might be headed down that road all over again.

A friend of mine said, just the other day, "History repeats itself.  It has to.  No one is listening." 

Unless something monumental shakes loose here, we're going right back to the Reagan years, folks.  

It's been fun.

This post was inspired by a fantastic article by Tim Mullany with the humble title "ECO WEAK-O", the full text of which can be read at this link.

Good humor in here – What kind of solar hippie are you?

This is some seriously funny stuff from Infographic.com

Maybe we should start a poll…

Our Most Popular How-To Video

8,800 views of "The Best Way to Weatherstrip a Door".

Turns out, there are a lot of leaky doors out there…

Watch on YouTube

Maybe Insulation Isn’t So Sexy After All

I wrote a post in August of 2010, with the title “Is HomeStar DEAD? Quite Possibly”. Since then, it's been one of the most popular posts on my site. (Maybe that's because it's #2 on the Google page for that search term… link)

Now we're halfway into 2011 and nothing has changed. It appears that, yes, HomeStar is long dead, with no chance of recovery. If you'll recall, at the time Harry Reid was preparing to bring it to the Senate floor, even with a majority in both houses of Congress, there were only thirty three senators who had committed to signing the HomeStar bill. The likelihood of it resurfacing, in this deadlocked administration, is paltry at best.

Heck, when's the last time you heard Obama say "Insulation is Sexy"?

I've got to say, I find that phenomenally disappointing. I'm all for solar and other alternative sources of energy. BUT, energy efficiency is the key to reducing energy consumption in the US and the rest of the world.

What's the point of installing a $40K photo-voltaic solar array on a home that wastes 30% of its energy?  The thing that's needed is for the players in national politics to get behind a comprehensive incentive package for residential energy efficiency that's equal to, or even better than, those for solar and other renewables.

There are still quite a few optimists out there. And God love 'em for it. We need unbridled optimism in order to swing the balance away from cynics like me. But if you're counting on the Fed to provide incentives for energy efficiency, home energy retrofits, and general reduction in the power demands of residential housing, you might be waiting a loooong time.   

Cash for Caulkers?  How about "Clunker for Caulkers"?

NYT article says historic homes are already green

It's originally from an article in the UK and is directed, exclusively, at sidewall insulation as you don't calculate u-values for floors and ceilings. I agree with the sentiment, as does Joe Lstiburek, the modern Moses of building science. That's why, at Conservation Pros, we spend an inordinate amount of time talking people out of filling their existing wall cavities with insulation.

That, and, we don't have a lot of walls in the US made of timber, cob, limestone, slate, or granite.

At any rate, it's an interesting read.  The rest of the article is here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8395482/Historic-homes-are-already-green-say-experts.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d8bbadefbe818b0%2C0

Mold and Allergy Season is Upon Us, Asheville!

Here we go again, Asheville, it's allergy season in the mountains of Western North Carolina!  Somehow, the "healing air" of the Southern Appalachians seems to have turned on many of us.

Not only is it allergy season, but it's time for the molds and fungi to start popping up in our crawl spaces.  If you have a sealed crawl space, you don't have much to worry about.  If, like most of us, you're still over a skanky old dirt crawl space, you might need to think about what it could be doing to your health.  

Mold is a massive problem in Asheville and much of it can be traced to moisture in our crawl spaces.  There are three things mold needs to survive and thrive, the right temperature, the right level of humidity and, of course, food.  The temperature in your crawl space is perfect for molds, the humidity is spiking as you read this, and the food is the very thing your home is made of; wood.

If you have mold in your crawl space, it's not going away without some major effort on your part.  Since you can't very well get rid of the food, and controlling temperature in your crawl can be a pricey proposition, you need to address the humidity.  One way or another, you need to keep that level in check, below 60%, ideally around 50%.

With a traditional, vented crawl space, that can be difficult, but it's not impossible.  First, you need to be sure your vapor barrier is intact and complete.  Next, you need some sort of dehumidification.  Ideally, you'd use a ducted de-humidifier because the stand-alone type tend to dehumidify the air around themselves and not touch the stuff back in the corners.

You should also use a separate humidity meter, known as a hygrometer.  The ones in the dehumidification units tend to be unreliable.  They can be had for a few dollars in any number of places.  

Better still is to have your crawl space completely sealed, encapsulated and unvented.  The North Carolina building code has recently been changed to include this option, as have the Asheville City and Buncombe County codes.

If you're unsure about the humidity in your crawlspace, go ahead and get yourself one of those hygrometers and check it regularly.  If you have humidity above 60% in your crawl in the Asheville area, you can bet there'll be mold as well.

To learn more about sealed crawlspaces in Asheville, click here:  sealed-crawlspaces