Great article in the Elmhurst Press today about Elmhurst Cool Cities Coalition’s effort to make it easier to make older Elmhurst homes more energy efficient. Whether you live in Elmhurst or not, great background on why it makes sense to pay attention to the comfort and efficiency of your home today.
For a step-by-step overview of [...]
What the heck is PITITUM???! PITI is a common mortgage term and stands for Principal, Interest, Taxes & Insurance. But I have started advising homeowners to get on the PITITUM bandwagon and get a more realistic handle on their budget, and what they can afford…
PITITUM = Principal + Interest + Taxes + Insurance + Transportation + Utilities + Maintenance
I [...]
While President Obama was at Savannah Tech in Georgia on Tuesday announcing his HOME STAR plan, I was on Capitol Hill promoting the same proposal to several Congressional representatives or their staff! As Obama outlined in his speech, the proposal is a job creation idea – pulling unemployed contractors from the hard-hit construction workforce to [...]
The recently published Elmhurst Energy & Emissions Profile surprised me a bit. I expected Elmhurst homes to be more in line with the rest of DuPage County. Instead, it shows we use 18% more natural gas than other DuPage homes and 25% more electricity than other Chicagoland homes.
Based on the averages it looks like the [...]
If you read this blog regularly, you are aware of the many excellent tax credits available to current and future homeowners right now. Now, here’s my secret to linking them all together for homes in and around Elmhurst. You have to get the sequence and dates just right to pull it off!
Earn the $8000 tax [...]
Good stuff here! A recap of Obama’s “Insulation is Sexy” speech from a Home Depot in DC last month. Quick info on how the proposed HOME STAR program will cut American energy use, save homeowners money, make our homes more cozy, create jobs and cut our use of foreign oil. What’s not to like? Plus [...]
We had a great session for the first 5×10 Improvement workshop last night. One topic that people were really interested in was the Energy Audit. You can learn more about why I think an energy audit is so important in my previous postings. And yes, I am continuing to offer one free energy audit to any [...]
Well…for right now, it’s Elmhurst! Elmhurst is a participating city in the Sierra Club International’s Cool Cities Initiative. Since 2005 one city at a time has been coming on board to make a commitment to fight global warming. There are five milestones a city must address on the journey as a Cool City and they get progressively more [...]
Day 1 of my lobbying adventure has been amazing. To a person, all the Efficiency First folks gathered here in DC share my passion for doing the right stuff, in the right way and out of the box thinking to make it really happen. Very inspiring to be among such a group!
Collectively today we met [...]
Great stuff out of Kipplinger’s this week. http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2009/09/green-myths2.html?kipad_id=52
Some key points…
* Just because something is called “green” doesn’t make it green. See some tips from the Federal Trade Commission on how to make good shopping choices.
* Older homes can actually be more efficient than some newer homes with complicated architecture and energy-hogging electronics
* CFLs may last [...]