Filling in the Gaps (in more ways than one)
Here's a free tip about making your house more energy efficient, and thus saving yourself TONS of money on your heating and electric bills every month. Your house needs to be as airtight as possible, so if there are any gaps in the insulation or cracks in the walls, any places where air gets through, they ought to be sealed up. Thing is, to find them, one generally has to do tests that require professionals like the people at CET. But it's an investment that pays for itself in a matter of months.
So that's the tip: fill in the gaps. In your house's envelope (that's a jargon-y term that means basically the line between what you heat and what's outside) and in your ductwork.
But now, allow me to fill in a few gaps of my own by telling you what all I've been up to in the past two weeks:
I've had a few multi-day projects:
1. Collecting all the links in the LEED-H book and making a spreadsheet of them. I then checked them all, and found replacements for the dead ones. I then went through this EPA Green Building Resources packet and did the same thing with them. I emailed my findings to the creators of each. The eventual goal of this is to create some sort of resource (physical or electronic--I'm not entirely sure) for our builders. I still have a lot of work to do on this: finding suitable things to print out, checking the categorization of the links, and checking the quality of the resources, as well as finding more.
2. Researching the whole thing about vegetarianism and climate change, and eventually constructing a flyer or handout addressing it. I've done a lot of research but haven't congealed my thoughts or the statistics yet.
3. Various things having to do with our client database. There was a piece of information we didn't know we were supposed to keep track of, and I updated all of those. Mostly I've been comparing various computer files and inputing the missing information. Some of this was fun, though, like checking the gas company against a map of Western Mass. Like I said before, I've started learning all the towns in Western Mass pretty well. The reason for all this is that there are two gas companies in Western Mass and two electric companies. One of the electric companies pays for energy audits, and both gas companies do, but only for their customers (people who heat with natural gas). So, I've had to check how all our clients heat their houses, and which gas and electric providers are in their town. The goal, then, was to determine whether the client paid for the service or whether one of their utilities did. I think I'm pretty much done with this.
4. Various creation of folders and mailings for clients of various different projects. I did LEED, EnergyStar, and ReStore folders, and a LEED mailing. And then there are all the copies for anyone who asks me to make some. I enjoy that though; it gets me up from the data-zonking.
5. Reading these various booklets. I read through the entire 180+ page LEED-H booklet, the EPA resource guide, and am currently working on the LEED for Neighborhood Development booklet. That's a new LEED program that's in a closed pilot. CET isn't doing any LEED-ND (as it's abbreviated) jobs, but it's still interesting to read up on. I also have two more things to read through. One is a guide to the Thermal Bypass Checklist, which is one of the major components of the EnergyStar inspection. This stuff is really educational and interesting, though reading for too long can put me to sleep a little.
So, that's about all I've been doing. I went out on my first two days with a rater. Both were rather unusual single-test outings, the first because Jonathan had forgotten to do it before (it was his first time doing that kind of inspection), and the second time because the house had failed the test the first time and they'd solved the problem. Since then I haven't gone out at all.
"But what about the drooling things?" asks the diligent reader. Well, we've had some visitors recently. On Wednesday of this past week, one of the CET raters brought his 9.5 month-old daughter in for a visit. Her name was Chloe and she was all wide-eyed and super-cute. She was in a very good mood and didn't cry at all. She walked a little, supported by her dad's fingers. Everyone in the office was a tad distracted that afternoon.
Then on Thursday and Friday, Beth, one of our Northampton office raters, brought in a dog that she's taking care of for a friend. The dog is a female rottweiler-huskie mix, is young but not a puppy, and has one brown and one blue eye. Her name's Suzzy and she's extremely friendly and just a pleasure to have in the office. I love dogs. She'll be back some next week, then is going back to her owner.
I think the last thing I have to talk about is my networking experience. I'll get to that in the next post. Then I'll be caught up! Yay!