Boosting the Economy with Efficient HVAC

January 10, 2009 – Vol.13 No.42

BOOSTING THE ECONOMY WITH EFFICIENT HVAC.
by Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News

Take the time to let your fingers to the walking through the Heating and Air Conditioning Contractors section of your Yellow Pages. In those pages of the business telephone telephone directory count the number of contractor listings. You may be surprised how many there are.

However, the number of listings actually shouldn’t be a shock: There are lots of houses out there and at some point all will need the services of an HVAC (Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning) contractor. (Or need a plumbing contractor if you are lucky enough to have a hot water heating system.)

The number of houses is only part of the story in the popularity of HVAC contracting: It can be a very profitable business. For the installation of new equipment (which is common) contractors can charge for their labor as well as mark up the cost of the equipment and related parts. That markup and the cost of labor is variable between contractors, so you should shop around. (And, a hint, replace before you need it so you’ll have the time to compare estimates. You don’t want to replace your heating system when it fails and it’s 0 degrees outside. When you’re freezing to death it’s tough to make an educated decision.)

President elect Obama is already pushing his economic stimulus plan. “We’ll create nearly half a million jobs by investing in clean energy – by committing to double the production of alternative energy in the next three years, and by modernizing more than 75 percent of federal buildings and improving the energy efficiency of two million American homes. Tax cuts, infrastructure building, and energy efficiency improvements for homes are a few of the features,” says Obama.

Typically, for existing construction, energy efficiency improvements mean installing new, state-of-the-art heating and cooling equipment.

The term “shovel ready” is being tossed about when funding infrastructure improvements is being discussed by pundits. “Shovel ready” means how many projects may be ready to begin construction or repair on a moment’s notice. Likely, there are few, so the impact of job creation (it’s needed now) wouldn’t be right away.

However, it’s safe to say that most American homeowners could use a more efficient heating and cooling system right now. Given an incentive, owners could give the go ahead in a matter of days or even hours. There are perhaps many more millions of “shovel ready” or perhaps “wrench ready” home HVAC efficiency projects than Obama estimates.

Like investments in infrastructure, improvements in home energy efficiency create domestic jobs. Aside from the local contractors themselves, furnaces and boilers are typically made in U.S. factories and sold through local or regional suppliers. So a plan to increase the energy efficiency of homes through the installation of new HVAC equipment would spread economic help throughout the country from contractor to manufacturing plant.

Of course there are more long term benefits of heating and cooling upgrades. Energy consumption is reduced thus cutting heating and cooling bills. Greenhouse gases, too, are cut, another goal for Obama. For the homeowner a new, furnace, boiler or air conditioning system could be like a tax cut that creates jobs and helps save the planet from global warming.

Whatever Congress and Obama sign off on in regard to efficiency improvements in heating and air conditioning, the legislation should reach out to give consideration to new technologies as well as offer guidance, perhaps through well-publicized websites, as to purchasing more efficient conventional systems and new technologies.

While there have been steady improvements in the efficiency of HVAC equipment over the years, there is always more opportunity for total system improvements.

For example, it’s difficult to regulate, on a room-by-room basis, whole house forced air heating and cooling systems. Registers can be adjusted per room but temperature cannot be regulated exactly. Improved regulation of hot or cold air can reduce energy consumption as well; hot or cold air is supplied only to rooms that need it.

There’s at least one system that can now do that.

Home Comfort Zones, of Portland, Oregon, has developed its MyTemp (R) room-by-room temperature control and energy management system; with the technology, ducts leading to rooms have air bags installed within them. Each room has a thermostat. The thermostats control the inflation or deflation of the room’s respective air bag to block (or not) air flowing to that room thus controlling its temperature.

The company says heating and cooling energy consumption can be reduced by up to 40 percent with its system.

Home Comfort Zones has announced that it’s expanding to the chilly New England states in a partnership with RST Inc. a manufacturer’s representative for several lines of advanced plumbing and HVAC solutions, including radiant heat and high velocity HVAC systems

Links:

Home Comfort Zones
http://www.homecomfortzones.com

RST
http://www.rstreps.com