Complaints about forced hot air usually stem from uncomfortable temperature swings or dryness. Large temperature swings can happen for several reasons: 1) Oversized heating systems In the past, it has been common practice to install heating systems that are 2 to 3 times too large. These systems send out a blast of very hot air [...]
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Homeowners Bill and Joyce in Leominster, MA were tired of fuel oil prices and were ready for a greener solution to home heating and cooling. Joyce contacted EnergySmart in September when their air conditioning system quit working. Within a few days of her call we visited their home to assess the property for geothermal. We [...]
In this post, I thought I would address a common misconception about geothermal that has been brought up several times over the past few months. The recurring comment that I have heard goes something like this: “I heard that you can drill and drill and not reach what you need. Then you wasted all that [...]
Recently, I met with a local architectural designer for lunch and we were discussing how one might go about decreasing their carbon footprint. Most people would think solar panels, right? When we looked at the numbers, geothermal was the winner by a landslide. Suppose we take a typical home in New England that has oil [...]
In this ‘Geothermal Demystified’ series, we are hoping to shed some light on how geothermal systems are installed and how they perform in New England. It’s surprising how often the same questions and comments arise. In this post, we will address two more geothermal myths having to do with local geology. Myth #3 My property [...]
As someone who makes a living designing and installing geothermal systems in New England, I cannot tell you how disheartening it is to hear and read all the misinformation about how goethermal works, or whether it works at all. Let’s face it – there’s a lot of bad information our there. I’ve heard it all. [...]
07/20/2011
The heat wave that has been hitting us lately has gotten a lot of us thinking about what we can do to minimize air conditioning costs. You would be surprised at the number of things in your house that create heat. Your air conditioning costs are directly related to the amount of heat that it [...]
07/17/2011
You can imagine my astonishment when I received an email from Google about 2 weeks ago indicating that they were discontinuing the PowerMeter. Their reasoning is as follows: “…our efforts have not scaled as quickly as we would have liked, so we have decided to retire PowerMeter.” Google has always been at the forefront of [...]
07/14/2011
Upon hearing that I had purchased a power monitor, one of my business partners purchased one, as well. He suspected that his tenants were using more than their fair share of electricity measured on their shared electrical meter. Because the power monitor uploads the data to the net, we are able to share our data [...]
All winter I pretty much sit in the dark. The idea of turning on the lights in unoccupied rooms makes me think of money going down the toilet. All of my light bulbs have already been switched to compact fluorescent and I even replaced my beloved halogen reading lamp with an LED lamp. Is the [...]