MakeHeat

Heard this on Andy McCaskey’s SDRNews podcast.  Glad to see it trickling down to the home market.  Cabots has both granulated (like blown insulation) as well as blanket available, while Aspen Aerogels has just blankets(spaceloft).  For new home construction, you should also see thermablock.com: this company makes a stick-on insulation for the structural parts of a home (the 2×4′s or 2×6′s) that’s supposed to increase the total R value by about 40%.

Superinsulating Aerogels Arrive on Home Insulation Market At Last | Popular Science.

Making heat is only part of the battle.  If I had a screen house with a solar air heater, it wouldn’t be keeping me warm: you have to keep the heat you make.  There are several products out on the market that allow you to put foam into your pre-existing walls to insulate and seal cracks.  This is the first one I found, and plan to follow with more.

Foam It Green Polyurethane Spray Foam Kits – Cart.

1. First, close all exterior doors, windows, and fireplace flues.
2. Turn off all combustion appliances such as gas burning furnaces and water heaters.
3. Then turn on all exhaust fans (generally located in the kitchen and bathrooms) or use a large window fan to suck the air out of the rooms. 

This test increases infiltration through cracks and leaks, making them easier to detect. You can use incense sticks or your damp hand to locate these leaks. If you use incense sticks, moving air will cause the smoke to waver, and if you use your damp hand, any drafts will feel cool to your hand.

HealthNewsDigest.com.

TX, USA – I always thought in terms of fluid dynamics when it came to heat – a fancy way of saying I wasn’t thinking clearly.  Here’s a great article, and what I learned today (you should learn at least one new thing every day, and relearn three). …”In simple terms, heat travels in three ways: convection, conduction and radiation,” Reed said. “The radiant barrier blocks the radiant spectrum; additional insulation slows conduction of heat into the house, and we put in another 20 eave vents and replaced our passive spinning turbines on the roof with solar-powered vents. That solves the convection problem.” …

via Dollar Wise: With radiant barriers, high expectations for lower bills | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Texas Regional News .

The first step in creating or upgrading a home that’s going to save you money making heat is keeping the heat there!  Before we started looking into alternative sources of heat, we insulated everything we could.  Once we did that, we found some of the other sources of cold air infiltration, like the “cold air return” that was kludged under the addition.  Cold air from the house is supposed to return to the furnace, but the way this was done cold air was returning to the house once the heater stopped…

 Here are some great tips for sealing and insulating around your home so you can keep the heat you make.

Go green — and stay toasty — without spending a fortune on energy-efficient home improvements | PressDemocrat.com | The Press Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA.