There should be also more focus on proper thermal insulation of houses in warm climate, which is something that is not often mentioned. Lots of energy gets lost on AC simply because heat easily enters the houses.
Yeah I'm renting a house in central NC and May-September our power bill skyrockets from AC. The windows are not insulated at all and we have a lot of them. Even the floors, walls, and ceilings leak heat like crazy, you can feel it just putting your hand close to the wall or ceiling. We run AC to get it down to 76F and it's still crazy expensive and using a lot of unnecessary power. We need to encourage insulation, especially of windows. My parents had a lot of big windows too and recently have started upgrading them to insulated windows and it makes a huge difference. The US needs to heavily encourage these sorts of improvements to buildings, it's good for everyone.
> The US needs to heavily encourage these sorts of improvements to buildings, it's good for everyone.
Is it though? I imagine your landlord doesn't think it's good for them. It's not bad for them, but why would they spend hundreds or thousands of dollars improving your apartments insulation when it costs them nothing to keep the poor thermal in place.
I too lived in rentals that had terrible thermal protection. It was awful to heat and cool. Yet, my landlords wouldn't have spent a dime to improve that.
Not sure what can be done here, but with seemingly more and more homes becoming rentals this perhaps needs a solution.
If two or three tenants in a row move out and cite sky high power costs due to poor insulation as the reason, the landlord will notice and do something about it. One tenant is a fluke, several all saying the same thing over a few years is a problem that will get dealt with. Nothing costs a landlord money like high turnover. But departing tenants DO need to communicate that as the issue, otherwise the landlord would never really know since s/he isn’t the one paying the bill.
In providence RI my friends and I rented a 3 BR 2nd floor of a duplex. The heating cost was insanity. The rent itself was 1350 per month and the oil heating in the winter cost us 3600, which is 100 per month added onto my 450 share for the entire year. I left that year, my roomies stayed and begged the landlord to switch, the oil heater was wicked old and inefficient. He said no, he didn't care. They moved due to that. So yes, it did cost him, probly the months worth of rent that he lost due to the realtors finders fee.
I live in London nowadays. When brosing rental properties,the first thing I check in photos is whether it has normal radiators ( gas heating). If I see electric ones, I move on to the next property.Also rent is much cheaper on these...
They can potentially raise the rent (for the next renter if there's rent control) by advertising "modern double pane windows" which offer sound insulation from outside noise, in addition to the thermal benefits.
They definitely could raise rents if offering thermal and noise insulated living environment. The quality of living goes up drastically with that, so it would make sense.
In my particular case I'm renting a house, so it is probably more directly important to the landlord to insulate the house than if it were a large apartment building. The resale value for the house goes up steeply with well-insulated windows. Also the quality of life inside the house improves with better insulation and can therefore potentially draw a slightly higher rent. Also the landlord will have to replace the AC and heating unit less frequently, and those things are expensive.
However there are also indirect benefits to improving insulation generally. First of all there is less fossil fuel pollution since much of the US is still mostly on fossil fuel power, so reducing electrical demand has a positive impact on air quality and atmospheric carbon dioxide. Also a lower load on the local power grid reduces operating costs and reduces wear on grid equipment, reducing frequency of part replacements. Also AC units tend to be pretty loud since they're running fairly large compressors, and themselves generate heat outside the house, and though these factors may be small they do contribute to both noise and heat pollution.
I think a subsidy for energy efficiencyizing buildings in various ways should be provided, I know they have been in limited ways before. Regulating new construction to ensure a base level of heat exchange resistance would be another way.
Require landlords to pay for heat? That would align incentives somewhat, though then the tenant has no incentive to be efficient.
A 50/50 split might work, since landlord is responsible for energy efficiency of the home and the tenant is responsible for setting the thermostat sanely?
On my university campus, the university covers electricity, but will flag you and inspect your room for banned equipment if you use too much. They do the same for internet usage. You're explicitly banned from running server racks, or microwaves or refridgerators other than the ones they provide in the rooms which have a particular wattage. A landlord could do the same.
All rental search sites I've used in my life have energy bill estimation right there. Where I live now, the law requires including that in the advertised price.
I was wondering about this the other day. In NL, insulation has been part of the building code for ages. With stronger requirements every decade or so. Insulated windows have been required since the 80ies for new houses. Now it’s triple pane krypton glass. Is this not the case for the USA.
The US has insulation requirements, it varies a lot state to state but new housing generally has at least decent-ish insulation. The main issue is that there is a lot of very old housing stock in the US. As of 2015 the median house was 37 years old and 40% were over 45 years old. In the area I live the vast majority of the houses were built in the 40s or 50s, though most people have done some amount of insulation retrofitting.
Prewar houses in cold climates are insulated just fine. It seems a lot of 1980s and 1990s structures in San Francisco basically cardboard boxes, because with mild weather you get away with it.
You are probably conflating window insulation with window air leaks. The best windows generally available are R-5 at best on initial installation and degrade over time as The argon leaks. They are also extremely expensive. Not a very good investment.
But most energy losses in older buildings are from leaking air not thermal conductance. So upgrading to R-1 but sealed and we'll installed Windows can do a lot without having to spend 50k.
Also, you can use thermal shutters that have MUCH higher R-value than even top of the line windows.
We have an old house and the energy auditor was selling us hard on attic air sealing and insulation. Claim was that windows weren’t gonna make as big of an impact given the stack effect. (They’re also historic “wavy glass” windows, and we’d like to keep them.)
Do you think attic air sealing, or more effective attic insulation would have a big impact? It does feel like the roof turns into a radiant heater in the summer.
(The only energy auditor available in the area is also in the business of providing the insulation, which is why I’m skeptical.)
It'll help. Ask for some customer references, maybe someone with a similar house. But it could also cause other problems. Older houses are naturally leaky and that helps keep them manage mold/mildew and radon. Your water heater and furnace could also backdraft. So that's something to consider. Modern houses are basically sealed inside a plastic bag so you need active mechanical ventilation to keep things in order.
If you have a really old house make sure you don't have vermiculite insulation which might make things way more expensive cause it likely has asbestos in it. Apart from that you can also DIY it but it's messy. Your state may offer incentives for doing it too.
I'm not an expert but based on my personal research adding a ridge vent to the roof and getting a convection current drawing fresh air from the soffits through the attic and out the ridge supposedly makes a big difference. When you've got it all sealed up you've got a solar oven.
You'll still want insulation on the floor of the attic space, and seal off the living space from the attic.
From what I gather the main complication is keeping critters out while opening your attic to a substantial flow of fresh air. A pile of rockwool insulation sounds like a hell of a home for many small mammals, and bees can get past all but the finest of screen meshes. It seems feasible to diligently install screens on all the vents but it'll be a maintenance burden to keep them intact as the years go by.
I don't know much about this, but anecdotal info: my apartment (comparable to a 1-floor bungalow with lots of windows) has argon-filled windows, and it cost me around USD$1600 for the window themselves (I didn't change the frames, but my old windows were cheap/scrap).
I heat to 18oC in winter (Montreal) and AC to 24oC in summer. My electricity bill averages USD$40 per month. The windows made a nice difference, and still seem efficient after 10 years.
If the window is in the sun, your major problem is unlikely to be window insulation. It’s solar heat gain. Sunlight carries a lot of power — about 1 kW per square meter. If your window lets all of that power in, then your AC needs to consume a couple hundred watts to send it back out again. What you need are windows with low solar heat gain coefficients (SHGC), which is mostly independent of insulation. Or you can get window treatments that are shiny on the side facing the window.
> What you need are windows with low solar heat gain coefficients (SHGC), which is mostly independent of insulation. Or you can get window treatments that are shiny on the side facing the window.
In the desert by me people use substantial awnings on the exterior putting the windows in shade. It's a lot cheaper than fancy window treatments and in my experience far more effective. Provides more space to mount solar panels too.
I have blackout curtains in my office covering two south facing windows (in FL). They block a good bit of heat, but it still gets warm. I mostly just wear shorts and deal with it as I really don't want to run the AC down too low (keep it at 80 while I'm home alone; 76 when the family gets home).
For me personally, 76°F (24.4°C) is kinda cold. I'd turn it up to 86°F (30°C) and make use of fans (or just use only fans, no AC). Probably, better to transition slowly, like 1° a day. Some people, of course, are less tolerant to heat, but I don't think I'm far from average. Just make sure you are dressed as light (or scanty) as possible.
New building standards don't affect existing buildings. And they're not optional, so the tax isn't an option for non-compliance.
Forcing existing landlords to retrofit to new building standards isn't even done for safety purposes, so it certainly isn't going to happen for energy efficiency.
And calling for this to now be a thing, well, I can't think of a better way to get entrenched interests to suddenly lobby hard against every single new building reg.
> New building standards don't affect existing buildings.
No, but habitability standards do (or, technically, in general affect the legal ability to charge rent for units in existing buildings.) So, user those of your concern is recalcitrant landlords.
> Forcing existing landlords to retrofit to new building standards isn't even done for safety purposes
Yes, this is done (not always, but it does happen), through habitability standards beifn updated along with building standards (or referencing them.)
I just went and looked at habitability standards, there's no way to get energy efficiency out of that mechanism, at best you could make landlords install ceiling fans.
And the only example I can think of for the latter was for asbestos. If being as horrible as asbestos is the bar you have to clear, regulation isn't a viable option and we're stuck with market solutions.
I come from a country where climate is very similar to what Chicago has,so to read that people use AC for heating is quite fascinating! I agree that houses shouldn't be built like in "The Three Little Pigs"...
AC (and heat pumps in general) is great for heating, it can be way more power efficient than anything else. I mean, in theory, its efficiency can be way higher than 100%. But that's only when it's not too cold outside (I guess, at least above zero). You can consider using it in spring & autumn periods.
I have the opposite problem living really high up in a condo. The heat from units below us travel upwards and in the summer I can open the door and get free cooling effect.
When so many people rent, landlord just passes the utility bill onto tenant and there's zero incentive to use energy-efficient windows/insulation/etc.
I have lived in building <10 years old where a breeze blows through closed windows.
The energy bills aren't so bad that middle-class renters are going to differentiate which apartment they choose based on the potential energy bills. (Whereas a homeowner who has already settled down into that house/condo has an incentive to reduce bills). So the heating/cooling energy is just going to keep getting wasted.
Definitely. A lot of our houses were built when a/c wasn’t necessary so you actually wanted to let heat in. The average summer high in LA was in the mid 70s during the 1950s. Now it’s in the high 80s and sometimes hits 100+.
The house my dad grew up in he no a/c. We had to install it in the 1980s. Now it would be unlivable without.
But the thermal profile is terrible. It’s designed to bring heat inside year round.
All those internal combustion engines filling the congested LA roads aren't exactly cooling the place down either. More of the energy from the fuel is lost to heat out the radiator and tail pipe than goes towards propulsion.
An interesting fact I was told: a typical American apartment uses more electricity on AC than a typical modern apartment in the Persian gulf countries.
Besides the near absence of insulation, a lot has to do with design itself. Prevalence of huge windows or glazed curtainwalls, indoor convection, exposed floor slabs, huge balconies, abundance of complex shapes, and no avoidance of West-East orientation.
There's a stat that goes around that says something like "10 billion people can't live at Western standards of living". What it doesn't mention is that the "western" expenditure is massively inflated by Americans being unable to muster the small amount of collective action required for them to benefit from well insulated houses, safe/efficient cars etc.
A house I was renting took about 50,000+ BTUs worth of two large AC units to maintain around 90F during the summer. Our electricity bill would get pretty close to $500/month if it was hot (and down to <$20 other months).
It was a house with a large, north/south-facing roof, with black roofing tiles, zero roofing insulation, and poor airflow (but lots of leaks) so we couldn't just open windows/doors. It was utterly absurd construction at even a glance (outside of fashion), and our utility costs were far more than it would've cost to improve. But the property owner lived elsewhere and had no interest in improving anything, only basic repairs.
Very low cost and effective way for thermal insulation is to apply limestone powder on the roof, easily lowers room temperature by 2 degrees Celsius, even 2 degrees makes a big difference in hot summers. Did it at my native place home last summer, made heat a bit bearable with temperatures going beyond 45 degrees.
Did you mean 'building a proper non-cardboard houses'? :)
(I wonder if there is a study on house sturdiness and longevity in Europe vs USA - there seems to be a huge difference. Are US houses considered a single generational (to be bulldozed instead of inherited)?)
