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Cutting your carbon footprint, Part 2

by Jason Moore
Friday, November 14, 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- She's lived in the house since it was built in 1978, but Anchorage School District Superintendent Carol Comeau hopes to improve her home.

With the help of experts in the area of clean energy, conservation, and efficiency, the Comeaus set out to lower their energy bills by 25 percent.

First, there was an evaluation of the home. Now they are set to make the necessary changes.

The hardware store isn't a place Comeau is most familiar with, but she has help.

"One of the most overlooked items in your home for energy is the foam insulation," a Home Depot employee said.

Carol and her husband Dennis make their way through the store ordering big ticket items, including a new garage door.

"You've got some choices here. No insulation, a one-and-three-eighths (-inch) insulation and a two-inch insulation, which gives you the most R-value, that one," " said a Home Depot employee pointing to some  insulation. "And you are going to want that installed."

But there are also smaller items like a brush for refrigerator dust that costs $3.99.

"What it does, it will remove all the debris and dust and cobwebs," a Home Depot employee said.

There are also Styrofoam insulation panels and fluorescent light bulbs.

"This actually is equivalent of 65 watts of actual light output, versus a consumption of 14 watts, so you're really buying a 14-watt bulb that's giving you that equivalent light," said a Home Depot employee.

It amounts to small investments for big savings.

Back at home, Carol uses her $4 brush for a three-minute job.

Consultant Andy Baker calls this "low-hanging fruit" for energy savings.

"The compressor for the refrigerator has to work much harder when the coils get full of dust, so when you clean the dust off you should reduce your energy use by 10 to 15 percent," Baker said.

Other easy changes include a programmable thermostat.

"(We set it) down two degrees at night, so we should be able to conserve some energy there, and we don't need the heat on that much at night," Carol said.

Dennis puts $0.98 foam gaskets around the electrical outlets, as every little bit helps. Carol handles changing the light bulbs to achieve about a 75 percent saving.

"You forget I started out as a noon duty attendant at Ocean View (Elementary)," Carol said.

In the garage, Dennis insulates the pipe coming out of the hot water tank.

"The hot water is 120 degrees, and you can feel in the garage it's about 50 degrees in here, so the hot water pipe comes out of the  tank and without insulation it's just radiating heat out into the garage," Baker said.

Carol says she has learned a lot through this experience.

"If you really go about identifying what the issues are and really chipping away at trying to reduce your energy consumption, it's a good thing," Comeau said.

Carol found an excuse to go back to work when it came to the crawl space. Here, Dennis and Andy work on gluing the Styrofoam insulation to the concrete foundation walls.

"Above us we have an uninsulated floor on the first floor of their house, so that's a heated space, so heat is being pulled down through this floor and out through this concrete wall," Baker said. "So when we add insulation to this wall we're going to stop that heat flow."

"We're paying for it," Dennis said. "We just have been doing it for 30 years, and now we want to stop that, and if we did everything on the list we'd probably save 25 or 28 percent in energy savings."

On their big windows they'll be installing cellular shades.

"About 90 percent of the heat loss through this wall is going right through the window," Baker said. "So in this window the glass surface is here and we want to get the cellular shade a half-inch to a quarter-inch off the glass. So if we mount the top of the shade on this surface then the shade can rest against this frame."

It's all just a lot of small things that can lead to big savings, as well as a home lesson the superintendent may be taking to work.