Conservation/energy expenditure

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I've put up a new poll on the front page of http://www.earth.org.uk/ which I'm still not sure I've gotten right.

I've been trying to think of a way to gauge people's commitment to and expenditure on conservation and insulation that is more or less immune to the basic costs of the stuff in your local area, and to what you use for heating.

So I'm trying to see if people are prepared to spend more than their primary domestic fuel bills in conservation and insulation for the coming winter in the Northern hemisphere (guys down under can answer for the winter passing!).  That's clearly more money than can be recovered in a year or probably even two or three.

This does not include any microgeneration.

Rgds

Damon

[ghurd]

I don't care for the choices!  But I do not know how to make them any better.

Insulation is a no-brainer.  It is plain stupid not to insulate.

I am shocked at the small amount of insulation the UK people tend to use.

(Fuzzy numbers follow, it's been a while)

I spent less than a years worth of nat gas bill on having a company insulate my house.  No labour involved, for me.

It was done in late summer / early fall, then NG doubled, so our honest pay-back was maybe 4~5 months?

It used to get really hot in here.  Now we rarely run A/C and it stays cooler.  We did not run the A/C much before.

(Open the windows at night, close them in the morning)

Reverse the window plan in spring and fall.

True Story.  The old neighbor guy has very little insulation (just 8" in the attic?).  Yesterday my wife was cold here in the house.  The neighbor's A/C was running.  He likes it a lot warmer than we do.

CFLs look good now, but will look a lot better on payback when electric rates increase.

We got the rate increase 'warning letter' a few months ago.  It is going up instead of down!  Go figure.

G-

[DamonHD]

The crux of the problem, of course, is that the developer/builder/landlord wants to have the property as cheap to build as possible, but the occupant pays the heating bills forever after.

UK building regulations and something called 'The Merton Rule' http://themertonrule.org/ have started to align builder/occupier interests in favour of building for energy-efficiency from the start, almost by luck, rather than the occupant (if they own rather than rent) desperately trying to retrofit a meretricious colander after the event.

And the UK government is now making developers peg building performance to the CSH (Code for Sustainable Homes, http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=725&storycode=3081484&c=2&encCode=000000
000129cc8c ) scale with the aim of all 'new' build being 'zero carbon' (CSH level 6) in use within a decade or thereabouts, though lots of people are still arguing what that means exactly.

Anyway, local councils are already starting to insist on CSH ratings well above the minimums implied by building regs to permit developments, AFAIK, which is good.

We still have the problem that the housing stock turns over slowly in the UK (maybe at most a percent or two per year?) and the embodied energy waste implied in unnecessary rebuilding is significant.

So most of us must just insulate out artificial caves as best we can...

Rgds

Damon

[ghurd]

It is good.

I know a little about the higher-end US renter occupants.

They DO look into the utility bill history.

It is easier to rent an identical place for more `rent' if the utility bills are less.

Higher-end renters look at the cost per year.

It is hard to rent a place if the heat bill in January is double one months rent.

Heating costs are often advertised in the "For Rent" ad, here.

Odds of getting a `better' renter go up a lot. "Good Renters" are worth a lot of long-term money, here.

They could super-insulate those units like heck, then charge more rent.

The occupant would pay less per year.  The landlord would make more. UK would send less money to elsewhere.

My attic is about R-150.  About 45" of cellulose.  It is cheap and easy to do that.

G-

[RandomJoe]

You know, I'd heard people talk about "feet" of insulation before, but never quite realized they were serious.  Then I found a website where they did a radiant-barrier study and some of the homes they worked in had - well - FEET of insulation!

So, I'm going to guess you don't / can't use your attic at all?  I tend to pop into mine all the time, mostly when running antenna cabling for my ham radio addiction...  Or perhaps you leave a pathway and just bury everything else?  I am also guessing the thickness has to taper down quite a bit toward the eaves, so you still have an air gap for air to flow up through the attic?

I've thought about further insulation, but really wondered how much better I'd get.  My A/C already barely runs - heck, I have a programmable thermostat and even on the hottest days of summer (100+ degF) my house won't get from roughly 76 when it sets back at 6AM to the 85 setback temp.  By the time I get home at 5PM, it'll maybe be 82 at highest.  And that's with about 6-8" of Rockwool.

But the attic is an absolute furnace, through which - naturally - my HVAC ducts run, hence my interest in the radiant barriers.  Perhaps I'll add more insulation as well, now!  I have a very high-pitched roof, maybe I can build a sort of raised walkway to get through and insulate under that...

[DamonHD]

I don't think most renters here are that sophisticated here [I hadn't thought about it all the times I came to rent a new place], especially given the strong social pressure to buy if you can afford to.

One large chunk of the rental market is students who are (a) poor and (b) not yet aware of the bills issue by and large [I wasn't] and (c) not that careful with the property anyway so expensive and fragile stuff ain't going to last...

Rgds

Damon

[DamonHD]

Thanks for all those who have already voted.

The result is not at all what I expected, though obviously OP users are probably rather more sophisticated than the average bear, so the results may well skew a different way given a wider variety of users.

Rgds

Damon

[ghurd]

The attic was never intended to be usable when they built the place.

Has a ridge vent and gable vents.

I ran more outlets than could ever be needed, plus 2 extra 110V wires and a 220V from near the breaker box to the attic with plenty of wire to work with, 2 or 3 sets of phone lines to every room (back in the day of dial-up), 2 sets of co-ax cable vision wires...  Wire was cheap at the time.

The phone and cable wires are in a box near the access hole (14x18"?) for switching around which is which.  I hope to never put more than my torso up there ever again.

Then I blew it in. Cheap and easy.  Made a huge difference.  

I didn't intend it to be that deep. Made an error in the calculations somewhere.  Just blew it deeper and deeper until I used all I bought.

After all the wires were installed, I had a company do the walls.  Not easy.

Rock wool is 'not compatable' with blown in.  They tell me blown in crushes the rock wool or fiberglass flat, so do not include it in calculations.

If nothing else, everyone with only 8" should put the R-38 Pink Panther over the existing insultaion.

Also cheap and easy is the space between the basement walls and first story floor is a large heat loss that few people insulate.

G-

[wooferhound]

I have added insulation to the attic of three rental houses that I have lived in. Payback was less than 1 year if you don't count your own time for the installation. Did'nt tell the owner till I moved out.