Best Energy Myths

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark Richardson on December 4, 2010 at 4:01am

Evan Mills said:

Silas - Great thread. You've hit a rich vein here.

Here are some items we assembled years back. We'll have to go back and update that with all the good stuff members have logged here....

Great article, Evan!

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Permalink Reply by Evan Mills on November 19, 2011 at 8:01pm

Here's a related Blog post from a HEP member....

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Permalink Reply by Caan Soloman on November 12, 2012 at 8:44am

Inverter units multi-split. 2 or more can run off one outside unit. Check our site for some examples.

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Permalink Reply by Colin Choney on November 20, 2012 at 4:18pm

One of my favorites, visited with a client and her HVAC contractor had her convinced that the only way she could correct hot and cold rooms was to buy a larger heat pump

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Permalink Reply by James E. Ragland on December 16, 2012 at 3:25am

Leaving the heating on overnight uses less energy than re-heating a cold building.. ha..

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Permalink Reply by Ed Voytovich on December 16, 2012 at 11:38am

My suggestion is not at all amusing:  "We need to sell home performance to provide comfort and energy savings for home owners" Instead of:

"We need to sell home performance because the earth is not so big that we humans can't screw the pooch on a vary, very global scale without even trying very hard . . . indeed, the only thing we have to do to have that effect is to convince ourselves that the most important things are money, convenience, and personal comfort.

"We need to sell home performance because the lack of it contributes to environmental changes in the atmosphere, the oceans, the seas, and even the dirt of the earth itself. 

"We need to sell home performance to do what we can to avoid climate change that could in the very near future lead to a global extinction event the likes of which we have not experienced in the last 64 million years. 

 "We need to sell home performance to reduce to the extent we can the mountain top removal in West Virginia; the strip mining in Wyoming and elsewhere; the demolition of places like southern Illinois and Kentucky; fracking in the Marcellus and Barnett shales and elsewhere; mining of Canadian tar sands; oil drilling in the Gulf of Maxico, the North Sea, and -- most obscene of all -- the Arctic."

  And that's just a partial list.

<End of Rant>

You may (or may not) appreciate the following ad that ran in the NY Times for 12/16/2012 and is cited on Climate Progress (http://tinyurl.com/d74gxl6).

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Permalink Reply by David Connelly Legg on December 20, 2012 at 7:28am

Houses need to breathe so air sealing is un-helathy for homes.

My lights are CFLs so I can leave them on all over the house now.

What do you mean insulation doesn't stop air leaks!! 

Lowering the thermostat at night wastes energy because you have to reheat the air in the morning.

My AC contractor  always gives me more efficient systems, I can tell because once he does the cooling loss he increases the size by 1/2 to 1 ton.

This is a funny but very sad thread.  We need energy literacy in America starting in our schools!!!! As my wife always said, it can't hurt for EE after all we had a huge impact on seat belts when kids started getting after their parents.

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Permalink Reply by John Rising on December 20, 2012 at 9:16pm

Not sure if this qualifies or not ... I often tell this joke as the only energy joke I know.
A window company's accountant notices that one of their customers has not paid his bill in over a year. She calls the client and asks him about the invoice and when he might be able to pay. He pauses and then states that the window salesman said they would pay for themselves in about a year...

"Oh yeah, we had that attic insulated a few years ago, I'm sure it's not the problem"
"We had our furnace replaced a few years ago with a condensing model but were not comfortable anymore"
"The house was built 5-10-15 years ago, why would there be any problems with the wall insulation"

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Permalink Reply by Bud Poll on December 22, 2012 at 6:32am

How about the "Short Circuit" myth, often stated, "leaving the gable vents in place when adding a ridge vent will cause the incoming air to follow the shortest path (gable to ridge) thus reducing the desired air flow from the soffits".  In actuality, the air entering the soffits is moving due to a pressure differential across the soffits (attic stack effect) which increases when the gable vents are left in place as the neutral pressure plane moves higher.  The decision to leave or remove the old gable vents should be based upon other factors, like wind, rain, snow, and proper location of the NPP, but not out of concern for a mythical short circuit path.

Bud

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Permalink Reply by Bud Poll on December 25, 2012 at 2:29am

I don't recall seeing this one on the list and it is frequently misunderstood.

If you compress fiberglass insulation you will reduce its insulation value.  Well, yes and no.

You can compress fiberglass insulation and increase its r-value per inch, to a point.  It is the reduced number of inches (thickness) that results in the reduction in insulation value.  6" fiberglass insulation has a slightly better r-value per inch when compressed into a 5.5" cavity.  But the loss of 1/2" yields a net reduction in total r-value. 

Fill the cavity, even if it requires a little stuffing, it is the cavity depth/width that will determines the insulation value.  Just don't try to set a record for how much fg you can squeeze in.

Bud

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Permalink Reply by Tom Delconte on December 26, 2012 at 7:48am

Just don't use fiberglass!

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Permalink Reply by Bud Poll on December 26, 2012 at 8:02am

To a point I do agree :).  Certainly the fg we use today is superior to what was installed 40 or 50 years ago, I don't remember before that.  I have removed some pretty nasty looking old stuff, but I wonder what cellulose will look like 50 years from now.  Will there be 2" voids at the top of all walls?  Will moisture, which I understand shouldn't be there, have deteriorated it to useless?  Even though we are building more efficient homes today, I just don't get the feeling we are building them to last 100 years, due to the cost factors and that is where fg gets its support.  It works to some level and it is low cost.

HH

Bud

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