What went wrong with weatherization

Popular Mechanics article on the dismal failure of the stimulus-plan - and other - weatherization projects.

It's not all bad, though. Ohio is going gang-busters! of the 32,000 units planned for attention, a whopping 2% have been processed. Ohio leads the nation!

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"I'm from the government and I'm here to dilly-dally."

Reply to
HeyBub
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When I visited the USA a couple of years ago (I'm from the UK) I took the opportunity to look round a few domestic house construction site. By UK standards, what I saw was abysmal in terms of energy efficiency. Houses here in the UK have insulation around four times as effective,not to mention more efficient windows and draught proofing. This was Iowa. Our average Winter temperature is maybe 35 deg F. Iowa maybe 10?. I would say there was no way these houses could be significantly improved by retrofitting insulation ect. America is twenty years behing the rest of the world. A bit like American cars in fact. Useless and outdated.

Reply to
harry

Okay, yeah, maybe most US houses are on the lightweight side. What can I say? Material and land and energy used to be cheap here. House falls down, move a mile further out and build a new one. Can't do that in UK- no room. And while new construction may be more energy-efficient on that side of the pond, what percentage of the existing housing stock is built to those standards?

But for somebody from UK to call US cars crappy? Pot-Kettle-Black, etc. At least we still have a couple of US-owned manufacturers left.

-- aem sends...

Reply to
aemeijers

Another thing that has changed is house size. Houses have gone from maybe 1700 sq.ft. to 2400 sq.ft. or so. Family size has gone down.

Have you driven a Ford lately? GM and Chrysler don't count anymore to me. The Feds have those two companies in their grimy mitts.

Reply to
Dean Hoffman

Check your numbers. Until the '70s, 1100 sq. feet or smaller was a typical house size, unless you were rich. Bedrooms were tiny, until everyone thought they needed a barge to sleep on. Living rooms were 12 feet wide and 16 feet long, not 24x24. (Try buying a couch sized for an older house- it ain't easy.) Family rooms, if they existed, were in the basement and called 'rec rooms'. A house with a second toilet in the laundry room/mudroom, much less with a powder room in the front hall, was considered fancy. A 'master bath', for an upscale house, was often little more than closet size, with a stall shower. There are still a whole lot of sub-1000-foot pre-1960 houses out there, with even fewer amenities. And at the time, they were considered perfectly fine. They used to sell a lot more bunk beds than they do now. You didn't get your own bedroom till your older sibling went away to school or got married, or went into Army, or whatever.

-- aem sends...

Reply to
aemeijers

Read that as ...... 'US automakers, reluctantly funded by the US federal government'!

During previous decades the mantra was that 'private enterprise' and the market place were 'self regulating'. Huh; that didn't work and the desk chair wasn't even cool from the previous president's posterior before the automakers were in Washington looking for 'bail-outs'! The last 10 to 15 years have not been good in the Good Ole USA, eh?

Governments don't 'want' to be in private business ...... it's not something they do well. Maybe those automakers should have been allowed to go under; at least no bonus for the ham handed executives who took them to the edge.

And maybe all those workers in the auto industry who would have (and might still?) lose their livelihood should be laid off and find other jobs? But then the question would be 'what is the government doing about it?'.

If one needs needs to buy a vehicle there are plenty of manufacturers around the world, Japanese, Korean, European, even India and it won't be long before China will be (or already is?) a big player. We have found that the most suitable are Japanese, especially those manufactured entirely in Japan! The last North America produced Japanese vehicle we bought had problems with weather related items such as wipers (it snows and vehicles ice up in North America by the way!), also lousy North American made electrics that corroded quickly. Since around 1967 Japanese vehicles, for example, in these parts have gone from being described as a 'Toy' (remember those adverts?) to somewhere around 50% of the vehicles on the road! In some Arab countries, you know the ones that sell us our oil, and where they have plenty of money to buy whatever they want (and several of them) the percentage of North American style/manufactured vehicles is extremely low.

Aside from vehicles; what is also noticeable as the world economy starts to recover is that those countries that have better regulated (that's regulated not governemnt run) financial systems are recovering a lot more quickly. All this ranting about 'socialism', 'fascism', 'government involvement' etc. that the Americans who don't understand any of it, indulge in is emotional.

It all harks back to the Senator McCarthy era where his 'Un American Activities' committee could find a 'Commie' under every park bench or in every movie script. Seems to be repeating the unfortunate trait of blaming somebody else for what are obviously problems internal to the country.

Maybe the USA needs a better system of government? One that is 'By the people, for the people etc. .....'? It's seems obvious that the ' lobbying system' of government has disadvantages? One lobbyist gets ahead (or what they want) and Joe/Jane citizen are left out.

Whether having an ordinary guy who put himself through college instead of Texan oil sponsored millionaires as president will change anything will have to be seen. Maybe too many vested interest to let him get anything done?

Now back to housing ..............................

Reply to
terry

When I visited the USA a couple of years ago (I'm from the UK) I took the opportunity to look round a few domestic house construction site. By UK standards, what I saw was abysmal in terms of energy efficiency. Houses here in the UK have insulation around four times as effective,not to mention more efficient windows and draught proofing. This was Iowa. Our average Winter temperature is maybe 35 deg F. Iowa maybe 10?. I would say there was no way these houses could be significantly improved by retrofitting insulation ect. America is twenty years behing the rest of the world. A bit like American cars in fact. Useless and outdated.

Useless and outdated? Do you mean like British royalty?

Reply to
Charlie

harry. That's strange. Haven't visited the UK very often since leaving some 50+ years ago but my limited experience of UK housing since hasn't been very impressive. Much of the UK housing stock is old and it is EXPENSIVE! also in short supply?

Visiting my sister in Farnborough (some 40 miles say from London?) in year 2000 her so-called four bed-roomer which she was trying to sell then (and I had offered to help her and my brother in law to move) for around the equivalent of $620,000 dollars was not impressive. One bedroom was no more than a box-room, it had no built in closets, one bathroom and a small extra toilet wash-basin under the stairs with a sloping headroom. There was insufficient room in the kitchen it seemed for a full size fridge, so there was a small 'camper sized' fridge with an equally small freezer below it with the door opening the opposite way! The instant hot water sytem for showers was a bit erratic and hard to use. It as summer time so no experience of winter conditions. So can't recall what kind of heating it had. Also a very; very, small attached garage but no direct access to it from house. She did not sell at the time but later for around $670,000. An equivalent house in North America at the time would IMO have cost/sold no more than half that; maybe $250,000 and in certain parts of the USA for around $200,000 or less.

Again staying at a B & B near Heathrow around 2005 I was relegated to what had probably been a council house down a side road, although it was a nice area not far from Heathrow. It was quite a surprise not having seen or lived in one of those since the 1950s! The whole house was no more than 12 or at most 15 feet wide and was attached both sides. The front door had originally opened into the front living room! But it had been walled off and been converted into one of B&B bedrooms. The staircase was narrow and the handrail was merely a strip of wood on the wall. The shower didn't work and there was no bath plug ...... but that's another story .............. There was no space on the property to park a vehicle! The whole row should have been torn down years ago.

Also stayed with old friend from school near Cheltenham. Smallish detached house, again no built in closets, pleasant area, smallish well kept garden. The small areas of grass could easily be trimmed with a push-mower. Very small attached garage. Not big enough to work on smallish car.

Visiting the big old house in Liverpool where we lived immediately after WWII which was over 100 years old when we lived there in the late 1940s, found it being converted to expensive flats. have since seen/heard each flat sells for around $300,000! No garages at all!

This all electric four bedroom and large attached garage wood frame house which we built in 1970, main construction taking about six weeks, and then finishing it ourselves cost (then) less than $40,000 (about 2.5 times my gross annual salary), including land, a well and septic tank. Now on municipal water and sewer. If built today it would have thicker walls and more insulation etc. But it has worked well and now coming up on a couple of major repair items; roof and driveway replacements at today's prices plus 40 years of pretty easy self- maintenance our annual total cost of housing, including heat/light, municipal fees, insurance etc. etc. is estimated at around say $7000 to $8000. Say around 5000 UK pounds.

Following discussions on UK d-i-y (a do it yourself group) it sounds as though insulation, use of vapour barriers, proper attic venting, air exchangers for well sealed homes and double glazing are still not universal in UK and that much of the housing is approaching 100 years old? I do recall a one floor flat of a 53 year old house being on the market in year 2000 for 130,000 UK pounds, wow, then well over $200,000?

BTW what has happened to all those pre-fabs of the post war era. how long did they last? Cheers.

Reply to
terry

LOL. Yeah, that's why Obama and the Dems are so hell bent on taking control of healthcare, prefering a public option and rejecting outright any number of simple steps that could be taken a few at a time to bring needed reform. Let's take for example eliminating roadblocks so that any health insurance company can sell it's products anywhere in the USA across state lines. If you're is in favor of competition and private business, then this is a simple and very logical step. Yet, Obama laments the lack of competition and at the same time refuses this simple proposal outright. Of course if the competition came from govt, then it would be OK. Even worse, despite being asked many times why he's opposed, he has yet to give an answer. Last Thursday, at the meeting to explore reaching some kind of agreement, the Obama answer was he didn't want to get bogged down in "talking points"

I guess those Toyota cars, most of which are built in Japan, that are killing people and causing runaway accidents are crowning examples of Japanese achievement. And if everything built in NA were crap, then there would be a hell of a lot of BMWs, Hondas, MBs etc that would be having all kinds of problems.

Who cares what anyone drives in some Arab countries? But for the record, HumVees seem to be very popular over there. Where are they built?

Yeah, China is having a boom at the moment. Does that make communism the best system? Last time I checked the US economy was and continues to be heavily regulated. Does that mean that the system will forsee and prevent everything that can go wrong? Of course not. Hindsight is 20-20. And if the govt is so much better, why did FNMA and FreddieMac, which are quasi govt agencies go bust too? Wasn't it Congressman Barney Frank, who's committee has supervisory authority, proclaim all was well just about a year before everything hit the fan?

I think many of us here understand it a lot better than you.

You have a govt that now owns GM and is seeking to take over 16% of the rest of the economy. At the same time they reject private free market easy solutions out of hand. Obama regularly rails against all kinds of businesses: Wall Street, Las Vegas, Insurance companies, Drug companies, etc. That indeed is moving toward socialism.

And where and under what system of govt exactly is it that this does not occur?

It's definitely changed things. And just looking at the poll numbers the people clearly don't like that change. When a Republican wins a Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy and becomes the first Republican senator from MA in 35 years, the hand writing is on the wall. And those that are too arrogant to read it, eg Obama and the Dems, will pay the price.

Reply to
trader4

How's British Leylands working out for ya? Lucas?

...and when AIM says "US-owned", he means owned by the _US_OWNED_. ;-)

Reply to
krw

I'm amazed at the people who watched Affirmative Action lending destroy the home mortgage business and they now believe an Affirmative Action politician can fix everything. Oh great teleprompter in the sky, please save us.

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

I find this very hard to believe. What are typical R values for walls and ceilings in the UK? How are your more efficient windows constructed? What draft proof methods do you prefer?

In most areas of the US, new homes must pass the Residential Energy Check which trades off insulation values and better windows and doors, with heating and cooling efficiency. The higher the furnace efficiency, the less unsulation you are required to have, etc.

My house (in Ohio) passed in 2005 using the 2003 ResCheck. I needed walls with R 13 cavities and R 3.3 foam panels on the outside. The ceilings are R

30 or 40, floors are R 19 over semi conditioned space, (not open to the outside air).

A friend is building a home nearby and by the 2008 standards has to have R 13 walls with R 6.5 foam panels, and R 49 ceilings, this is with a geo-thermal heat pump.

I think my home is pretty average. Are you saying the homes on the UK have R

70 walls and R 120 ceilings?
Reply to
DT

Their argument is that there will be "race to the bottom" as each insurance company narrows more and more its coverage in order to offer lower rates.

I think the reason is more insidious.

There are states that mandate dodgy coverage: Chiropractic, holistic medicine, herbal or aroma therapy, Naturopathy, and the like, plus they mandate coverage for arguably non-medical conditions such as alcoholism, hair transplants, birth-control pills, tattoo removal, and so on. These requirements significantly raise the cost to all but were put in place by high-decibel advocates.

Permitting sales across state lines would put pressure on these insurers to get out of the voodoo business to the disquiet of the new age types who would have crystals in every hospital room.

Of course the Republicans are not immune to unproven therapies. We conservatives believe that tax cuts can cure cancer and alleviate bee bites.

Reply to
HeyBub

Many homes in the UK are so small they can be acclimatized in the winter with mere body heat. Maybe one dog.

Reply to
HeyBub

If that's true, it's surely one of the stupidist examples of govt in action. What good is a higher efficiency furnace if you're then going to back off on the amount of insulation? Why save money in one place, just to throw it out in another?

Reply to
trader4

By this writing, either you are attempting humor, or displaying ignorance.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

It just sets a *minimum* standard for BTUs per square foot to ensure a reasonably efficient home. You can always build to a higher efficiency. That required efficiency has risen over the years. REScheck is pass/fail, there is no fudging by the building department. The REScheck software generates a score and it must reach a certain BTU/sf, depending on where you live. The scoring page states "pass" or "fail". If you don't pass, you don't get the building permit. If you pass by 20%, so much the better.

You can download REScheck or run it on the web. It works in near real time, you change the window sizes in one room, for instance, and a new score appears. You can experiment with different options to see what you would rather do. If you want lots of huge windows, you are going to need higher insulation. Judging from what my friend has been going through it would be extremely hard to pass the latest versions with an 80% furnace in my area.

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It also offers pre-approved packages. As long as you meet each insulation level and window U factor, the home passes automatically. I couldn't use this approach with my home, since part of it was existing and I added a second story addition. Since I had a few areas which were less than the specified insulation or U factors, I had to increase the insulation in other areas to pass.

Reply to
DT

Where did you visit? Much of the U.S. doesn't need much insulation. I bet if you visited a recent minnisota house, you'd find insulation superior to any brit house. Their requirements dwarf yours.

Reply to
AZ Nomad

I haven't been to the UK except on a plane connection, but I've lived in both Germany and Minnesota. (roughly same latitude)

There is just no comparison. The biggest difference is inflitration. Minnesota houses were built like a sieve, air almost blows through them. The German houses showed how tight you can get with proper attention to construction detail - they had so few air changes per day (not per hour) that most people open windows to ventilate. (yeah, seems counterproductive, but humidity would build up) The German windows really seal and really insulate, while being operable (tilt or close).

Reply to
TimR

It is a good question to be asking ...........' Why spend money on energy losses when, by a much larger investment at today's prices one could reduce it considerably?'

But it can be a matter of current 'economics'. Living, as we are, in a typical 1970s stick built, fully paid for, North American house, we might be able, say, to cut our energy costs in half . Oh goody, eh?

But do so would either mean selling and building/buying a newer better insulated house etc. and/or gutting this one entirely and rebuilding it! Both alternatives would be costly. At least $50,000 to $100,000.

To get any 'significant' savings in energy costs one estimate of the cost would require one to amortize something of the order of at least $50,000 (maybe more) at an annual of cost of around $6000, in order to reduce our annual energy cost from around $3500 per annum by 50% or $1750.

In other words $6000 per year (next 10 years) to save $1750; it's not economic!

A similar situation can exist with a motor vehicle; e.g. the 2002 model V6 we have at the moment, originally bought for operating a small business does not get very good gas mileage. But at this stage it is driven so little that fuel consumption is not a significant cost factor. So again it is not economic to replace it until it becomes absolutely necessary. If one were a 'travelling salesman' , for example,. then gas mileage could be a most significant factor.

In the meantime one can do some normal things to improve one's existing home; without getting involved in any of those governemnt subsidized schemes, which, in Canada anyway, seem to require masses of bureaucracy! Declaration of ones income for last few years, address, blood type of your first born, when you last visited the USA and how many times per week you and your spouse (or significant other) get it on! Well that is a 'bit' of an exaggeration! But the previous time we had taken advantage of a government funded 'Better insulation scheme' it ended up in my income tax!

Seriously though: The governemnt of Canada have just ceased offering an incentive that provided, on expenditures of up to $10,000 a maximum subsidy of $1,350 (13.5%). Considering that at least 50% of any $10,000 insulation upgrade may be labour, a better course in our case was to buy the materials and o the work ourselves, as convenient (and from time to as material was on sale?). That subsidy/incentive (now no longer available) on say $5000 was 15% on anything over the first $1000, so on $5000 =3D $600! So, an overall cost of say $4,400 in order to make some slight reduction, maybe $50 per month? in energy costs. That does seem a little more economic although the $50 per month reduction may be a bit optimistic.

Reply to
terry

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