Electricity rates would skyrocket
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 | Uncategorized
“ELECTRICITY RATES WOULD NECESSARILY SKYROCKET”
My first car was a 1956 Chevrolet two-door hardtop. Do you remember how the little chrome flap over the door window would flip up when the door was opened? Pretty cool. This meant that the door did not have a frame of metal surrounding the window which made it look very streamlined. You also had to know the secret access to the fuel filler which was hidden behind the rear taillight. Back in those days we didn’t give much consideration to fuel economy since gas cost 29.9 cents per gallon. This particular car delivered only 12 to 14 miles per gallon, but that didn’t bother me a bit.
My, how things have changed! A car that gets only 14 miles per gallon today is an albatross. A vehicle for the wealthy. A car that can hardly be sold. P.T. Barnum wasn’t exactly right. There aren’t enough suckers to go around these days to snap up a vehicle like that.
In the same way, homebuilders weren’t very interested in energy costs in the early 70’s when I started building. We didn’t think about ways to build an energy-efficient home. Energy costs were low, especially in the areas where TVA furnished power. TVA rates were the second lowest in the country.
Did you know that 62% of TVA’s energy comes from coal-fired steam plants? Why is that important? President Obama said, “So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can–it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” He went on to say, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Are you ready for that? Everyone I know was complaining this year because of the high electric bills they experienced. Are you ready for those bills to skyrocket even more?
When energy costs rose dramatically in the mid 70’s, I worked hard to find ways to make my homes more energy efficient than those of my competition. These techniques I still use today along with other innovations that have been developed recently.
For example, do you realize that your home, even though built by a good reputable builder, has an air loss which is the equivalent of your front door being open 24 hours a day? The framing system of the average home takes up about 22% of the exterior wall space. This 22% is uninsulated. There is a framing technique that reduces the amount of uninsulated space to about 12%. It’s called “advanced framing technique.” This one technique alone results in up to a 5% energy savings.
Today, homes can be built so that the amount of air loss is reduced from the size of the open front door to the size of a 3 inch circle. As you can imagine, the cost to build such a home carries a price tag of about 15 to 20 thousand dollars. Looking at the future through the eyes of our president, this may be a very wise investment.
There are less costly approaches as well. The next best system, called “flash and batt,” utilizes a closed-cell poly foam on the inside surface of the wall sheathing along with regular fiberglass batts. This system adds only 2 to 3 thousand dollars to the average home price and should result in good energy savings. The closed-cell foam effectively seals the exterior against air loss.
An even less costly system is called “tight-fit.” Cellulose insulation mixed with glue is blown into the stud cavity to make a much tighter seal than standard fiberglass batts. This system adds about one thousand dollars to the cost and can result in energy savings, especially when combined with advanced framing.
This may be the time to trade out of your “gas-guzzler” home and consider building an energy-efficient home that will pay big dividends in the days of high energy costs which lie ahead of us.
1 Comment to Electricity rates would skyrocket
Looks as though I need to build another house.
May 13, 2009