Submitted by Northwest Energy Team
Get the Facts at April’s Home Efficiency Action Training
Weather is warming up (wasn’t that a fabulous weekend?) and the hardware stores are crowded with ambitious, determined people. Before you tackle this year’s major home improvement project, think about how you can add some energy efficient upgrades as well.
Oftentimes an energy efficiency upgrade is simple and inexpensive – especially if you’re already planning to crawl around under your house to check the insulation or tearing into a wall. The trick is knowing what to do, when to do it and in what order. AND knowing what is going to give you the most return for your investment.
Researching energy efficiency upgrades is absolutely the way to go. And it’s also a way to get completely overwhelmed by facts – often with facts that don’t have anything to do with weather and home conditions in the Olympia area.
If you’re the kind of person that likes getting an overview of facts first and then getting into the details, you have a resource at this month’s Home Efficiency Action Training (HEAT), Thursday, April 4, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. at Lacey Community Center. This workshop is free and open to the public.
HEAT workshops are dedicated to education. You will learn:
- How to evaluate what your home needs.
- How to find out what you can do yourself to improve your home’s energy performance.
- How to tell if you may need more technical assistance.
- Basic information on the 100+ rebates, credits, and incentives available through Puget Sound Energy and Energy Star.
- What improvements give the best return for your time and money.
- How you can work your way to better energy performance – you can’t buy your way there.
This is also a good workshop for anyone actively looking for a “used” home in the area – or anyone putting their home on the market. Frequently buyers find a great house in the perfect neighborhood and then get turned off when they find (for example) the home has baseboard heat.
Dealing with things like sadly inefficient heating systems is not the issue it once was. You will learn what to look for when shopping for a home – what is affordably deal-able and what should make you stop and think a little more.
Brent Foster of Northwest Infrared will be the first speaker. He will give his classic “$40 and a Grubby Weekend” talk on covering DIY energy efficiency improvements.
Then Paul Ivy of Northwest Energy Team will speak on ductless heat pumps: how they work and the data to tell whether one would pay off for your home.
Puget Sound Energy will be on hand (hopefully; they are installing a new system this week and it’s all hands on the PSE deck) to give their usual in-depth information of their massive numbers of Re-Energize rebates. If you are going to tackle a home improvement project, wouldn’t it be great to know if there was a rebate connected to it?
Marilyn Ball-Brown of Generations Credit Union will give some basic information on low-interest “green improvement” home loans. If you have a major remodel planned, this is a chance to check on some financing options.
The last speaker is Kirk Haffner of South Sound Solar. He does this great “Solar 101” talk which covers how to evaluate your own site for solar potential, addresses the basics of how solar works and then gives you the skinny on the credits, rebates and incentives. Pretty sweet.
Bring pen, paper and questions to the Lacey Community Center this Thursday, April 4 (6 – 8 p.m.) and get some clear guidance. For questions contact Paul Ivy at 360-357-9167 or Paul@NorthwestEnergyTeam.com . All HEAT workshops are for your information’s sake and do not involve sales at all.
