Outdoors now

Go outside and visually inspect for leaks. Use your imagination. And remem-

ber: When in doubt, squirt caulk! What’s the worst that can happen? Here are

some places to pay special attention to:

 ✓ Look at faucets, pipes, electrical wiring, and electric outlets. Cracks

often form around the junctions where the pipes fit through foundations

and siding; fix these with caulk. Even if you’re only sealing off your base-

ment, which you’re not heating or cooling, you’ll be better off inside the

upper part of the house .

✓ Check all interfaces between two different building materials. Bricks

to foundation; interior corners with molding strips; where siding and

foundations meet; roofs to siding; and so on. Plug all holes and voids

with caulk — the good stuff.

 If icicles are clustering around a particular location at your house, you

have a leak somewhere above that’s melting snow. The water drips

down and then refreezes into icicles. These leaks are usually pretty good

sized and easy to locate and fix.

 ✓ Look for cracks in mortar, foundations, siding, and so on. Seal these

with appropriate materials.

 ✓ Check for cracks and voids around exterior doors and windows. These

gaps may not result in air leaks inside the house, but while you’re in

your grungy clothes and the proper mood, you may as well seal water

leaks to prevent damage that could cost money and turn into air leaks.

 ✓ Check storm windows for seal integrity. The interior window may be

well sealed, but the storm window will work better if it’s also sealed.Conserving Energy without

Reducing Quality of Life

Conserving energy reduces greenhouse gases, relieves the strain on natural

resources, lowers energy costs, and eases the manmade assault on Mother

Nature. There seems to be an inherent assumption that energy conserva-

tion also entails a reduction in quality of lifestyle, but Europeans use far less

energy than North Americans, and arguing that their lifestyles are any worse

than ours would be difficult. In Europe, energy efficiency has been ingrained

for a long time to the point where it’s a self-perpetuating logic of its own.

On a residential street, most of the houses are similar. The people living

inside don’t look the same, but culturally, they’re similar. They’re in the same

neighborhood, after all. But one house may be paying $400 a month in power

bills while the other is only paying $50. You can see an equivalent difference

in their carbon footprints. (For more on carbon footprints, see Chapter 1.)

Yet by all external accounts, both houses enjoy the same quality of life.

The house with the lower power bills has solar equipment installed on its

roof. And it probably has deciduous trees on the southern front. It looks

better for it, especially in the autumn. It has solar light tubes in the kitchen

so that lights aren’t on very often. The occupants open and close windows to

optimize ventilation. They use space heaters in winter and turn their thermo-

stats down, but they wear sweaters so they’re just as warm.

Here are some more things you may notice about the efficient house:

 ✓ It’s darker at night.

 ✓ The garage door is closed all the time.

 ✓ Blinds and awnings are opened and closed a lot, depending on conditions.

 ✓ Solar tubes and skylights are visible on the roof.

 ✓ A clothesline bisects the backyard.

 ✓ The noise pollution from an HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-

conditioning system) is much less because it’s used much less.

 ✓ You don’t hear a TV on all the time.

You get the picture. Both houses have the same quality of life, but there’s a

very big difference.Lighting

Most households have a good number of lights on at the same time (some even

during the daylight hours!). Basic logic suggests that you don’t need more than

one light per person turned on at any give time, but let’s be practical — lighting

affects ambience quite a bit. It can make a room seem much more inviting, soft-

ening the hard edges and implying security and well being. Lighting can magnify

the best features of your house, both inside and out, and it’s not reasonable to

reduce lighting to the strict task of functionality.

Lighting (and darkening) the interior

You can probably do better with your lights. Do you turn them on by habit

or necessity? Sure, the house looks nice and warm with a bunch of incandes-

cents burning away, but you’re an emancipated energy slave now, and it’s

time to revert to darkness. Let there be dark!

 Take a look at some tips:

 ✓ Here’s some bottom-line logic you can’t argue with: One light bulb per

person in on the house at any given time.

 ✓ If you want a dimmer, just use lower wattage bulbs. Dimmers don’t save

energy; they just consume it differently. Experiment with lower wattage

bulbs; if you don’t like the result, go back. But you’ll probably find that

lower wattages work just fine. In fact, lower wattage bulbs tend to have

a warmer tone, so odds are you’ll like them. Since they run cooler, they

last longer as well. You save on your electric bill, and you also save by

not having to change your light bulbs as often.

 Incandescents are inefficient because they put out a lot of heat along with

their light (a typical incandescent is only 10 percent efficient; in other words,

a 100-watt bulb is putting out 90 watts of heat and only 10 watts of light; that’s

the reason so many utilities are encouraging and subsidizing the use of fluo-

rescents). Using incandescents makes even less sense in the summer, when

you’re trying to cool your houseCooking appliances

Limit heat from cooking. You can turn your oven off before food is finished

cooking, especially in the summer. Don’t preheat your oven, like it tells you

to do in the recipe. It doesn’t really make any difference in the quality of the

final product; you just have to pay more attention to when the food is done.

And in the summer, whatever heat you generate in your oven will eventually

bleed into your house, so that exact amount of heat will have to be offset

by your air conditioner. You also get this added heat when you cook on the

stovetop.

 Use the barbecue in the summer to cook all your food, including vegetables.

Gas barbecues are much better for the environment than charcoal, and

because they’re much more convenient, you’ll be more inclined to use them.

And contrary to what a lot of barbecue aficionados claim, gas barbecues don’t

smell bad. Besides, most people who use charcoals squirt a bunch of nasty

lighter fluid over the coals, which is terrible for the environment and in some

communities, it’s banned altogether. If you insist on charcoal, use an electric

starter instead of lighter fluid.

Microwaves are the most efficient way to heat foods, but sometimes they’re

not practical because of the astringent textures that result. Toaster ovens

provide a happy median, and I recommend sitting one next to your micro-

wave. Get one with a timer, or at some point, you’ll forget what you’re doing,

burn something, set off the smoke alarms, and wake up the dog.

Or you can use a solar oven, which effectively captures solar radiation into

a confined, insulated space to heat just like a conventional oven but with no

energy cost and no pollution