It’s a little known fact that this winter will be the first in which Massachusetts requires home heating oil to include at least 2% biofuels, rising 1 percentage point each year until it reaches 5% in 2012. In 2009, that creates a 24 million gallon demand, and Baystate Biofuels is here to fill it.
The company has taken over the disused tanks at an old Western Telecom building in North Andover and it plans to utilize solar power Osgood Landing had previously installed on the site, and Baystate Biofuels will tap into excess steam from a nearby waste-to-energy incinerator to heat the tanks to lower the viscosity of the pure biodiesel.
Warm Home Cool Planet is checking on whether Baystate will be delivering to Cambridge this winter. In the meantime, check out the video above. More on this soon.
From Canada comes the rather amazing story of Cansolair, a company that reuses soda cans to make solar panels. Once installed, this soda/solar unit can provide up to 30% of the heating for your house. All this in the cloudy, foggy Labrador region. All without adding another CO2 particle to the environment. Maybe Coke knew it was onto something when they introduced this new flavor last year.
Last week, we showed you how a local Cambridge organization (HEET–Home Energy Efficiency Team) ‘weatherizes’ a house for fellow Cambridge residents. Weatherizing a house involves making some basic non-structural changes to a house to reduce the energy needed for heating and cooling and save money on utilities. The homeowner supplies all the materials and HEET provides the knowledge and manpower needed to finish all energy efficiency improvements in a single day.
It’s a great community activity and a fantastic way to meet your fellow Cambridge residents while learning from skilled tradesmen how you can make your own home more energy efficient. And there is always a party to celebrate the completion of another successful Weatherization Barnraising.
The next HEET Weatherization Barnraising is scheduled for Sunday, March 1 between 12:30—5 pm at 120 Chestnut Street and 100 Henry Street, Cambridgeport.
The Work to be carried out on site includes:
Spraying the basement rimjoist using RetroFoam, led by Tom Lawler (the head of RetroFoam, a Massachusetts-based insulation company)
Using Plexiglas to insulate windows
Repairing drywall
Weatherizing doors
Possible building of an insulated cover for an attic hatch
The number of participants will be limited to assure that everyone has guidance and support from a skilled team leader. You can sign up today by contacting Steve Morr-Wineman at swineman@gis.net or 617-876-4753.
You may remember the scene from the 1985 movie Witness starring Harrison Ford. A group of Amish people converge on a neighbor’s property and assemble a barn in a single montage, a single day. A Cambridge-based co-op HEET (for Home Energy Efficiency Team) does weatherization work that’s less lofty, but arguably more important to the modern world. It’s a model for what can be done by harnessing the power of progressive community which emerged during the Obama campaign.
As Bob the Builder might say, ‘Can We Caulk it? Yes we can!’
Combining the materials purchased by the homeowner with free knowhow and labor from HEET, the team has weatherized several low-income homes in Cambridge, with the goal of performing a barn-raising per month. As they do so, they transfer the skills needed to make—and keep— a home more energy efficient to both homeowners and groups of new volunteers. The energy savings persist, putting cash in the pockets of Cambridge residents, which can be spent in the local economy in different ways—a Cambridge mini-stimulus.
HEET grew out of neighborhood organization called GreenPort. The purpose of both groups, according to co-founder Steve Morr-Wineman, is to bring neighbors together to respond to the environmental crisis. A recent project included weatherizing the Cambridgeport Public School, a pioneering public-private-volunteer collaboration with the savings going back to Cambridge’s tax-payers.
Daily KOS thinks the model needs to go national, and so does Warm Home Cool Planet.
Somerville, MA will soon hold their first weatherization barnraising and Watertown, Brookline, Lexington, Medford, Milton, Newton, Beverly, and Boston are thinking about starting their own groups. I think it would be a good idea for this idea to go nation-wide. In fact, a weatherization barnraising on the White House might be a very good way to kick-start that process.
Our hats off to the HEET team. You’re doing great work. Expect to hear from us soon.
If one does a Google search on ‘keeping warm in the winter,’ you’ll find dozens of articles from all over the world, with tips and advice on how to keep warm without breaking the bank. There’s a lot of overlap in these lists, but occasionally you find a unique idea or two. Many of these lists are aimed at the elderly, who have to balance warmth issues with other issues (avoiding slips and falls). You’ll also find a great deal of disagreement about the safety and utility of closing off vents in unused parts of a structure heated by a forced air furnace.
The tips are all common-sensical. But one thing we’ve noticed at Warm Home Cool Planet, if you pile up enough common sense, you frequently find you’ve created an uncommonly useful resource. We read through dozens of postings with the reality of Cambridge winter in mind.
Our Survey of Surveys found the following categories of suggestions:
Eliminate drafts—It’s not just about saving money and the planet, it’s about comfort. One thing we hadn’t seen before were these insulated window blinds with magnetic seals at the edges, which come from, no surprise, Montana.
Set up a warm room safely—(without causing furnace problems; this means being careful about how many heating vents, if any, you shut. One rule of thumb is to never shut vents that supply more than 15% of your homes total cubic heating volume, and if you are using a heat pump, don’t shut off vents ever, period.)
Dress in air-trapping thin layers—much discussion of thermal underwear; downhill skiers seem to know a lot about this.
Exercise moderately and appropriately for your age and physical condition.
Eat and drink enough; eat and drink warm things.
Only use space heaters safely and responsibly. If you die, you will soon grow cold and the space heater will be a waste of money.
The details of an interesting program to encourage energy efficiency in Utah just crossed our desk here at Warm Home Cool Planet.
The Energy Services Efficiency Program… eases the financial burden of making large changes that lower the energy load on the power grid, such as better insulation, more efficient air conditioning systems and improved swimming pool pumps.The rebates could pay more than $500 for improved attic insulation, $350 for a new air conditioning unit and up to $125 for a better swimming pool pump.
Warm Home Cool Planet supports this idea because it achieves two things. It ties the reduction of energy use in each house to specific improvements, and it helps the homeowner make the capital investment in what are becoming tough times for all. Looking at the photo below, it seem like the folks in Utah are getting with the program too:
Larry Morrison, also with Morrison Insulation, said when he learned about such rebates last year, he started alerting all of his customers to the possible benefits. He said it costs about 50 cents per square foot for a typical installation, while rebate programs would reimburse for 35 cents per square foot – as both the St. George and Questar programs do.
The accepted wisdom is at least 50% of the energy used in our homes is for heating and cooling. That is particularly true for residents in the North-East Corridor and the Midwest, who routinely shiver through winter and swelter throughout the summer months.
The Department of Energy says every house has an R-value, which is your home’s built-in effectiveness at retaining the heat generated within your home. They have even provided a calculator that recommends various insulation improvements to reduce the effect of climatic changes outside your four walls.
Warm Home Cool Planet input their data and found the results… a little confusing. Try it yourself though.
To find out more about R-values, you’ll find this explanation enlightening. Particularly the part explaining why simply putting more insulation in your walls won’t cut your energy bills by 50%.
For those Warm Home Cool Planet readers who passed high-school physics, this Wikipedia stub on thermal resistance makes useful reading before starting an energy-efficient renovation.
