Steal this idea! Saving heat means less cost, less waste
After moving into our beautiful house overlooking a nature preserve, we realized the cost of heating and cooling our dream home would be phenomenal. It was like living in a greenhouse, with all the wild swings of temperature one finds in a desert. Our cold nights were very very cold and our hot days were sometimes too much for our A/C to handle.
home.woh.rr.com/coffeyrush/WindowB.htm
The worst part was trying to sleep. Some rooms in the house became overly hot at night, while others were comfortable. That's when I decided to take action.
If you go to the store and buy your own materials, you may create Window Blankets (see link, above) for as many or as few of your windows as you like. When our power recently went off during sub-zero temperatures, our indoor temperature went from 75 degrees F to not lower than 58 degrees F after more than twelve hours of the house being pummelled by gale-force winds.
Start with a bathroom window in your house. Cover up half of it (so you still have some natural daylight). One average sized window typically loses as much heat as an entire bedroom-sized wall. How much coal/oil/electricity/gas do you think you could save by covering basement and bathroom windows this way?
Think on these things!
As long as you still have ample natural lighting from the outdoors and do not seal up the air envelope of the home so that there is insufficient air exchange with the outdoors, energy conservation of this type can be useful. In the 1980's we found that efforts to conserve energy were allowing the build-up of high levels of indoor pollution that were higher than we would tolerate outdoors. If you are going to seal up your home, have it tested for molds and radon. Be sure to avoid toxic cleaning, painting and air freshening materials, and be sure that you don't have a lot of formaldehyde-containing particle board, new carpeting and plastics that are not "less toxic" types, unvented gas appliances, contamination from an attached garage, etc. Chilcren and the elderly are especially susceptible to indoor pollutants.
Many people do not feel well in high levels of flourescent lighting, so blocking off windows may require less energy-efficient incandescent lighting - and a lot of it - to respond to our need for sunlight during the winter months. Seasonal affective disorder (winter blues) has been associated with diminished sunlight during the winter months.
Sustainable house design begins with the selection of a suitable construction site, architectural and engineering design of the house and selection of suitable building materials. Once it has been built, do-it-yourself retrofits should be undertaken with care, and in consultation with people who have long-term experience in living with the results. There are many good books on the matket on the subject of indoor pollution, safe indoor environments, nontoxic homes, etc. Your local American Lung Association affiliate, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, as well as your state and local health departments, should be able to direct you to these resources.
Peace,
Earon Davis, MPH
posted by Earon on 2/13/2008 12:07 pm