Can Save on Natural Gas Bills and Upgrades

Dominion East Ohio offers it for $50 and gives rebates on repairs

The Home Performance With Energy Star program is a valuable resource for homeowners looking to save energy dollars now and into the future.  It does this by having a certified auditor perform a series of tests to your home to determine where you are leaking energy dollars through poorly insulated ceilings and walls, or leaking energy dollars through cracks, hidden holes or chases in your homes construction.  A chase is a chute that runs from the conditioned part of your house to an unconditioned part, say from your basement to your attic or crawl space.

The auditor can spend up to four hours performing the blower door test. This test is done by closing all windows and doors in a house, except one exterior door. That doorway is sealed with the blower door test instrument which pressurizes the house to detect any leaks or cracks where conditioned air can be leaking out of your house, wasting your energy dollars. 

This part of the audit is looking at your house as an "envelope".  The envelope is how well your house keeps in the conditioned air that you've spent good money to heat, clean and humidify in the winter time or dehumidify, clean and cool in the summertime.

The second part of this audit is to determin the efficiency of your major appliances and how efficienctly they use your energy dollars. Older equipment is typically less efficient and uses more gas or electricity to run. While newer equipment containing the EnergyStar label has been tested and certified to deliver results while using less energy.

Once the audit has been performed, homeowners can qualify for the following rebates when they are installed by a certified GoodCents contractor (like Gorjanc Comfort Services).

Acting on the recommendations of the auditor is up to the homeowner.  If you do nothing, your cost is $50 for the audit report. You can receive a free carbon monoxide detector or you can have your $50 refunded if you make one of the audit's recommended improvements.  But if you want to take advantage of Dominion's rebates, you must use a contractor who has been certified by GoodCents (the Dominion East Ohio administrator).

To find out more information regarding the Home Performance With Energy Star program, call us at 440-449-4411 or click here.

 

 

 

 

 

-Where does your Water IQ rank?

 

1.  Which of the following uses less water?

            a) taking a five minute shower

            b) taking a bath

2.  In the average household, which of the following wastes the MOST water per day?

            a) running the tap while washing dishes

            b) using a garbage disposal

            c) a leaky toilet

            d) long showers

3.  How much water can you save per day by turning off the tap while brushing your teeth in the morning and at bedtime?

            a) up to 2 gallons

            b) up to 4 gallons

            c) up to 8 gallons

            d) up to 6 gallons

4.  How much water is saved per flush with a high-efficiency toilet?

            a) at least 1.4 gallons

            b) at least 2.2 gallons

            c) at least 6 gallons

5.  How much of the water on earth is available for people’s everyday use?

            a) more than 50%

            b) 28%

            c) less than 1%

            d) 12%

Time to flip your computer over and check your answers!

1. A – Taking a five minute shower uses 10-25 gallons of water, while a full tub requires about 70 gallons. If you take a bath, stopper the drain immediately and adjust the temperature as you fill the tub.

2. C – A leaky toilet can waste about 200 gallons of water every day! To tell if your toilet is leaking, place a drop of food coloring in the tank; if the color shows in the bowl without flushing, you have a leak.

3. C – The average bathroom faucet flows at a rate of two gallons per minute; by simply turning the tap off, you can save more than 100 gallons of water per person each month

4. B – If your toilet is from 1992 or earlier, you probably have an inefficient model that uses between 3.5 to 7 gallons per flush. New high-efficiency models use less than 1.3 gallons per flush; that’s 60% - 80% less water than their less efficient counterparts.

5. C – Less than 1%! – Even though 75% of the earth’s surface is covered by water, less than 1 percent is available for human use. The rest is salt water, locked in inaccessible locations underground or is frozen in polar ice caps and glaciers.

Thanks for playing along with us, but if you’d like to find out more about why water efficiency is important and how you can become more water-efficient, visit

www.epa.gov/watersense.

Why is it that we can throw everything but the kitchen sink at a problem...but what happens when the problem IS the kitchen sink?!!?

-More specifically, the drain in the kitchen sink. 

When the drain backs up, so do dishes, meals and blood pressure!

• Some things are better composted or thrown away instead of being ground up and carried down the drain. Things that are big and fibrous, starchy, greasy or boney for instance.
• If it's a question of should I run it or shouldn't I? The answer is Yes, you should. Run it more frequently. Don't wait until it's overloaded with potato peels before you flip the switch.
• If the disposal is on, the cold water should be running too! Always!  Without the water running to carry the ground-up debris away, it will end up looking like the puree clinging to the walls of your food processor.
• Listen for the sound of your disposer to say "all clear". It sounds like a whirring motor and not a chopping, grinding, I'm working kind of sound.
• Continue to run the cold water after you turn the disposer off. Running the water for 10 seconds longer will let you start with a clean slate for the next round.

     Another problem that can surface when the disposer isn't run enough is the dishwasher backing up and flooding or water leaking out of the dishwasher's air gap.  This is because most dishwasher drains are plumbed into the garbage disposal. (See illustration above). So if there's a back-up at the disposer, there will also be a back-up at the dishwasher.

     99% of the time, your sink, disposer and drain will perform like the champs they were designed to be. For the other 1% refer to this article or give us a call to check it out.

If you have questions about this or other household products and services or suggestions for future columns, please email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .