Duh. This is the low hanging fruit. We did air sealing on 3 houses last weekend, and they probably are going to save hundreds of dollars in heating oil this winter.

No doubt. Increase efficiency plus the plummeting cost of solar panels (see nanosolar) will result in HUGE savings on traditional energy sources.

It will be years before individuals can buy Nanosolar panels for residential use. Everything is tied up in large-scale installations.

If by years you mean 5 years, then I'd say yes. in the meantime DOW is already putting out a product:

http://cleantechnica.com/2009/10/06/sol ... -unveiled/



BTW Mos, how do you do those animations? I'd like to start a satirical look at doomers called "We're doomed"; the premise is the main character sees doom around every corner.

Maybe Obama can send everyone a can of "Great Stuff" foam... That should help solve our problems!

Lets see - 350 million cans of foam applied in the right places to stop infiltration -- I predict a payback time of about 3 days.

You are right - he should do it.

IIRC the thin film manufacturers are only about $.5/W cheaper than the cheaper on-grid panels, and pretty much identical in price to the non-UL stuff, so it isn't as if we need thin film to ride to the rescue.

Efficiency is our greatest untapped source of energy.

-Amory Lovins

That just means thin film isn't cheap enough. Last I checked there isn't a flood of people installing PV solar.

When did you check? CA installed half of all of 2008's capacity in one quarter, which was equal to all of 2007's installed capacity. There appears to be a lot of people interested in PV installs.

Course, just because it's cheap enough to install doesn't mean it's cheap enough for everyone to consider. The average person w/ a 30 year fixed rate loan paying it off over 30 years ends up paying more than twice the loan amount. So if people are willing to pay twice what something like a house is worth in interest just to have lower monthly payments, I doubt they would consider a solar panel system even if the panels were free since and the system paid itself off in two years because it represents a lump sum payment that's larger than the monthly electric bill.

There are always going to be people that will trade lower payments now for greater debt later, but that doesn't mean that panel prices aren't cheap enough for those who care more about lower long run costs, thin film or otherwise.

Potential savings are incredible in my region of the Northeast due to 1800s to early 1900s housing stock .

Many large homes are still uninsulated, poorly insulated, poorly weatherized, have single pane windows and grossly oversized, grossly inefficient 50 plus year old boilers, furnaces, coal-conversion units etc.

We just serviced a 3,600 sq/ft Colonial with no insulation, single pane windows, one 1930s oil fired hot water boiler, two 1960s oil-fired steam boilers and two 1970s oil fired hot water heaters providing heat/hot water to two extra apartments. They used about 4,000 gallons of heating oil last year.


In addition, many homes have no zoning, so their oversized, inefficient boilers are heating several zones they're not using.

Many of our customers with inefficient boilers with tankless coils use incredible amounts of heating oil just to provide domestic hot water. Their boilers cycle on and off many times during the day just to maintain temperature when there's no demand for hot water.

Since many systems are poorly designed, there's an incredible waste of energy due to short cycling, jacket loss, stand-by loss, chimney loss, piping loss, ghost flow (from lack of/non functional flo-check valves) poor burner tuning etc.

Many of the installers and service people in the market don't have the knowledge, skills, tools and equipment necessary to design, install and service and tune highly effificient hydronic systems. Even those with the proper tools and knowledge don't use them since time is money.


It's pretty common for our construction, heating and heating fuel customers to use 50 percent less fuel by simply replacing their inefficient boiler/tankless coil with a high efficiency boiler, indirect water heater and outdoor reset control. Zoning saves even more.

I've saved some of our customers 20 to 30 percent by upgrading their burners, downfiring their boilers and tuning their systems properly.

I just had a call the other day form a customer with no flow check valves isolating their heating zones form their indirect water heater. Their system was heating their baseboards zones all summer, so they burned up all their propane, plus their A/C was working overtime to overcome the heat from their baseboard heating system.

Many of our customers won't replace their existing inefficient equipment since HEAP and Emergency HEAP provide them with free fuel.

The free furnace/boiler replacement programs also don't pay enough for high quality, high efficiency installations.

I've noticed a similar situation regarding PA's low income energy assistance. They seem to only want to create the impression of solving the problem.

Your company focuses only on hydronics? Do you only work with the state assistance programs or also have retail customers? What's your take on the weatherization/insulation programs side of the equation?

We service and install oil/gas/propane fired residential/commercial hydronic, steam, forced air and hybrid systems, but there are more boilers than furnaces in many regions we service, especially in older homes and buildings.

Subsidized heating fuel customers and subsidized furnace/boiler service/repair/replacement customers are a relatively small part of our business by choice, but this customer base has grown as the income qualification limits have increased.

Most of the subsidized furnace/boiler replacement work is low bid cut-and-run work, so we avoid it unless it's to help a long term customer.

We're swamped with non subsidized annual service, service contract, standard service, emergency service and installation work, so we don't mess with low bid work, highly competitive bid work, low margin work, non-customer warranty work, paperwork, approvals, red tape, fronting large amounts of money and waiting to get paid.

Servicing the older equipment is an expensive, time consuming, dirty job, so we've dropped many of these non-subsidized customers as well. To make money doing subsidized service, you'd have to cut a lot of corners since annual service on some of the large older units requires 3 plus hours of labor, plus tons of refractory, high temp silicone, oddball filters/nozzles/pump strainers, extra vacuum bags etc. We could service 2/3/4 modern units in that time @ $150 to $250 per unit vs $150 for the single subsidized service unit.

Many of these older units contain, asbestos and vermiculite, plus they're generally filthy to service as well. Many people doing cut-rate service vacuum these units with cheap non commercial vacuums and never wear gloves or respirators.

IMO, the winterization/weatherization and furnace/boiler replacement programs make more sense than buying fuel for customers with uninsulated/poorly insulated homes and/or grossly inefficient heating systems. Many of these customers have much less financial incentive to weatherize, replace grossly inefficient equipment, or turn down thermostats since HEAP/Emergency HEAP pays for much of their fuel.