I used to be in construction before I decided to go back to college and get my EE and started designing microprocessors.
Spend the $$ first on making sure your home is fully insulated in the walls, floor and ceiling. This is within the abilities of most home owners.
Get a Kill-O-Watt ($20) and find out where all the high current devices are in your house. Changing them to more energy efficient versions will help more.
Just doing this will save real $$$ while having to spend 20k for a solar array which might save you $10/month.
Absolutely agree.
The first places I start investing in “energy efficiency” on a home are the doors. There are far too many homes with far too much leakage around doors.
Next are the windows.
Those two areas are the worst offenders in heat loss, because many people don’t take the time to really do doors and window installation correctly.
Next area is insulation.
Some of the best engineering ideas I’ve seen recently on homebuilding have to do with a) going to 6” walls and b) staggering studs on the inside/outside walls, so there is no direct connection from the outside wall to the inside wall through the stud except possibly in corners. This radically reduces the heat transmission of a house from the inside walls to the outside.
Thank you so much for the info. I’ve made up my mind not to go solar. Don’t know if my stubborn hubby will go along. But, if he doesn’t he can build the darn think himself...lol I’m going to check out a wood gasifier next. I’d never even heard of one of those until someone mentioned it.