For the last year and a half, Ken Ward and Andrée Zaleska have been rehabbing a 100-year-old former neighborhood store in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. They're converting it into a home for their combined family, a community gathering place, and a zero-carbon demonstration home to inspire others -- and sharing their journey in the special series Coming Home: Chronicling the (re)invention of the JP Green House.

The firm overseeing the project, Placetailor, specializes in creating homes on the Passive House model, in which supertight insulation and careful use of passive solar create a building that requires no heating source. The JP Green House will be one of the first Passive House rehabs in the U.S. Photographer Leise Jones has documented the work of as it progresses, and shares some of her images here.

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Q. Dear Umbra,

I've taken to washing my hair less and less often to keep it from drying out. Since I've switched to the "no-'poo" method (baking soda followed by a vinegar rinse) it stays cleaner longer. However, I still take a shower (brief and lukewarm) most days. To keep my curly hair from becoming totally frizzy in the humidity of the shower, I typically cover it with a shower cap. My current cap is wearing out and I'm going to need a new one soon -- but your simple rule of "no vinyl and that's final!" keeps resounding in my head. Every shower cap I've seen is made of vinyl, except for those cheap plastic ones in hotel rooms. What's a girl to do?

Curly Girl
Pittsburgh, Penn.

A. Dearest Curly Girl,

Or a nice felt hat always does the trick.Have you ever noticed that the hair is always greener on the other side of the fence? I know straight-haired gals who would kill to have your tress-related troubles, and I imagine there are days when you wouldn't mind a mane that's a bit more manageable.

I commend you on your shift away from conventional beauty products, which are so often toxic, and on your commitment to a vinyl-free lifestyle. How cockle-warming to see my message sinking in!

I've done a bit of scouring on your behalf, and I think I've found a couple of possible solutions, though they may be difficult to track down. You're certainly right that vinyl is the most common, but I also came across caps made from other, marginally better materials, including nylon and polypropylene. But here is my big discovery: cotton and silk! It seems counterintuitive, but according to reliable sources, these are lovely materials for shower caps. You can buy cute patterned varieties from various places online, with a little looking. Of course, cotton and silk have their own eco-impacts -- so, dearest readers, one of you should create an organic-cotton shower-cap business, stat.

I suppose your other option might be to ... wear a plastic grocery bag over your hair, securing it with clips or a headband? An ingenious reuse for a pesky object.

Tangly,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

I started a green team at my office and one of our initiatives is reducing energy consumption. The team had recommended turning off the computers at night and when not in use. Seems logical, right? Well, the IT department denied our efforts and recommends keeping computers on 24/7. I'm horrified! The rationale is that turning on and off your computer changes the internal temperature of the equipment and adds to the wear and tear. I need some data to back up our green claim that it is better and safe to shut down the computers. Can you please help?

Nervously awaiting,
Jennifer

A. Dearest Jennifer,

Little-known fact: I actually keep my computer turned off 24 hours a day. I just peek at my inbox over my editor's shoulder, scribble my answers on recycled paper, and make her type them in. Saves boatloads of energy.

Congratulations on the formation of your green team, and condolences on the fact that you have already been strongarmed. I suspect it will not be the last time, as earnest eco-efforts are not always welcomed by those whose habits and patterns they affect.

There are two answers to your question, as far as I see it: a factual one and a philosophical one. The factual answer is, reputable sources including the U.S. Department of Energy say it is A-OK to turn your computer off at night, and that the various "wear and tear" arguments are no longer accurate. (Here is a fact sheet from the Oregon DEQ that, while a bit dated, cites many useful resources you might peruse.) The philosophical answer is, don't ever, ever, ever alienate your IT department. Even for the sake of saving the planet.

I think there may be some middle ground here: more and more computers have a "hibernate" function, which is similar to a sleep function but even, well, sleepier. Talk to your IT people to find out if there's a way to send all the computers happily into hibernation at the end of the day. Yes, they will still use a bit of energy, but far less than if they were left in full on mode, humming along. Other key things to do: turn off your monitor whenever you won't be using it for 15 to 20 minutes. And remember that a screen saver is not an energy-saver; in fact, most screen savers are energy hogs.

Now go buy the IT guys some cookies, and keep up the good work.

RAMly,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

I am so utterly sick of getting junk mail, is there anything we can do to stop it? In the age of the internet spam, is it really so impossible to just outlaw it? I can swallow deleting junkmail, but I can't swallow how much of it has to be tossed.

Carey S.
Missoula, Mont.

A. Dearest Carey,

In a sense, old-fashioned junk mail is less offensive than spam. After all, when was the last time an envelope arrived at your house promising to enlarge your manhood or sell you cheap Rolex watches?

On the other hand, the sheer mass of junk mail is offensive indeed: each of us in the U.S. receives about 560 pieces a year, according to Co-op America, and all that "direct mail" (that's the nice name for it) adds up to the equivalent of more than 100 million trees. While the bad economy has led to a steep decline in junk mail sent this year, "they" predict a comeback; real mail is still considered more effective for advertising than e-mail, which is too easy to delete.

The good news is, there are steps you can take to slow the stream of junk mail to your home. First of all, avoid entering contests, filling out warranties, and giving your address on forms -- if you must do so, write "do not rent or sell my information" alongside. Go to the Direct Marketing Assocation site to register your preferences, or use a service such as 41pounds.org (which charges $41 for five years of mail stoppage, but promises a more thorough excavation than DMA). To reduce the catalogues that come (and 'tis the season, 'tisn't it?), visit Catalog Choice or contact merchandisers directly. To be removed from the list for credit card offers, call 888-5-OPTOUT. And if you're a business, see this list of tips for junk-mail reduction from our friends here in King County, Washington.

As for outlawing junk mail entirely, it seems unlikely to happen. And various efforts to create a federal "Do Not Mail" list along the lines of the "Do Not Call" list haven't led to much (except for a suspicious industry-led imitation). If you're feeling feisty, and you believe in online petitions, you can sign this petition urging Congress to take action. Otherwise, take the steps above -- and recycle, recycle, recycle.

Papercutly,
Umbra

Related Links:

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This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!

This interview is part of a series on people who are making their communities smarter, greener places to live. Got a nomination? Leave it in the comments section or send it along to us.

Winner of Project Laundry List’s 2009 “Art on the Line” competition. Daisey BinghamAlexander Lee founded Project Laundry List as a Middlebury College undergrad in 1995, after hearing Dr. Helen Caldicott say we could shut down the nuclear industry if we all did things like hang out our clothes. He’s been true to the cause ever since, pushing for clotheslines across the land—even at the White House. Grist caught up with him to find out how hanging out can make for better neighborhoods, what clotheslines have to do with climate change, and why laundry stigmas are as persistent as wine stains.

Q. You created and run Project Laundry List—why, and what are its goals?

A. Growing up, my mother had always referred to herself as Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (the prickly laundress in Beatrix Potter’s series) and the clothesline was much less a pennant of the eco-chic, as it is becoming today through our work, than a flag of New England Yankee frugality. Helen’s idea resonated with me and we started a subgroup of the environmental club. We asked people to put themselves on the line and come hang out with us, and the puns haven’t stopped.

Our mission has evolved to focus on “making air-drying and cold-water washing laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy.” This really only became my day job in 2007, after years as a teacher, law student, public utilities commission staffer, and political campaigner. I get paid roughly minimum wage, mostly raised through selling clotheslines and drying racks. I work a bazillion hours. We have never really written grants. There is no time for that nonsense when the house is burning down. This is a work of love and passion, motivated by an abiding sense that we are in planetary crisis. Not much sense in working for Lehman Brothers and laying up treasure, like many of my classmates did, when ain’t none of it gunna matter if we don’t get ahold of the climate monster. I am just not the type to drink martinis and listen to Mozart as the Titanic is sinking.

Raise your hand if you believe in the right to dry!Couresty Project Laundry ListI am inspired by people like Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, to live and work as I do, but I fall way short. Furthermore, I am too irreverent and incorrigible to be as good a Catholic as she. An editor for my forthcoming book (More Time to Hang) likened me, somewhat admiringly, to a monk. I grunted and then chuckled, remembering Dorothy’s rebuke to somebody calling her a saint: “I won’t be dismissed so easily.” In July 2008, ABC World News, in their story on the right to dry, referred to me as “a 33 year-old bachelor lawyer from Concord, NH.” That conjures up another image, entirely. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Q. The clothesline issue seems to have gotten a lot of press in the last year or two—to what do you attribute that? Does it surprise you?

A. No surprise. People love to talk about laundry and everybody, everybody is an expert. Laundry is a universal human experience that is tactile, olfactory, and sentimental. Nearly everybody of a certain age has their own story of twirling among the bedsheets pinned on a clothesline with a grandmother or parent. Consumers like the smell so much that Yankee Candle has four scents meant to remind us of clothes drying on the line. (Forget that they mostly smell like dryer sheets.)

We have received mention in the WSJ twice, ABC World News and the CBS Sunday Morning Show, and NPR and The New York Times (seven times!). We have a meme that works, but the clothesline is just a “gateway drug” to better environmental living. It is a jumping off point to talk about the failure of the fourth layer of government (“community” associations); to talk about clothing care issues more generally, like we are doing with the Permacouture Institute through our New Again Coalition; to talk about why taxpayers foot the bill to wash prison uniforms in hot water; and to think about so much else.

Q. I’m always taken aback when I hear about places that don’t allow clotheslines, and then I assume they’re gated communities in sprawling places. Is that generally true? And are the bans are a reflection of some sort of stigma?

Lee (left) with Canadian folk singer and children’s TV personality Fred Penner, sporting a clothesline tie. Courtesy Project Laundry ListA. Truth is, clotheslines are banned or severely restricted by landlords and mobile home parks, too. It is not just the super-wealthy who are afraid of some mythic property value decrease if a neighbor shows some thong on the line.

The Italians—only 3 to 4 percent of them own a dryer—think we are crazy. They are a fashion-conscious, industrialized nation. We could take a page from their book. By contrast, about 80 percent of American households own a dryer, but good news: for the first time last year, we did see a drastic decrease in the number of Americans who see the dryer as essential.

There are five major objections to the clothesline that I confront all of the time: Prudery, snobbery, liability/safety, convenience, and feminism. I could write a book (I am writing a book) full of anecdotes that paint a picture of an America looking for any reason not to use a clothesline. The excuses range from the absurd to the comical. In both Connecticut and New Hampshire, shills for the local chapters of the Community Association Institute testified against Right to Dry legislation, claiming that the clothesline is a liability. Somebody might walk into one in the common area of a condominium and sue the association, they claimed. Never mind that, according to the National Fire Prevention Association, dryers cause 15,000 fires every year, resulting in 10-15 deaths and $200 million in property damage.

Michelle Obama put in that garden at the White House and I said, on Facebook, “Maybe a clothesline will be next.” Within minutes someone asked me if I was being racist or snarky. He was surprised to learn we had been pushing for a White House clothesline since 2007 on www.right2dry.org. That is what we are up against here. Stigma.

In response to the Times debate I wrote a piece for, a woman proclaimed, “You’ll pry my clothes dryer out of my cold dead hands.” Project Laundry List is not telling her she cannot have a dryer. Feminism is about choices. We are telling her that if she has a dryer, the oceans may rise and her front porch will get wet. Tough choices for some.

We are not anti-dryer; we are pro-clothesline. If you cannot get up out of your wheelchair or you have debilitating allergies for part of the year, the dryer makes sense and is a marvelous invention, but the real problem is not the millions of Americans disallowed from hanging clothes, it is the hundreds of millions of Americans who refuse to get up, go outside for some fresh air and sunshine, talk over the fence with their neighbors, and mindfully take time to do an essential human task. By my estimate five billion plus people in the world manage fine without a dryer. It may not be “easy living,” but it beats having the ocean lapping at your door.

Q. What promise do better laundry habits hold for individuals? What about for climate?

A. Life is about choices. We should sweat the small stuff, because small is beautiful; however, we can ill afford not to sweat the big stuff. A report that just came out concluded that if Americans would hang their laundry out to dry, along with 16 other small steps, they could slash U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 7.4 per cent by 2019. This is a studiously conservative study. We can do more, faster. I know we can, in my unscientific gut.

As far as laundry itself, we do a terrible job of measuring its true national energy impact. It is okay to look at the average household energy used by a fridge, but when you have over 2 million households doing fifteen loads or more per week and others skewing the average by doing laundry down the hall or at a Laundromat, the 5.9 percent figure, which is the average American residential electric use for the tumble dryer, tells you almost nothing. There are 2 million people in jail in this country and millions spent last night in a hotel, hospital, or nursing home. We do not submeter commercial or industrial laundry facilities to see how much they are using. All that laundry done for restaurants, universities, fish piers, etc., goes unaccounted for.

Q. You spent the summer on a “Clotheslines Across America” tour—what are the most memorable things you saw and heard?

World’s largest—and solar-powered to boot!Courtesy Alex LeeA. The tour started on my 35th birthday in New York City. The purpose was to have fun and meet some of our supporters. I wanted to see this country, see the holy ground that people like my uncle, a Marine lieutenant in Korea, died to protect. I met somebody at the giant clothespin sculpture in Philadelphia who had supported us for over a decade!

Another primary purpose was to provide material for a movie that is being made called Drying for Freedom—watch the trailer. The interviews that we did in Kentucky, visiting the World’s Largest Laundromat (solar hot water!) just outside Chicago, standing beneath the Arch in St. Louis on the Saturday morning of Parkapalooza, and watching a baseball game with Gov Pat Quinn of Illinois (we want a major league team to do a “Line Dry” event next year) were a couple of the highlights. I had the most fun doing a photo shoot with a pin-up girl in Philly so that we can make a poster that asks, “Why Don’t More Men Hang Out the Laundry?!” She was watching as I did the dirty work… and don’t worry, it was tasteful! Maybe every Hollywood couple can do a similar photo shoot with Celeste Giuliano (the awesome photographer) and we can produce a whole calendar on this theme.

Q. What will it take to get every U.S. municipality to give its citizens the “right to dry”?

A. What will it take to get every utility company in the country to give away clotheslines to its customers, like Toronto Hydro and BC Hydro have done in Canada? Couldn’t they give away racks, too? What will it take to get these places you are asking about to allow xeriscaping, compost piles, window AC units and screen windows (so people don’t get central air), and gardens? Maybe some really good designer drugs from Aldous Huxley. Maybe the Community Association Institute making this an organizational priority.

Q. What eco-worry keeps you up at night?

A. Environmentalists have this fascination with carbon dioxide. It is time for them to start paying attention to methane, before the proverbial cow pie hits the electric fan.  To understand why methane is 72 times worse than carbon dioxide over a twenty year period, read Wikipedia. Particularly, I am worried that New England governors are about to encourage Hydro-Quebec to build more dams when nobody can show me any peer-reviewed evidence that rotting vegetation in temperate hydroelectric reservoirs are not a major producer of greenhouse gases. I have been working with the Cree since the early 1990s on this and have paddled the Rupert River—just dammed this year—five times.

Q. Anything else you want people to know about your work?

A. Without throwing about academic terms like Jevons Paradox and the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate, I just want to say that heroes of mine, like Amory Lovins, who have asked us to invest with religious fervor in the concept of energy efficiency, have forgotten that we need to focus on what happens with all that leftover cash saved through efficiency. If the individual takes that cash and flies to a conference in Copenhagen or buys one of these new drying cabinets that Maytag thinks we need to have next to our dryer, then we have not gained a thing. In fact, it is a setback.

Read More Work for Mother by Ruth Schwartz Cowan and Elizabeth Shove’s book Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience (Berg 2003). Stop putting your faith in sweeping political reforms, like the “clean” nuclear and America is the Saudi Arabia of clean coal mumbo jumbo coming out of our Congress, and start taking some personal responsibility. Congressman Brian Baird is on the right track with his behavior change research bill. New technology is important, but not the silver bullet.

The biggest crisis facing humanity is not campaign finance reform, climate change, nuclear waste and proliferation, or endocrine disruption and our poisoned food, air, or water, but rather how we do our laundry. What if every one of the five billion people without access to a dryer now suddenly had not only a dryer, but a refrigerator, washing machine, and hot water heater in their mud hut? And what’s up with all the wooden clothespins we buy now being “Made in China”? I was made in America and think conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, that you should put on your sweater and turn down the thermostat. It is almost winter, for Pete’s sake.

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Q. Dear Umbra,

I know it's a little early, but I had this great idea for a New Year's resolution. Every month in 2010, I pick a certain eco-area of my life and focus on that for a whole month. So far I have: reduce energy consumption; reduce water consumption; reduce material waste; reuse; recycle; volunteerism/activism; eating local. Finally, I think December will be trying to use everything I've learned and put it all together cohesively. However, my list isn't full, and I'm out of ideas. Do you have any suggestions?

Happy Hippie
Alexandria, Va.

A. Dearest HH,

It's never too early to make good resolutions! I bet you are also stocking up on organic, fair-trade chocolate for Valentine's Day. Three cheers for organization.

Personally, I think a better resolution might be to try to spend the year really, seriously improving on one or two of these areas, rather than flitting about from topic to topic. As you well know, you cannot just "reuse" for a month and be done with it. However, I admire the somewhat wackadoodle structure of your list, and I think you've made a great start on it. You have seven good categories, plus your December free-for-all. So here are four more ideas from me to round out your year: go carless for a month; serve as a public information officer on climate change for a month, helping your friends and family and perhaps strangers understand the issue; spend a month weatherizing your house; and spend a month without the TV on. This last step will help you not only reduce your energy consumption, it will help you reconnect with the real world. You could use the time instead to read deeply on the eco-topic of your choice, or to brush up on green classics.

Readers, any other ideas for HH? Or resolutions of your own? Please share in the comments section below.

Resolvedly,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

I was recently appalled when my 9-year-old son came home from school and related that his teacher had denounced human-caused climate change to the class. I immediately searched for the Grist link I once saw that listed scientists (and academic institutions) who believe otherwise. Unfortunately that link appears to be missing. If not for Grist, where can I find such a list? How should I deal with this situation?

A very worried mother stewing in the climate change pot,

Cate J.
Whitefish, Mont.

A. Dearest Cate,

Just the facts ... please?This really boils my butter. Let me direct you and others to our thorough series on "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic," which refutes various attempts to debunk the science -- it includes a list of some of the scientific organizations that agree about anthropogenic climate change. I'm not sure if it's the list you had in mind, but it should help. And here is a letter sent in late October to every U.S. senator from the country's leading scientific organizations, confirming that research has shown climate change is primarily human caused.

You might also point your child's teacher to the U.S. EPA's resource page for students and educators, or print out the agency's climate FAQ. It is called, notably, "Back to Basics." Because at this point in time, this is basic information: our current climate problem is caused by human activity.

Does this teacher also suggest that gravity may be false and the moon is made of cheese? If he or she insists on continuing to plant seeds of doubt in young minds about scientifically solid information, I would not hesitate to take your concerns to a higher authority.

Factily,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

I am looking for advice about purchasing the best low-flow and/or dual-flush toilet to replace my current one, which I've been told needs a complete replacement due to its age and inability to flush sufficiently. I've heard some use a very low amount of water, but that can often translate into a lack of, well, doing their duty. I'm having a hard time navigating all the brands and claims to fame. Help me wash it all away!

Erica
Portland, Ore.

A. Dearest Erica,

This notion that low-flow toilets are somehow not powerful enough to do their duty lingers on, despite being largely false. It's true that the first generation of low-flows lacked a little oomph, but at this point the major manufacturers have figured out how to keep things moving. And it's worth making the switch: toilets can use up to 30 percent of all our household water. A low-flow toilet uses just 1.6 gallons per flush compared to an older model's three or more gallons, while a high-efficiency model uses a measly 1.28 gpf. Dual-flush toilets, which are my favorite option but tend to be more expensive, usually use less than a gallon for liquid waste and about 1.6 for solid waste.

To be honest, I think if you identify your price range and go with one of the major manufacturers, you'll be fine. But if you are really in the mood to dork out, the California Urban Water Conservation Council has done some extremely thorough "maximum performance" testing, and makes various PDFs available that sort the results by performance, by manufacturer, and so forth. The EPA also offers a list of high-efficiency toilets that have earned its WaterSense seal, as good an endorsement as we currently have. Good luck.

Whooshily,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

In your last column, you talked about what people can do in the weeks leading up to the Copenhagen summit. I wanted to share a site called www.hopenhagen.org that is working on that very issue. There is a useful Facebook application that is associated that has a myriad of actions for just that audience: change out a lightbulb, turn down your water heater, etc.! Is there any way you can write a bit about it in the next post in response to the question? Thanks!

Mary
Santa Cruz, Calif.

A. Dearest Mary,

I think you just have. Thank you for adding to our resources.

Hopily,
Umbra

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Norton hit Congress to testify about the value of green building in 2008.globalwarming.house.govA major investment in making affordable housing greener—a $4 billion investment, to be precise—was announced Wednesday. The injection comes courtesy of Enterprise Community Partners, a 25-year-old non-profit dedicated to community development and affordable housing. With heavyweight partners including NRDC, HUD, and the Home Depot Foundation, Enterprise—which was founded by the grandparents of actor Edward Norton, who sits on its board—has set its sights on overhauling the entire affordable housing stock in this country.

Well, in that pebble-in-a-pond sort of way. The actual $4 billion will be split, with $2.5 billion going toward the construction or retrofit of 75,000 units across the country, and $1.5 billion going toward research and systems reform work. Through its work with state and local governments, Enterprise Green Communities hopes to have an eco-influence on hundreds of thousands more units, and leverage lots of dough. If that’s not enough, its leaders are calling for the country’s entire affordable housing stock—around 30 million households—to be green by 2020.

It’s the kind of energetic, solution-y plan that makes you have real hope for a millisecond. Even if the 30 million households vision doesn’t pan out, there’s real progress to be made. As speaker after speaker pointed out in a conference call this morning (in which Norton was supposed to participate, but he wasn’t there, not that it’s the only reason certain people called in, ha ha, but where was he?), this isn’t greening merely for the sake of environmental progress—it has tangible effects on the health and quality of life of residents, as well as holding the potential for green job creation, energy savings, and significant carbon reduction.

In fact, Enterprise has just rolled out the results from its work over the last few years. In conjunction with its splashy announcement today, it released a report called Incremental Cost, Measurable Savings: Enterprise Green Communities Criteria. Not the hottest title, but it gets at the point that green builders and fans of retrofitting try to make day in and day out: choosing greener options doesn’t cost that much more, and it saves a hell of a lot over the long run.

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Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets

Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price

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Doug Letterman via flickrPop quiz: What saves money, saves energy, creates green jobs, fights climate change, can fix the economy, will make America great again, and is both a floor wax and a dessert topping?

Answer: It’s weatherization! And both the U.S. government and the European Union are embracing its potential.

In a report released today, Joe Biden’s Middle Class Task Force (which, hello: still a terrible name) recommends steps toward a national retrofit program, citing a potential $21 billion in annual energy savings and 40 percent cut in energy use. Specific proposals include: an Energy Star-style labeling program for existing homes; a national home energy performance measure; municipal financing that attaches retrofit costs to homeowners’ tax bills; and national standards for workforce training and certification.

“These recommendations can pave the way for a self-sustaining retrofit market, a market that can reliably cut energy bills while also creating good green jobs and saving consumers money,” says the report. Hear that? Weatherization will save us all.

Next step? Another task force! Yesssss. The interagency Energy Retrofit Working Group will submit an implementation plan to Biden in thirty days. At which point he will create a subcommittee to ... oh hell, just go add some insulation to your attic. We’ll let you know when the good stuff comes.

Meanwhile, across the pond, a draft EU report recommends retrofitting 15 million buildings in Europe over the next decade as part of an “energy efficiency action plan” aimed at cutting energy use by 20 percent. The European Building Initiative would generate about $19.7 billion in savings and could create 300,000 jobs a year, the report estimates: “Investing in energy efficiency in buildings can play a key role in the EU’s economic recovery.”

Hear that? Go on, repeat after me: Weatherization will save us all.

Related Links:

Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets

Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price

Merkley wants Senate jobs bill to help finance building efficiency retrofits

As my family and co-workers will readily attest, I looked forward to my energy audit with disturbing anticipation after I made the appointment about a month ago. I was nearly giddy at the thought of having all my energy-efficiency questions answered: Should I replace my windows? Insulate? Wrap my water heater? Were there huge drafts in my basement that I didn’t know about?

It was a bit like waiting for a first date with someone who came highly recommended. Only with the promise of lower utility bills instead of ... well. Other things.

I was sure this guy would have answers. But there were a few things I didn’t know.

For one thing, I didn’t know he’d look like Wade Boggs. (To baseball fans of a certain age: Aw yeah! Ol’ chicken-chomping panty-lover himself! To everyone else: You had to be there.) I also learned a few other things during the two hours he spent in my drafty house.

1. Utilities are generous ... to a point. When I wrote my post about replacing windows, some readers suggested an energy audit first. I was daunted by the cost, which can be a few hundred dollars, but I discovered that my utility offers free audits through a third-party company. Sweet. This is true in many, many places, and you should see if it’s true in your town—and then, if you can, find out just what services they cover. Because the auditor pointed out something that makes sense, but that I hadn’t really thought about: Utilities can choose how fancy an audit they feel like subsidizing. I think in my case, it was a pretty bare bones version—down to the basement, up to the attic, measure the windows, squint at things, crunch some numbers. But a utility in a nearby town, the auditor told me, has shelled out for infrared scans for any customer. Others subsidize the blower door test, a sort of whole-house draft detector that I now covet.

2. Infrared offers insights ... sometimes. The auditor said infrared scans—which show how much energy a house is losing, and where—are really only useful in a very warm or very cold situation, when the difference between the inside and outside temperatures is enough to register. I can’t confirm this elsewhere, though it sounds logical enough. Science types, please feel free to weigh in.

3. The ol’ “wrap your hot-water heater” tip is out of date. Most heaters are now built with insulation, but some still need that extra love. So how can you tell whether you need to take this step? According to the feds, if your hot-water heater is warm to the touch, it needs to be insulated, and a blanket or jacket can be had for a measly $10 to $20. Either way, keeping it set at 120 (or lower, if you can hack it) will save energy and money.

4. Commercial building managers overlook the obvious. My auditor said he does more commercial than residential audits, and that the companies he visits still need to make really simple, but cost-effective, changes—things like not running the air conditioning all weekend, or turning the lights out when no one’s in the building. Green walls may be more fun, but corporate America could make big gains just by flipping off the lights.

4.5. I have work to do. The good news is, my fella and I just took the plunge and insulated our attic, after two years of muttering about it. But now we need to insulate the basement. Get the furnace inspected, and possibly replaced. Add insulation to the walls (ulp). And do something about those windows.

I spend much of my time at Grist editing columns and videos that cheerily advise our users to take all these steps. But actually doing it? That’s a house of a different color.

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Q. Dear Umbra,

What does a carbon offset do today for the planet? It seems to me like these vehicles are more for our guilty conscience than for real change. What do you think?

Ingrid G.
Chicago, Ill.

A. Dearest Ingrid,

Get involved in the climate fight -- become a Climate Citizen today.I am about to leave carbon offsets behind, but I want to use your letter to do two things: clarify a comment I made in Monday's column, then step up on my cap-and-trade soapbox.

First: I got a little too extreme on Monday what with averring that voluntary personal offsets did not "negate" our actual emissions. It is true that they don't magically erase the nasties you emit. However, if you have chosen a solid, verified provider and your money is going toward projects that would not otherwise exist (again, that's called "additionality"), and the offsetter is accurately counting the tons of carbon removed by the project ... if all those terms are met, the offset does keep an amount of carbon equivalent to your real emissions out of the atmosphere.

However! As I've said before, the voluntary offset market is frustrating because it has no overarching entity determining the quality of proffered products. Hence it seems suspicious, to you and to others. For this reason and many more, we need a national cap and trade program.

And that brings us to my second -- but actually primary -- purpose today: to emphasize that if we get a decent national cap-and-trade program going, all this voluntary offset stuff will be less urgent. The voluntary system, which is a passel of organizations patching together divergent methods, does not equal a well-planned national scheme with a target, a proven methodology, and rigorous accounting. It's great that individuals have an interest in creating and buying into small-scale offset projects. But it'll be even better when we have a national system that forces industry and hence consumers to internalize the cost of carbon.

The national system will not be perfect. But we will all be working together to reduce our global footprint, and reducing the chance that our footprint will be wiped out by giant waves from rising seas. It won't just be those of us with a guilty conscience who are trying to build an alternative energy system.

We need a decent cap-and-trade bill, and our politicians need to know that we want one and are willing to be part of the U.S. Stop Global Warming In Its Tracks Team. Contact your elected representatives and let them know how you feel -- visit our Climate Citizens section for tips on getting started.

Repetitively,
Umbra

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Q. Dear Umbra,

We are a family of five, with three little boys growing bigger every day. Which is the better environmental investment for our family: to replace our existing hot water heater with a solar model, or to switch to an on-demand, "instantaneous" hot water system?

Thanks!
Gillian and Grant
Toronto, Ont.

A. Dearest Gillian and Grant,

Whaddaya mean, my bath is heated with coal?Solar hot water is the better choice and would still be so if your children grew not one inch taller. Solar hot water takes advantage of the sun hitting your roof, which hopefully happens regularly without costing you money, nor the Earth anguish. A tankless heater will still use a polluting energy source to heat the water. It is a rare ratepayer who gets electricity from all-renewable sources, and Torontoians (?) seem to have the usual mix of coal, gas, nukes, hydro, and so forth.

All a tankless model does differently from your (I assume conventional) hot water heater is heat water as you need it, rather than storing hot water for hours. Like your tank heater, it uses either an electric coil or a gas fire to do this. A tankless on-demand model is, in the best scenario, a bit more efficient than your existing hot water heater. But it still has all the problems of using a non-renewable resource: pollution, greenhouse gas production, a sufficient power generation and delivery system, and of course reliance on the supply of whatever resource is used. You might be interested in reading my earlier column on tankless heaters.

A solar hot water system, on the other hand, can provide the bulk of your hot water needs without using any non-renewable resources (other than those used to make the equipment). Solar hot water is neither a new nor a highly complex technology, so you need not be a brave early adopter to have a system installed. There are a wide variety of systems (again, see a previous Umbra solar water love-fest) to choose from, and there are often financial incentives from one's city or state. Toronto seems to have a solar hot water initiative heating up right now, in fact, and here is a list of system suppliers to peruse.

The two potential drawbacks that I see are the initial financial outlay and whether your roof and home are well situated. But you won't know whether these are actual or theoretical drawbacks for your specific situation until you investigate the systems available where you live, their costs, and the fabulous financial incentives that might be coming your way. Here are some resources from the U.S. government on solar water heaters and how to calculate their costs.

Always choose the sun over the coal mine.

Sootily,
Umbra

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Q. Dear Umbra,

I've heard that tightening up a leaky house is one of the best energy conservation tactics out there. Energy audits could save an enormous amount of fuel. My wife is very much opposed to this because she places a high value on fresh air exchange. Are there health risks to "tightening the residential envelope"?

David G.
Morenci, Mich.

A. Dearest David,

Your house is breathing too.You can't teach an old dog new tricks, and apparently it is likewise fairly impossible to stop an older house from leaking at least a bit of healthy fresh air. Most houses which were not tightly built to begin with (usually called "older" and perhaps also "new but shoddy") have air passing through windows, attics, vents, doors, walls, ducts, and actual holes in the walls. It would be quite a task to thwart each of these air passageways, but doing as much as you can will definitely save you fuel and money.

It might also save you further headaches: In some cases, warm air might be passing partway out of your home, then encountering cold outdoor air, condensing, and forming mold in your walls -- just a little example to counter your wife's unswerving love of your current exchange.

An energy audit will tell you where the major leaks are, and hopefully also give you an indication of the costs and benefits of stopping them. You will also learn about your current ventilation situation. You might be in an unusual situation where your indoor air is for one reason or another poor quality -- maybe you have a busted old furnace or a poorly vented stove. Are all your combustion appliances working and vented well? A good energy specialist should be able to diagnose whether problems exist, and tell you how to address them.

If you do decide to go ahead to the indeed wonderfully conserving projects of insulating, caulking, sealing the attic, etc., you can either do it yourself or hire a professional. Should either you or the professional reach such sublime levels of tightening that there is no air inflow, an official home ventilation system should be installed. It is apparently better to make a tight home and have the fresh air follow approved channels than it is to simply rely on the inhale and exhale of your old house.

Energy professionals can test the leakage of your house using such esoteric tools as the blower door, the manometer (tee hee), and the infrared camera. If these items sound exciting to you, contact your local utility or visit the DOE for more information and get started on your energy-saving, conservation-erific house tightening program. I don't think you'll regret it.

Warmly,
Umbra

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Not my window. But this is how they feel sometimes.TottoBG via flickrOnce upon a time, I was full of unswayable romantic notions about old houses. Then I bought one.

I’ll refrain from going into too much detail about the quirks of our house, and of course I’m grateful to have a roof over our heads. But we’ve come up against a particular challenge that I can’t seem to figure my way around. It’s a little thing called window shopping.

No, not window shopping like pressing your nose up against the glass (thanks, wordplay-loving co-workers!). Window shopping like, “We have got to replace these old, rattling, single-paned, glazing-falling-out beasts before another winter sets in.” Even weatherstripping doesn’t help at this point.

The good news is that friends and family and This Old House keep telling us how easy it is to replace windows yourself. The bad news is, we’re pussies. I mean, of all the projects to screw up, is that really the one you want to test your skills on? So we started scouting around for installation estimates.

But that’s where the bad news got worse. Not surprisingly, it costs a lot to have someone else put windows in your house. And furthermore-not-surprisingly, it costs a lot more if you choose a material whose production doesn’t devastate planetary and human health.

The most affordable option? Vinyl.

If there’s one thing that echoes in my head after editing Ask Umbra for years, it’s this: “No vinyl, that’s final.” Vinyl’s drawbacks are many, varied, and well documented. We had two companies visit so far; one spent the entire time talking up vinyl (and assuring us that “it doesn’t bleed”) while the other spent the entire time talking it down. I look around my neighborhood, and everyone seems to have it. I research online, and everyone seems to sell it—but I’m also noticing another interesting trend, which is a sort of vinyl-window backlash. They don’t actually perform that well. They warp and wear out. There are other more modern options (fiberglass, for one, which is a relative newcomer to WindowLand and brings its own set of pros and cons).

I’m thrilled to see vinyl getting its due. But here’s the thing: of the estimates we’ve gotten so far, only vinyl came even within spitting distance of our budget. This is one of those moments where I get a fresh reminder of why everyone doesn’t just “Go Green It’s So Easy and Fun!” Reality intervenes.

I know new windows—whether vinyl or not—should eventually pay for themselves in energy savings. So I figure I have a few options: Keep getting estimates in the hope that someone will magically be willing to install non-toxic windows for a reasonable price. Suck it up and buy the vinyl windows, installation and all. Buy more expensive windows and try to install them ourselves, thus coming out at about the same place. Or really suck it up and buy non-toxic windows and installation. (This last one is, frankly, nearly impossible given our current budget.)

What should I do? Now you get to vote. And/or rant in the comments about what a fool I am. Meanwhile, I’ll be window shopping.

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Q. Dear Umbra,

I recently spent several months in New Zealand and was impressed with the simple energy-saving electrical outlets they used. Every outlet is equipped with a small switch allowing you to "turn off at the wall" whatever device you have plugged in. I want to replace my current outlets with ones such as those in NZ but I've never seen anything similar being used in the States and cannot find a retailer. I'm sure they have to be out there somewhere -- any ideas?

Casey F.
Austin, Tex.

A. Dearest Casey,

No outlet?Since telling Jonathan he might kill himself by using GFCI breaker buttons for this very purpose, I have been gripped by a small obsession with plugs. Not only does New Zealand appear to have these sensible switch-off buttons on outlets, other fine nations such as Australia, Fiji, perhaps the U.K., and more I have not yet discovered do as well.

I can't find any outlets with on-off switches for the U.S. either. I have found a series of devices which are almost such a thing but not quite, and we will see if any of them sound useful.

Currently our two mainstream choices for avoiding phantom power draw from overeager appliances are power strips and manually unplugging the appliance. Each of these has an unwieldiness and cord-tangling potential that makes it a wee bit annoying. Ideal substitutes would be on-off switches at each individual outlet, a master switch that turns off multiple outlets in a room, or, of course, devices without a standby mode. (Or how about less stuff?)

It is possible to buy a two-prong plug with an on-off switch (here is one such; there are others out there), which is itself plugged into the wall outlet and receives the plug of a two-pronged device such as a coffee maker or wall wart. A variety of these are available for under $10. I've never used and do not endorse them, but they seem straightforward.

At the next level are a series of similar interlocutor plugs which are wired to turn off the outlet through remote control. You plug them into the outlet, plug the appliance into them, then sit back and impress friends and visitors with a wave of your wireless remote. One product provides multiple wireless plugs with a programmable remote, so that with a series of masterful clicks you can turn off power to multiple outlets. The remote requires a battery, but to me the more daunting requirement is keeping track of yet another vital small object in the home. I'm kind of losing it already with just my car keys and a few pacifiers.

Yet another step up from these mere over-the-counter objects is a whole-home system you can hire a company (GreenSwitch and perhaps others) to install. It, too, is a wireless system with a remote, and some master wall switches as well. This is far from an endorsement, just something I found that might work.

My current residence is wired in a way that I have found annoying up to now: in some rooms, wall switches control the power to the outlets. It can be a little confusing if you forget which switch is which and accidentally turn off an appliance you are using. But now that I pause to think, this system could be used as a way around power strips. Something to consider next time we have to rewire our homes.

Shockingly,
Umbra

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Q. Hi Umbra,

I know that the little trickle of electricity that so many appliances use even when they are "off" adds up to a significant amount of power. I also know that a power strip with an on/off switch can help. But there are places in my house where a power strip is pretty inconvenient. In the kitchen, I've begun using the test and reset buttons on the GFI outlet as on/off switches for the coffee maker and its little clock. It seems very handy -- but I can't help but wonder if in doing so I'm going to wear out the GFI outlet or undermine my efforts somehow. "They" say to test GFIs monthly, but if I effectively test it every day, am I going to be replacing it frequently? Might I conceivably mess it up through overuse to the point where it becomes an electrical fire hazard? Or have I stumbled across a quick and easy way to deal with trickling electricity?

Jonathan T.
Norwich, Vt.

A. Dearest Jonathan,

"They" do say to test the GFI or GFCI monthly, and as far as I can tell it's because "they" don't want you to be seriously electrocuted. "They" love you.

Oh noooooo!grendelkhan via flickrGround Fault (Circuit) Interrupter outlets are those outlets in kitchens, bathrooms, and other potential wet locations that have the Test and Reset buttons between the two pluggy spots. They monitor electrical flow through the outlet when it is in use. Under normal conditions, the electricity should complete a circuit, with a certain number of milliamps leaving out one hot prong hole and returning through the neutral prong hole. The GFCI is predicated on the notion that if any of the milliamps leaving the outlet fail to return to the official neutral/ground within, they must have found a ground somewhere else.

That somewhere else could conceivably be a person, perhaps a person standing in a spot of water (as I once was when operating a dangerous secondhand toaster -- zoinks). A tiny difference in the amount of amps leaving vs. returning activates a coil inside the GFCI, which then passes the bad news on to various other bits, ending in the physical severance of the electrical connection within the outlet. The outlet stops working, the appliance in question stops receiving electricity, and any nearby persons are spared horrible pain. GFCIs are calibrated to trip at about 5 or 6 milliamps -- before you even feel a shock, much less cardiac arrest.

To wend our way to your actual question, there are a few potential problems with your use of the Test button as a phantom load reducer. As you say, you will wear the thing out more quickly than if you just tested monthly as we are meant to do. The part that will wear out is the part that senses a loss of amps in the circuit and shuts off power to the outlet. It might become way more sensitive to wee variations in current, and start shutting off when nothing is wrong, and perhaps shut off altogether if it is an outlet of recent vintage -- in other words, become annoying and need to be replaced. Or, worse, it will stop sensing variations in current, but still let you access electricity. You may not notice that it has stopped, and be killed in a stupid accident involving a humdrum kitchen appliance and a puddle of toddler pee underfoot. (There is a way to determine if your GFCI is failing: a little diagnostic GFCI tester plug found at hardware stores.)

Other issues with this theoretically excellent idea is that some GFCIs may be wired so as to cut off power to other outlets down the line, monitoring not only themselves but their neighbors for a power imbalance. You've been shutting yours off and having no noticeable problems in other outlets, but other persons might shut off the power to three outlets in a row, maybe interrupting the baked beans down there in the crockpot.

So, to sum up: On the minor side, you would wear out your GFCI outlet and need to buy and install a new one. On the major side, you would be dead. I prefer you non-dead.

Stay tuned for my next column, which looks at some more promising alternatives.

Affectionately,
Umbra

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I'm in decent shape for 52, but it took everything I had to carry a hefty piece of welded steel plate out of the backyard -- and I didn't place it any too gently on the curb when I got it there. So I was impressed when John from Blue Scrap & Recycling casually flipped the hunk of metal into his truck without apparent effort. John suggested we ought to give him a call when we have more demo work. "We're used to moving heavy stuff around," he said. "Plaster and wood, that's kid's stuff." Even so, it took John and a crew of four a full afternoon to rip out our old heating plant.

The oil furnace, tank, and gas boiler that took up half the basement will be replaced in the JP Green House by an efficient air circulation system, heat exchange unit, and a small electric heating element, drawing as little power as a intermittent hair dryer. Supplemental heating will only be required on the very coldest days, provided by a wood or pellet stove (which only need burn for brief intervals), and air conditioning will not be neccessary.

Heating a home with a hair dryer -- that is the astounding promise of passivhaus, the state-of-the-art energy efficient construction standard that's so far ahead of the envelope in U.S. building codes that structures built to passivhaus code score low in Energy Star and LEED rankings; that's because neither standard accounts for buildings so tight and well insulated that they don't require traditional heating plants (and lose points in the ratings game for having none!).

Minneapolis blower door.The Energy Conservatory.Placetailor's Pratt House project illustrates the point. The super-insulated home of Simon Hare, founder of Placetailor, built on the footprint of a 100-year-old gunsmith shop on Fort Hill in Roxbury, scored an astonishing 0.6 in volume of air replacement in a recent blower test (dead-on for the passivhaus standard and difficult to achieve in a very small spaces). In the test, a large fan is attached to a door to create a partial vacuum, and the rate at which air filters into the structure gives an accurate picture of the tightness of its envelope.

Passivhaus certification sets tough standards for air tightness, heating, and total energy consumption, and recommends three additonal measurements covering window efficiency, peak heating, and ventilation heat recovery. Taken together, these criteria ensure a snug, parsimonious, well ventilated space, intelligently oriented to prevailing weather and the path of the sun, that stays cool in summer, as old adobe buildings do in the Southwest, and hoards heat from appliances, bodies, and lighting so well that it remains pleasant and warm without additional heating on all but the coldest days.

Energy savings (and avoided carbon emissions) are immense. The JP Green House aims to use less than 4.75 kBtu/sq. foot per year in heating, an austounding 1/8 of the 40.5 kBtu/sq. ft. of our estimated past energy expenditures in a barely insulated structure with cracks wide enough to admit daylight. (Based on U.S. Energy Information Administration 2001 survey data.) The comparison with average U.S. housing stock, and even Energy Star-certified homes, shown in the chart below is no less remarkable. If we are able to install pv solar and micro-wind, it will be no great trick to reach negative (net) carbon emissions and become a small electric power generator.

Challenges. The challenges confronting our design/build team at Placetailor are mountainous. To meet exacting passivhaus standards on a shoestring budget in a rickety 100-year-old building abandoned for the last five years is tough by any measure, but Andrée and I have heaped on additional burdens by our persnickety insistence on certain aesthetic considerations. We are assuredly among the very few climate-conscious homeowners called to task by our designers for not daring to dream large enough in reducing our own carbon footprint.

Take the matter of the windows. To minimize energy loss and maximize passive solar heating in winter months, it makes sense to virtually eliminate openings on the north side and install large windows on the south to warm concrete floors and retain energy, which radiates into living space at night. From the perspective of energy expenditure, there is no utility to windows on the east and west sides and the strict dictates of the passivhaus standards encourage designers to limit their size or do away with them entirely. This can be handled in new construction by turning south-facing walls into a curtain of glass -- with shades, screens, and even intelligent planting of deciduous trees and vines to provide summertime shade -- but such a solution is out of reach in our constrained budget.

But forgoing those windows is a problem for us. We do not want to lose the view on our west side, which looks onto our garden, nor on the east, which commands a fine prospect of the intersection anchored by our former corner store and cemeteries further down Bourne Street, and we worry about how our demonstration home will be received by an American audience who will not find appealing, it seems safe to say, any house that feels dark and closed in. Placetailor cut the Gordian knot of the windows by designing permanently emplaced, triple-paned picture windows with small venting casements on the side, and will custom-craft insulated shutters to cut heat loss at night.

Another example of tradeoffs was whether to use cellulose or recycled-foam insulation. The choice matters, in terms of modeling low-carbon impact construction pathways; cellulose is a clear winner, but it also means a four-inch difference in how much interior space is lost. In the end, we decided to do both, employing an innovative construction solution devised by Placetailor using recycled cellulose on the second floor and installing recycled foam on the first.

These are just two example amid many of the tradeoffs between cutting carbon emissions to the bone -- the imperative on which averting collapse of civilization depends -- our personal wants and sensibilities, and our best guess as to the comforts, aestetics, and amenities essential to winning acceptance by a wider audience.

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Q. Dear Umbra,

With all the rain we've had this year, the pool water doesn't get a chance to warm up in between rainstorms. We are trying to design a passive heating system. We've thought about flexible one-inch black hose (if we can find it) attached to the filter and laid out around the pool, but are there any solar energy systems already out there that we could use?

Jerri
Waterbury

A. Dearest Jerri,

Why yes there are, and they are quite similar to your recent black hose invention.

Whether they will have any effect on the heat of your pool when there is no sun to collect is research I will leave to you.

What a dive.Before looking too far in to buying a passive solar heating system for your pool, you should certainly buy a simple blue polypro or polyethylene "solar pool cover" if you don't already have one. These look like blue bubble wrap, and lie atop the pool when it is not in use. They stop evaporative loss of any existing warmth in the pool, and help capture any solar energy that might hit during random sunny moments. A cover should help keep your pool about 5 to 10 degrees warmer.

The commercial solar pool collectors use the pool's pump to circulate water through a series of ... black plastic hoses. The hoses are oft laid out atop a black plastic bed. The two immediate drawbacks I could see are the amount of space needed for adequate hose footage to heat a pool-sized amount of water, and the accompanying aesthetic concerns. To quote today's expert website, the Florida Solar Energy Center, "The collector area is usually about the same size as the pool surface area in northern Florida." It's a bit of a stretch, but perhaps whichever Waterbury you are in (states, people, please!) can be thought of as a far northern Florida. Ergo you will need quite a bit of space.

Commercial solar pool heaters can be a money-saver over time if they replace another type of heater in the pool, such as propane. In your case, you would be fixing a hopefully temporary problem with what we might call new infrastructure.

The Florida Solar Energy Center gives a very thorough overview of the various aspects of pool heater design, offers vendors, and is generally helpful. You will, as mentioned, have to do some of your own adjusting on the estimates of size and BTUs needed for the Waterbury area. If it doesn't seem worth it to invest in a commercial heater, I'm sure the various do-it-yourselfers on the internet have some ideas to offer you.

Warmly,
Umbra

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Q. Dear Umbra,

I have noticed window film applications available at local home improvement stores that claim additional insulation qualities when used, in addition to a sleek look when compared to window blinds. In comparison to the standard winter window applications you can buy to help with drafty windows, but that look less than stellar when applied, does this window film hold its own or fare better/worse. Is this a way to cheaply add extra insulation to single-paned windows, and does it do well in both winter and summer?

Rob B.
Louisville, Ky.

A. Dearest Rob,

The do-it-yourself low-emissivity window films help with the drawbacks of natural light -- I read that on a sales website. I do vaguely remember a drawback or two to natural light, but sun has stayed away from my home biome so long that if it ever reappears it is welcome to run rampant over my moldy furniture.

Slim shadies?Home DepotThe films you see in the overwhelming aisles are a version of the low-e coatings applied as part of the glazing of certain new windows. Low-e film is coated with metal, or metal oxide. The coating blocks solar energy from entering your home if the film faces the sun, or traps heat inside your home if it faces the heat. Low-e coating that faces out at the sun also is blocking almost all UV rays from entering your home and degrading your furnishings. Sundry other films reduce glare and increase privacy; I suppose these are the ones you are comparing to window blinds. As you shop, be careful to read the specifications about transmittance of visible light. You may still want to see clearly out of your window rather than have a strong tint.

Low-e films do sound great. They are applied to the glass section of your window, so they don't solve draftiness or wind whistling through the cracks. What they are doing is stopping the thermal conduction of heat through the glass. (Check out my earlier guide to vexing window issues.)

Low-e films should last about 10-15 years, can save you up to 10 percent of your electric bill, and can be applied without too much trouble on a small window but should be professionally smoothed on a larger window.

Of course, because films are heat transfer-related, there are all sorts of numbers and climate-related decisions to make. The Florida Solar Energy Center clearly explains how to crunch the numbers (SHGC and VT values, you know) and choose a window film that will work for your home, window orientation, and needs. It may be just the answer for your budget and your climate.

Warmly,
Umbra

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President Barack Obama doesn't think he can solve global warming by changing his f**king light bulbs, but he's going to do it anyway. More importantly, he's going to change the light-bulb industry.

Obama unveiled new energy-efficiency standards for lighting and appliances on Monday -- the latest in a string of energy-focused announcements and events for the president. On Friday, he praised the House for passing the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act. On Saturday, he focused his weekly address on the bill and the importance of clean energy -- a last-minute change, as the address had been intended to focus on health care. And on Sunday, he sat down with a group of reporters for a lengthy interview about the climate bill and energy in general, emphasizing that he thinks the clean-energy market is poised for explosive growth.

On Monday, with Energy Secretary Steven Chu at his side, Obama said the Department of Energy is at work on new standards for fluorescent and incandescent lighting. And in the meantime, he's changing the light bulbs in the White House.

"Now I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and our businesses," Obama said.

The president estimated that the new lighting standards would cut 594 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions between 2012 and 2042 and save American energy users $1 billion to $4 billion each year over that period -- conserving enough energy to eliminate the need for as many as 14 new coal-fired power plants.

Obama also announced that the Department of Energy has outlined tougher efficiency standards for household appliances, responding to a request from the White House in February to speed up the delivery of new rules, and he noted major federal investments in energy efficiency for buildings.

"One of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest ways to make our economy stronger and cleaner is to make our economy more energy efficient," said Obama. "By bringing more energy-efficient technologies to American homes and businesses, we won't just significantly reduce our energy demand; we'll put more money back in the pockets of hardworking Americans."

Obama highlighted the gains that California has made in efficiency since the 1970s, which have put the state's energy usage 40 percent below the national average. In the process, he said, the state has created 1.5 million jobs in energy efficiency. Obama predicted that the new federal standards will have similar effects -- creating jobs, reducing emissions, and saving money.

The president also announced that $346 million from the economic stimulus bill will be invested in efficiency for commercial and residential buildings, which account for 40 percent of domestic energy use and 40 percent of domestic CO2 emissions. Of that money, $100 million will be invested in advanced building systems research, $70 million in residential buildings, $53.5 million for commercial buildings, and $72.5 million for buildings and appliance market transformation.

Obama took the opportunity to again praise the House's passage of the climate and energy bill on Friday, a move he said will help make "clean energy the profitable kind of energy." He praised legislators who voted for the bill for being "willing to place America's progress ahead of the usual Washington politics."

For more, read Obama's full remarks.

Here are President Obama's full remarks:

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The red Honda Fit from a local car-sharing service pulls into the driveway of a suburban San Francisco Bay-area home, and two clean-cut young guys in khaki jump out and start unloading a Ghostbusters array of gadgets -- something resembling a giant black megaphone, a glowing tube attached to a video screen, and a handheld device that looks like it was pilfered from Dr. McCoy's sick bay.

Meet the "greenup" team from Sustainable Spaces, a four-year-old San Francisco firm that conducts residential energy audits and energy efficiency retrofits to shrink a home's carbon footprint while saving the owner money over the long haul.

Matt Golden of Sustainable Spaces sets up a large fan inside the home's front door. When the fan is turned on, the house will be pressurized and the team will measure where the air is leaking out.KQED Quest via FlickrGreen retrofits are all the rage and for a reason: commercial and residential buildings account for more than 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Insulating homes, plugging leaky heating ducts and taking other low-tech measures could cut energy use appreciably, which is why the Obama administration wants to retrofit all 128 million U.S. homes and has devoted billions of stimulus package cash to weatherization and other energy efficiency programs.

So what has largely been an unregulated mom-and-pop business needs to scale up -- big time -- and homeowners need incentives to invest in insulation and other unglamorous improvements. Sustainable Spaces' solution: Silicon Valley-style technological innovation coupled with heavy-duty politicking in Washington. More on that later.

At the 1950s ranch house in the East Bay 'burb of Walnut Creek, energy auditor Ryan Jaramillo is explaining to homeowner Dan Schoenholz the company's holistic home approach that treats a house as a networked energy system so that solutions can be prioritized to get the most bang for the buck. About half of greenups -- Sustainable Spaces slang for energy audits -- result in retrofits, Jaramillo says, and the company itself performs 90 percent of that work.

The 40-something, Prius-driving Shoenholz is a prototypical green retrofit client. He already had replaced many of his old single-pane windows. And Shoenholz, who deals with energy efficiency programs as a special projects manager for an East Bay city, rarely runs his air conditioner, even in Walnut Creek's sweltering summers. He even participates in a PG&E program that lets the utility remotely turn off the AC when electricity demand spikes.

And he was willing to shell out about $300 for a Sustainable Spaces greenup, which usually runs $595 for a comparably sized house.

While Jaramillo strapped on a face mask and hoisted himself into the attic to inspect the ductwork and insulation, a colleague began measuring each room in the house, noting the placement of heating vents while using a gadget to determine the energy efficiency of the windows. Jaramillo then donned a jumpsuit and crawled into the crawl space, poking a gadget into the woodwork that measures moisture content.

Back in the house, Jaramillo fed a cable containing a miniature camera into the walls to see if they were insulated. Then it was time for the blower test. The front door was sealed and a blower used to depressurize the house so the greenup team could identify air leaks. Waving around an infrared sensor device, Jaramillo could see heat leaks showing up on the screen as orange-red sunbursts.

All the data collected at Schoenholz's home will be fed into Sustainable Space's computer models to guide its engineers' design of an energy efficiency plan.

"One of the things that has prevented me from doing this stuff is that there's a huge capital investment for a relatively small return," Schoenholz says, "though I know it's the right thing to do."

The relatively paltry tax incentives for energy efficiency retrofits is the reason Sustainable Spaces founder and president Matt Golden spends at least one week a month in Washington. "We really didn't get our act together for the stimulus and we kind of missed that boat to some degree," Golden tells me a few days later in San Francisco. "Sexiness-wise, we don't sound byte and we don't have a pretty picture of a solar panel."

While many billions will be handed out to weatherize low-income housing and promote other energy efficiency measures, not much was put in the pot for the average middle-class homeowner -- Sustainable Spaces' bread and butter customers. Install a $30,000 solar array on your roof and you qualify for a 30 percent tax credit -- $9,000. But spend $30,000 on maximizing your home's energy efficiency and the credit tops out at $1,500.

Golden, who serves as president of the new home-retrofit trade group Efficiency First, has been lobbying Congress to make tax credits dependent on how much energy a retrofit saves, not on the price of the products installed. Efficiency First also wants federal loan guarantees and low-interest financing for home retrofits. Golden is also working with state and local officials on how stimulus money will be distributed and for what programs.

Pam Molsick of Sustainable Spaces inspects heating ducts insulated with asbestos, which is badly peeling in places.KQED Quest via FlickrBut Golden is depending on technological innovation to transform a cottage industry into big business. Sustainable Spaces, for instance, has an eight-person software division developing programs to automate the energy audit and retrofit process. (The company's VP of product development is a former Google engineering director.)

"We're building a system that gives customers access to the data the same way we access the data, accelerates the process and also deploys systems on handhelds out in the field," says Golden. "Very rapidly we need to deliver the tools that enable scale in this industry -- through whatever means necessary because that's how we get to our climate goals."

And Efficiency First is pushing government to regulate the retrofit industry to avoid a backlash if unscrupulous operators flood the field in search of quick cash. "There's more stringent standards in California for cutting hair than doing an energy audit," Golden says.

Which is why I wasn't surprised the other day when I was walking to the Berkeley farmers market to find a person handing out flyers for -- you guessed it -- home energy audits.

Read past Green State installments by Todd Woody.

Related Links:

Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dearest Umbra,

While pleased as pie to have a new super-efficient dishwasher, I remain curious as to the chemical composition of the required rinse aid. This dishwasher relies on a hot water rinse and its stainless steel tub to somehow dry the dishes -- there is no energy-sucking, plastic-melting heating element to accomplish dryness. However, this dishwasher will not run unless its rinse aid receptacle is filled. While I could probably trick it by filling the rinse aid reservoir with water ... that would seem likely to promote unsightly spotting. While I enjoy the energy efficiency and quietude of this dishwasher, I am concerned that I may be slowly killing my family through hydrophobic rinse aid ingestion. What is this stuff anyway?

Spotless But Concerned
Louisville, Colo.

A. Dearest Spotless,

There is an easy answer to this issue, but in researching it I discovered yet another of those depressing unknown household hazards that deflate my sense of humor.

Rinse charming?Conventional rinse aid is one of the mystery products wherein manufacturers only need disclose active ingredients. We can find Material Safety Data Sheets for these products on line, which say reassuring things such as "The manufacturer's MSDS does not state whether the ingredients are considered carcinogens or potential carcinogens." Rumor has it that conventional rinse aids do contain phosphates, the chemical compounds that can lead to marine dead zones. By "rumor," I mean that the "eco" rinse aids claim a lack of phosphates.

All sorts of ecologically preferable companies offer rinse aids in which all ingredients are disclosed. Various promises to love fish and plants and hate landfills are pledged upon the labels. But here is an even better option: reading online (as I often do, don't you know), I encountered chatty dishwasher-loving people who are using our old friend white vinegar as a rinse aid. I was especially interested in this because where I am currently living the water is hard like a rock, so our glasses ("glassware" I believe is the proper term) come out cloudy like Seattle, and gross and embarrassing to hostliness. Oh my heavens, my life has changed. Put white vinegar in the rinse aid dispenser, or put a cup filled with it upright in the bottom rack when you run the wash. Come on over for a drink -- our glassware is no longer embarrassing.

The bad news can be delivered through more good news. The new site GoodGuide seems to be what many of you want and need: decent, in-depth ratings of products. I hope they make millions of dollars. Unfortunately, while I was looking up rinse aids (check out the rankings), I learned that the dishwasher is considered, by some, to be an incredibly toxic appliance. In 1999, researchers at the University of Texas-Austin released data on the ability of dishwashers to "strip" chemicals out of water and release them in air. This is of course why we smell chlorine when we are using a chlorine-based dishwashing detergent. Other, less stinky but also harmful pollutants may be removed from the water and let loose in your home: chlorine from water treatment, radon, chloroform, perhaps other volatile organic compounds.

We're not going to stop using our very efficient dishwashers, so perhaps this tidbit of information will simply further encourage our use of less-toxic rinse agents (and detergents), and help us remember to run dishwasher loads at night. You see, if we leave the washer door shut for a while after the load finishes, less of the potentially toxic steam will waft out toward us. And of course, it's best if we run appliances at night anyway, to lessen the business-hours load on the electric grid.

Humorlessly,
Umbra

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