Green & Smart - Smart Use (even better- non use)of Energy
When people think of solar energy, they always seem to immediately jump to the conclusion that you must get a bunch of the big panels to be in the Green. Actually, solar panels are the last thing you should consider. The first thing to consider is how you are using your energy resources and see if doing things just a little differently might be a much less expensive way to live better in our Technological World. In my world, Air Conditioning is the thing that has always cost the most. When I moved down to Florida in 1971 to go to school, I drove 1800 miles in the middle of a heat wave. The student apartmentment that we rented was all windows and it was HOT. We immediately went to K-Mart and bought two big 18,000 BTU air conditioners to cool off. The next month when the bills arrive we found that the apartment cost $100 a month and those two airconditioners cost me $300! We immediately got used to being warm.
If it were my house instead of just student housing, there would be some immediate changes made to keep things reasonable. The construction was all windows on the North and the South side. On the east and the West sides was a brick wall and we could hear everything that was happening at the neighbors' apartments next to us. Terrible design! We added some large insulated wall curtains that pulled shut all day, and the heat was not so bad..
In Colorado, it is always much cooler at night than the daytime, so common sense would say close the place and draw the shades during the daytime and then open shades, windows, and doors everything except the screens (to keep the bugs out). This keeps me cool now, and in fact often it is almost too cool until late morning when things get warmer. If you have a building with either cinder block or brick or stone construction, you are going to have a problem with heating and cooling. The reason why is that a solid mass wall is able to store heat or cold and also will readily transmit it because it has a good thermal conductivity. The smart way to build a cinder block, brick, or stone house would be to have the cinder blocks, bricks, and stones on the inside of the wall and the insulation on the outside. Put a vapor barrier of plastic sheeting between the masonry and the insulation, and cover the outside with some appropriate finishing material or siding. This way, not much of the heat and cold gets into the house, and the masonry mass will store the Heat or Cold for a longer period of time, and it may have enough thermal lag that you live as if you are recording the nightime and playing it back the next day. If you have some spare room in the house somewhere, you can store metal items which will add to the thermal lag of the house. If you have a way to do this without adverse reaction, store botttles full of liquid around the house to add to the thermal lag some more. A big fish tank has considerable thermal lag and will also provide some humidity to the air should you live in a very dry climate like Colorado.
By far the worst energy problem will be air losses around the house. Your 117 vac wall outlets will generally always be leaking air, and there goes your cool in the Summer and your warm in the Winter. Get some exoanding foam in a spray can and after removing the wall plate and the electricity, give each outlet a generous shot of expanding foam behind the outlet, filling the whole cavity.. This will be a major smart energy server. Inspect the weatherstripping around your doors and replace it so that all the doors are tightly sealed. Most houses have ventilating fans for the bathrooms and kitchen but unfortunately they seldomly perfectly seal. Fireplaces usually have a Louver that can be closed when the fireplace is not in use. And these seldomly close well. Chimneys and furnaces are generally a long way from airtight. What we are looking for is a rating that shows that there is about a single air change an hour. Some are looking for an air exchange of less than one an hour, but I have long felt that this is just too tight, and particularly if this is new building which will be leaching formaldahydes from the glues used in plywood. Several companies now have a special door that can be temporarily installed to measure the air loss.
Caulking around the windows and seams is also important, of course. So the general recommendation is to tighten up the house first before anything else. The next step is insulation and the standards are continually rising on how much is needed.
Green & Passive - Achieve a Green Home or Business Passively