I liked the perspective of this video short…Earth is infested with humans. It’s good to step outside our typical point of view that we are the center of the universe. Maybe we are just parasites.
Please note this is graphic and may be offensive to some.
Humans! from three legged legs on Vimeo.
Building Alternatives performs residential energy audits
Back in May of this year, we had an energy audit done on the house. I was very excited to have this done for two reasons. One, because I hoped we would identify a flaw that if fixed would save us money and I had hoped we could qualify for energy rebate to curb the cost. Second, because I love the science and tech of it. However, I should have known that it wouldn’t be all fireworks and streamers when I entered our electric and propane usage into the energy calculators and it determined us to be “in the green”. The truth is, our house is fairly tight-sealed. We had good windows (double paned argon gas)…possibly the sills could be sealed with spray foam. Also, we have air leaks in expected places for a log home (the corners). The main place where we had room for improvement was the “attic” but it would be too costly to be worth it. Now I put “attic” in quotes because we don’t have one. We have metal roof, fiberglass insulation, and v-grove pine board paneling. There is room for improvement there because we could have more efficient foam board or blown insulation.
See how the audit was done in these videos:
Overall, I’m glad we did this because I got to see the process, but my advice is, if the energy calculator shows you in the green, leave it be. Naturally, we still want to replace our traditional water heater with a tankless water heater. Surely, we’d love to install solar panels and perhaps a wind turbine. But these things will not be to save money in any less than 20 years. These things will be simply because we don’t want to waste energy, especially free energy. It’s my dream to be off the grid!