The Carolina Contractor Show
The Carolina Contractor Show
Home Weatherization: Your Guide to Comfort and Savings
Feeling the pinch of high utility bills? Your home might be quietly leaking money through unsealed windows, inadequate insulation, and other weatherization weak points. General contractor Donnie Blanchard breaks down the surprising difference between weatherization and insulation – and why you need both for maximum comfort and savings…
We dive into a fascinating case study of a young couple whose home had zero wall insulation, leaving them shivering in 50-degree indoor temperatures despite running their heat pump constantly. For just $2,000, a simple "drill and fill" insulation solution transformed their comfort and slashed their energy bills. This perfect example demonstrates how weatherization investments pay for themselves quickly and continue generating savings for decades.
Donnie explains that weatherization addresses convective heat transfer (air movement) while insulation tackles conductive heat transfer (heat moving through materials). Understanding this distinction helps homeowners make smarter upgrade decisions. Whether you're feeling drafts from outlets, discovering your floors aren't insulated, or considering window replacements, this episode provides practical guidance on where to start.
The financial benefits of weatherization can be staggering. Using real data from utility company projections, Donnie reveals how proper weatherization can save homeowners up to six figures over a 30-year mortgage period. Unlike many home improvements that only provide value at resale, weatherization starts paying you back immediately through reduced monthly bills.
We also discuss the value of professional energy audits, including blower door tests and duct blaster assessments that pinpoint exactly where your home is losing energy. Often, the solutions are simpler and less expensive than homeowners expect – sometimes fixing disconnected ductwork can solve problems that might otherwise prompt considering a complete HVAC replacement.
Ready to stop wasting money on inefficient heating and cooling? Visit thecarolinacontractor.com to submit your questions about weatherization, insulation, or any other home improvement topic!
Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show with your host, general Contractor Donnie Blanchard. Now I know it's only spring, donnie, but summer means big summer movie blockbusters. My son, zach, when he's not in college, tends to work at a movie theater. Are you looking forward to anything coming out this spring and summer in the theater?
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure, All the new Marvel movies are coming out. Well, maybe not necessarily this summer, but they get kicked off this summer. So it's been a big secret as to what they were going to do and the next phase in the whole series, and so I'm looking forward to it. It kind of brings out the kid in me and you know, when you get a little older, you grow up watching that stuff and then you get married and you have kids and then they get into it.
Speaker 1:You get to go back to the theater and watch all that stuff. Then you just have to be kind of a creeper and go because you enjoy it and, like I said, my son's very excited about it. So I kind of get to go back to the theaters and watch the expansion of the Marvel Universe. That's going to happen, of the Marvel universe. That's going to happen, especially with the Fantastic Four. You seen that trailer, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's kind of odd that they went that route where it's almost like they live in this utopia of a perfect world, and I'm interested to see how they're going to spin it. All right, is your car this color anymore, lord? No, thank God that we got a few good strong rains, because I don't know if the pollen just bothers me more because I'm older every year, but it seems like this year it was extra heavy and a lot of porch maintenance. I always think about the show that you talked about. You wrapped your porch in plastic and I always thought how weird the neighbors must think you are. But it was a heck of an idea, man. It worked. It did the trick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first year we did it was COVID, so they definitely thought something was weird. First year we did, it was COVID, so they definitely thought something was weird. We didn't do it this past spring because we're going to really be cleaning it out anyways, because we're going to be doing some projects over the next year or so. But I want to start off the show by letting everybody who's never heard it before know what's going on, because whoever is listening for the first time is completely lost. This is the Carolina Contractor Show and my name is Eric Smith. I do inside sales for home builders in Wilson, Greenville. Donnie here is a general contractor. He owns Blanchard Building Company. Also owns Sure Top Roofing.
Speaker 1:We just like to talk about building and construction and DIY projects and if you own a house, you're going to dig this show. If you sit in your garage on the weekends and want to do some projects or you want to do repairs, or maybe you're going to dig this show If you sit in your garage on the weekends and want to do some projects or you want to do repairs or maybe you're going to be doing a renovation of some sort, this is what we do, but we're not those boring engineer types. We talk about sports and movies and things like that too. The website you can start at to get more information thecarolinacontractorcom Very popular feature Ask the Contractor. That's your chance to pick Donnie's brain. Click on the button. Anything about your house the inside or the outside, construction, diy we love to get those questions. Also, links to the YouTube page. Be sure to go there and give us a like. You can join on to get notified when we put up shows. We've got social media. Find us there on IG and Facebook and, again, give us likes, ideas, follow us there. If there's something you want to talk about, we're open to it. We love doing that.
Speaker 1:And again, donnie, you are a contractor, general contractor. You do a lot of stuff with houses. I'm just the pretty boy here. But what's going on in your world? Because I know in winter things slow down, maybe on both sides roofing and general construction. But now that we're kind of coming out with we're in spring, weather's getting warmer, pollen's going away. Are you getting busy? You got projects going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought I was going to catch my breath in January. So I did a few things that have been on the back burner for a while and, man, I just don't know if catching my breath is in the cards for the next decade. You know, you think about with children. You got cars, colleges and weddings to pay for, so you really can't take your foot off the gas for a lot of reasons. But January I got a few things done. It was probably the only time I've had two or three weeks where people weren't pulling at me, and then I'm pleased to say that that it started back in February and so it seems like the economy's booming where we are and people aren't afraid to spend money anymore. You know, it's kind of one of those things where consumer confidence controls and drives the workload in my world and and it's not easy, but but like I mentioned before, when you have children to pay for and, you know, want to live a decent life you got to go to work every day and I'm just thankful that there's work there to do. So we did get a few projects out of the ground recently and we got some really interesting additions and you know, normally I take on a lot of new construction. So we, you know, start from scratch, build from the ground up, and an addition or a remodel is just a different animal because the folks are usually living there. So both of these most recent projects happen to be additions. And we got one that was built, I don't know, 50, 60 years ago Very cute house, young couple and we got into the project and everything super smooth, everybody's super happy.
Speaker 2:And when we went to do the breakthrough into the house from the new addition to the existing, we realized that they didn't have any insulation in their house. So of course you know me, I go building science nerd and try to ask all the right questions. And it turns out that they are basically on a heat pump, which means they have electric heat. And we were still in the colder months when we got going and they revealed to me that at nighttime that their system couldn't really keep up and that they would get down in the sixties or even high fifties inside the house. So that's not. I like to sleep in the cold, but that's not for everybody, especially when you have young children like they do.
Speaker 2:So, um, of course that turned into what can we do about it? We realized there was no insulation in the exterior walls and we've talked about this on several shows over the last what five, six years? But they did have overhead insulation. They did have insulation in the crawl space under the house but they didn't have anything in the walls. So there's a process called drill and fill and basically the insulation company comes and pumps cellulose insulation into the walls. So we were responsible for going around and making access in every stud bay and it sounds like a lot but it's really, when you find the 16 inch on center pattern, it's just a matter of following that inch increment and, you know, giving access to the insulation company.
Speaker 2:And the even more surprising thing is it's not that expensive to do. This was a smaller house, but I want to say that they were able to insulate the walls for about $2,000. And you know, I mean that's a red insulate. From an insulating standpoint, two grand is pretty cheap, but from a retrofit insulation I felt like that was a very fair price. And just today we talked about it and of course it got cold the last couple of and temperature starting to bounce back to to cooler weather and which I expected, but they told me that it didn't get below mid 60s or so, and that really solved a big problem that they didn't even know they had or why they had it, and it was all because they didn't have, you know, the gas heat would have given them a a hotter punch when the the heat kicked, but they had that electric heat and no insulation, so that was the perfect recipe for not very comfortable inside the house.
Speaker 1:And you know, if your house is cold in the winter, it's going to be hot in the summer because weatherization and insulation the whole point is when you want to be cool inside, keep that heat out, and vice versa. So they weren't. They were maybe going to have a month of good weather and then all of a sudden it would be. Now it's too hot. At night it's getting up to 78, 80 degrees and the AC is going to be running full-time nonstop and never catching up.
Speaker 2:Yep, agreed, they do have a lot of mature shade trees, so maybe that helped out. I think their bigger problem was in the winter, but either way, I think that they just made a big improvement for not very much money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fantastic. It just shows you how important weatherization is. And in the future we'll talk about some upgrades you can do to your house. I'm going to be doing some renovations. Well, my wife and I we're going to start doing some renovations to our house and there's lots of little things that you find out as you go through the process. And have someone like Donnie, who's a contractor who knows what to look for, that small changes, sometimes inexpensive, like you said, to weatherize their house for that amount of money is a pretty good deal, and that I guess when you're out working on a house and you see a weatherization issue, it reminds you how important it is to take care of your house and get it weatherized. And that's kind of like the topic of the show today that we're going to focus on.
Speaker 2:Yep, exactly An important point to mention that weatherization and insulation go hand in hand, but they are not the same. Weatherization is more like sealing all the cracks, and I say that because there's two types of heat transfer. Well, two types that we'll talk about today, and that's conductive and convective. And you always hear about a convection oven. Same concept with convective. Basically, the convective is heat transfer from air pressure. So your house, whether it's a mild breeze or a strong wind, it always has a pressure on it and that pressure is going to push air out, either into your house or, you know, if it has a clear path, it's going to push the conditioned air out of your house at a much faster rate. And you know insulation does the opposite.
Speaker 2:Insulation is more of a convective, I'm sorry, conductive. So that is like insulation helps with. If the south face of your house has a lot of sun on it for six, eight, ten hours a day, you know that that hot surface is going to heat up. It's going to transfer from the brick or the siding to the plywood, that to the studs, that to the drywall, and that heats your house up at a much slower rate than the convective. But uh, the difference between the two is weatherization controls, and we'll talk about how, why and the details. But weatherization controls the convective heat transfer and insulation controls the conductive.
Speaker 1:All right, so you can say to somebody you need to weatherize your house, but there's things you have to recognize first. I guess the big why you want to do it First of all it's an investment into your house. Weatherizing it and having it done properly is something I guess you could get an ROI on it. We've had shows about ROIs. But weatherization is going to save utility bills like your appliances, not your appliances. Things like your AC unit or your heat pump be more effective because you have good insulation. And what do you? Does the first thing a homeowner look for or think about on whether or not they need weatherization? Why would you consider?
Speaker 2:it.
Speaker 2:I would say the first thing, without even having an obvious indicator, is that if you live in an old house, it probably needs it.
Speaker 2:If you have old windows, they probably aren't insulated or sealed around the window frames, and certainly if you have high power bills, that's a dead ringer. So if you live, I want to say the rule of thumb is around 12 cents per square foot for the utility bill so you can do the math there and a very well insulated and weatherized house. You can get down as low as anywhere from three to six or seven cents per square foot, so you can literally cut your monthly utility bills down by 75%. And I've seen in some cases I mean I do it on every house when I build with a, with new construction and and the, the challenge is trying to retrofit an old house because you're going behind. You know the outdated construction methods You're you're trying to fix uh construction materials that were thought of and installed, you know, 20, 30 years ago in some circumstances. But yeah, yeah, the power bill, I would say it would be the best indicator on that one. If you have a 2000 square foot house and a $600 utility bill, you've got a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess we might think we're going to put in a new HVAC system. But even if you put in a brand new system and you do all the duct work, if your house isn't weatherized you're not getting the full benefit from the HVAC unit. So weatherization helps multiple things work better and together they save you a lot of money and give you a good ROI.
Speaker 2:Yeah, agreed, 1000%, because folks just throw more BTUs at a problem. So you've got an old, leaky house and you say I want gas heat because my grandfather always believed in gas and all this. Then I'm not anti-gas. In some circumstances, like the tankless water heaters, they work much better with gas because you want to give a bigger punch of heat as that water passes through the line. But things like heat pumps or the electric heat, rather, that has come so far that as long as you're insulated and, like you say, weatherized right, it works so much more efficiently. It operates at a lot less expense than what a gas pack would do.
Speaker 2:And another thing that people don't consider is that it contributes to your indoor air quality. It contributes to your comfort, and you know people don't consider is that it contributes to your indoor air quality? It contributes to your comfort, and people don't think about comfort. Am I comfortable, or does the heat turn on and give me a blast of heat and then it gets kind of cold and it doesn't deal with the humidity, which probably means you have an oversized unit. There's several things that need to be taken into that account for that equation to work perfectly. You got efficiency, comfort, indoor air quality and just a lot of factors to think about if you got a whole family living there.
Speaker 1:It could be that if you put in a new HVAC unit, just blowing in $1,000 or $2,000 of a little bit of extra insulation in your attic could be the thing that really makes that unit hum along and become super efficient.
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure and more importantly than that is, it will probably extend the life of it, because you've got to think those things wear out on cycle time and of course they make monitors that will tell you exactly how often, and even thermostats that do that. Now the cycle time on and off, how many hours it ran this week versus last week, and maybe even mine doesn't do this, but I'm sure they make them where they track back to see, almost like you check your power bill from this year to last, and and basically that cycle time will contribute to the lifespan of the unit. So if it cycles on and off way fewer times because you have better insulation, and that's totally worth it because we preach all the time the heating and air unit, that's the biggest ticket item on the house and it's guaranteed to wear out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now I've dropped insulation several times, so help me out here. There is a distinct difference between weatherization and insulation. Is insulation part of the weatherization process, right?
Speaker 2:It would be the second part. So if you were going to do them in order, you would want to weatherize and then insulate and basically we can go on a little deeper dive. But weatherization is controlling where air comes from outside to inside or vice versa. And I've been in older homes where I could hold my hand down by an outlet and I could feel a breeze coming out from around the outlet. And that was all because the outside was so leaky. You know they just didn't control any type of airflow from outside to inside. So convective, like a convection oven, moves air around. That convective is air moving from the outside to the inside of your house and the first step would be sealing around all kind of light penetrations. You know any. Anywhere there's a window in your house having a spray foam, low expansion spray foam, insulation around that window or that door. So a lot of those are always empty cavities and and you know that door, I'm sorry that that empty cavity holds the air that you don't want getting into your house.
Speaker 1:Real quick explain on the low expansion foam, because people see great stuff and they see a red can and a blue can and what can happen if you use the wrong foam. Insulation from the spray can.
Speaker 2:If you use the wrong one, it expands super aggressive and you'll never be able to open your windows again unless you dig all that stuff out and start all over, and I don't recommend that.
Speaker 1:Hey, it can pop casing, Like if you got 445 around a window. If it's not nailed in tight, it can pop casing and cause it to bow and stuff. You don't realize how important it is to recognize what is low expansion foam versus the high expansion.
Speaker 2:Funny story. This has been 10 years ago and I built a house for a guy and basically under the soaker tub in his master it was this giant soaker tub and you can imagine you fill that thing up with 30 gallons of water and what water is? 8.6 pounds per gallon, so that that's a lot of weight in that fiberglass soaker tub. So the manufacturer recommends that you put, um, something under that tub to support the distance between the bottom of the tub and the sub floor underneath. And most of the time people just mix up a bag of saccharite and they are a couple of bags of saccharite and most of the time people just mix up a bag of sacrete and they are a couple of bags of sacrete and they put that in there because you know, it hardens to the shape, it works.
Speaker 2:And this guy said look, dude, I don't want concrete under my tub and it just rubs me wrong. Well, we're still in sort of the first days when great stuff became readily available to big box stores. And I'm thinking for a couple of days and I said, well, what about? We just use, you know, spray foam, and I knew it would expand aggressively, like I mentioned earlier. But we actually put it underneath the tub. We set the tub, rather, and we put the low expansion spray foam and I was banking on the fact that it would just go out the sides. You know, it would just expand out around the sides. We even took, I think we took a bundle or two of shingles and weighted down the top and would you believe that spray foam floated that tub up out of the hole.
Speaker 2:We had to, and it wasn't a real big cleanup, but we actually had to go in there, take it out, start all over. But we actually had to go in there, take it out, start all over. And after he saw the end result, he was okay with the concrete, cool new spray foam that they have. They have an insect deterrent spray foam, so I think that's really neat. And if you live in an older home, I want to say it's the one with the green lid, of course, but they have one that has, it's, an insect blocker and an insect deterrent. So it actually has something in there that I guess gives off a smell that they don't like, but it also hardens to the point where they can't burrow through it. So use that in several places. Not that I monitor it very closely, but it seemed to work well.
Speaker 1:All right, Donnie, someone isn't sure if they need their house weatherized. Let's do some steps they can take. Where do you go? Or maybe they feel drafts coming through and they know they need to do something. Where do they start? What do they need to do?
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of insulation companies have gotten wise to the fact that this is a big need now. So a lot of the insulation companies, instead of just putting bad insulation in the floors you know, walls and in the ceiling, they have expanded their services to include things like where they weatherize around the window, so they'll actually come in. They include things like where they weatherize around the window, so they'll actually come in. They'll take off all of your casing around the window and basically they'll do the low-expansion spray foam around your windows and put your casing back. If you're handy I feel like that's very much a DIY thing you can order bigger cans of spray foam online than you can get in the big-box store, and they actually have a cool wand. So if you have a big house and a lot of time on your hands, that may be a cheaper route than hiring an insulation company.
Speaker 2:Another thing that we did a lot of weatherization back 15, 20 years ago for a local municipality, and a big thing that they did was add radiant barrier. That's another weatherization tactic, and what that is is something that resembles almost like a uh tinfoil with a woven fiber. A heavy duty tinfoil with a woven fiber in there comes in a three foot roll and you basically put that on the bottom side of your rafters in the attic and, uh, that is the first step before you blow more attic insulation. And when I say it works, we would be on one side of an attic doing the radiant barrier. We'd go from the bottom of the rafter up to the ridge, so the uppermost, and with one side done of the attic and the other side not, it would be as much as a 10 to 15 degree swing from one side to the other immediately.
Speaker 2:And what that does is basically the intake and the soffit that we always preach about when we do roofing shows. The intake and the soffit vent from the outside that travels along the backside of your plywood, which keeps the shingles technically a few degrees cooler for the lifespan of the shingles and it exhausts out the ridge vent. It keeps all that heat intake or all that air intake in that cavity between the rafters, so it makes that ridge vent and soffit intake work that much better. So several things I mean it just depends on the house. So it's a case-by-case scenario, but yeah.
Speaker 1:DIY. So it sounds like you need a pro. But you need a pro to do an audit to really figure out where to make your weatherization.
Speaker 2:That's a better answer than what I gave. Yeah, if you've got the money for an energy auditor. I was thinking DIY, because that's all the questions we get from the listeners, but an energy auditor would really help you tell the tale of where you need it. You know what's the most important and you know where your money needs to go first.
Speaker 1:Well, what I was saying by that is there are DIY things you can do. Well, what I was saying by that is there are DIY things you can do, but you got to make sure you know this is the issue, or one of the issues. You could be fixing something. That's fine, or you could pop off some casing and make the situation worse so you could crack casing, have to get that replaced, or make sure your windows or something need to be treated. But there are energy auditors you can hire and they could come through your house. I don't know the pricing, I don't know if you have a connection with one that we could get on the show in the future, but somebody who could go through your house and say you need to do these five, six things to weatherize your house.
Speaker 2:So I do have a connection for an energy auditor and I've been meaning to get him on for a while because this seems to be a hot topic every time the seasons change. But basically they do what's called a blower door test. So they depressurize the house and they cover all the vents, so anywhere that you might have free airflow into the house. So your supply lines from your HVAC they seal all those tight and they basically open one of your doors front door, back door. They seal all those tight and they basically open one of your doors front door, back door and they leave it on and it tells them how leaky your house is. And they have a I can't remember the number, I used to be a little better versed on this stuff but it'll tell them if your house is really leaky, then we need to go around and check things out.
Speaker 2:And when they depressurize a house dude, you can walk around, hold your hand by any window, by any outlet, any vulnerable place, and you can just feel the wind rushing in from the outside. So that tells the tale there. They do another thing called a duct blaster test, meaning your HVAC ducts. So a lot of times people don't, you don't ever get under your house or you really don't get in the attic and do a duct work inspection, but it's not uncommon for your duct work to have a tear or, you know, be poorly insulated or just not connected at the air handler. There's several things that can happen there, but that test works for that.
Speaker 1:Let me interrupt real quick. My AC guy one time. He says he'll measure the flow of your airflow through the ducts. Just by reading the airflow he usually can tell you if it's a leak or just compressed ductwork, which is amazing of an ability to without looking at it going. You got a problem here based on the airflow.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that the order of operations is kind of cool right here because that, yeah, if somebody's like your guy, he's a heating and air guy but he did a semi energy audit on your house and an energy auditor could tell you here you are thinking you've got to spend a ton of money on a brand new system and the whole nine yards, and an energy auditor can tell you, maybe you just have a couple of loose duct runs from the air handler and you can go in the attic and tighten those up and seal those off and problem solved and you're not spending $15,000 on a new system. So super important, and I think that's a good place to start.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to put you on the job of finding your energy auditor guy and have him come on the show, because we could probably talk about you more than I, of course, the basic steps and what the process would be, but it would probably be better to have a pro come on and tell us. Here's what I'm going to do if I come to your house, do an energy audit. No doubt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's, he's man, this guy. He'll talk circles around us because he lives it and breathes it every single day and um more than anything. We kind of described the process that he goes through, but I bet he has some really good stories.
Speaker 1:Um, anything else you want to add. So the energy auditor we're pretending here time to role play has gone through a house. He's made these recommendations. What do you see? You mentioned windows. Any other thing you see as a common place in a house that needs to?
Speaker 2:be addressed. I would say that just look under your house and over your house, because you'd be amazed at how many older homes just don't have insulation in the floor and people just crank the heat up instead of saying, hey, why are my floors cold every day. Just kind of floating through life. And I would say that the windows are probably the most important place to check and if they're older windows we preach about the best window that they made 15 years ago is still worse than the worst window you can buy today, because the energy codes are so much more strict now that they dictate that even the cheapest window you can buy is going to be really good.
Speaker 1:I word it this way the cheapest window today is just as good as the best window 15 years ago. If you want to have a pretty window, go ahead with it. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's mainly aesthetic. The hardware might be nicer. It might actually, over the years, open and close just as good as it did new. But for the efficiency and the weatherization there's no need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars per window when you could get your whole house done with a set of new windows at a lower price.
Speaker 2:it will still be super energy efficient, absolutely when people get into the triple pain and I won't call the manufacturers by name, but there's some manufacturers out there that you know pretty darn pricey you know more about that than I do.
Speaker 1:But um, yeah, and again, that's your decision If you want to go that route. I've we've seen houses where they've put in 50, 60, 70, a100,000 in windows. Great, I love capitalism, Fantastic for you. I'll stick with some maybe basic silver line fiberglass windows that will still do a pretty dang good job of keeping me comfortable and keep my energy bill lower.
Speaker 2:I think one of the most important things that I want to stress before we wrap up is that sort of like insulation upgrades, weatherization upgrades are permanent, so once you do these, they don't wear out, they don't have a lifespan, they're just in place, and, especially with how far the installations come these days, that you put all that stuff in there and it's made to last and, and the cool thing is, it pays you back immediately. So you're going to see the returns on your utility bills and once you make back what you spent on the insulation, which payback period is shorter than most of the things in your house you're making money. So your house is actually making you money, not like another. When we talk about ROI on all these upgrades, you have to actually sell the house to get that money back, and so this is something that pays you back immediately, and to me it's a no brainer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that beautiful new front door might inspire a buyer, but it doesn't give you any money when you put it on the house and stay there for 15 years. But upgrading insulation, weatherization I want to remind people that if you do do some weatherization, we're not CPAs I know it's a shock. We're not public accountants or tax advisors. There are tax credits for doing weatherization. You don't have to get it done before this tax season, but keep your receipts because there's plenty of resources that you can check out and find out where you can save money. As a matter of fact, if I'm correct, aren't some like HELOCs and loans? Not that you're a banker either? Can you take some of that off taxes like the interest on that if you're doing it for home?
Speaker 2:improvements. Yes, sir, you're supposed to be able to do that, but I don't want to speak out of turn, so I'm going to follow suit with what you just said and refer everybody to a CPA.
Speaker 1:All right. So near future we're going to have an energy auditor on who can tell people what the process is, what to expect, and maybe he'll have details about square footage and savings per square foot when you do simple things like weatherize your house.
Speaker 2:Hey, and one thing I want to add before we go is just to talk dollars and cents on this thing. I did a spreadsheet gosh forever ago. But Duke Energy had a price per kilowatt hour projection page on their website. I don't know if it's still there, but this is back before I had a bunch of kids and had more time on my hands. But I made a spreadsheet showing that if you built a 1000 square foot house and you were able to build it to code minimum or you were able to build it efficiently, like we're talking about, and save $100 a month. And then I did another section of the spreadsheet where those same calculations were figured in on a 2,000 square foot house, saving $200 a month. And I did $3,000 at three and $4,000 at $400 a month when I projected those price per kilowatt hour increases in there. And I did it conservatively just to make sure the numbers would be okay, because, no secret, that price per kilowatt hour is always going to go up. The power company is never going to charge less.
Speaker 2:When you got to the end of a 30-year mortgage, the way I would word it to people when they were this is before everybody was on the efficiency train I would word it to people that at the end of 30 years the numbers were so big it was maybe $100,000.
Speaker 2:And this is back before construction shot up. $100,000 saved on a 1,000-square-foot house and the bigger the house, the bigger that in number multiplied out to be. So on a 3,000-square-foot house, if you built it efficiently, the savings in the end were exponentially more than that 1,000-square-foot house. And the way that I would word it to people that were looking to build is you build it efficiently and you either pay. If you don't build it efficiently, you either pay for your house once or you pay for it twice. The numbers were that big and I highly recommend it when I haven't had anybody really buck me on it, because they know I've been down this road over and over but I really think that that's a way to save the very most money possible on a house is to go ahead and put a little bit up front in a better heating and air unit and insulating the proper way and maybe even going the extra mile with the insulation and the windows, making sure that your systems jive and that everything works together, and it's going to pay you back.
Speaker 1:We even did a whole show talking about that very thing, donnie, and I want to remind people they can go to the website and download the podcast. We've got hundreds, literally hundreds of episodes of the Carolina Contractor Show online. So find your favorite service that you'd like to listen to and download podcasts from, and they're labeled by a topic and you can easily find subjects that are going to relate to you more. And weatherization we've kind of talked about before. We've done insulation shows and the one you talked about again on the house was, uh, saving I mean six figures on a house over the loan period in the time you own that house because you've insulated and done things correctly during the build and you can still save tens of thousands retrofitting or putting stuff in on an existing house.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, well put. Go to the website thecarolinacontractorcom. Donnie, you've got homework to do. You're going to get us an energy auditor on the show and we'll save people even more money, and we just thank you all for tuning in Again. Hit the website thecarolinacontractorcom and give us a like there. You got a question comment recipes for something for spring and summer. Please submit it there and we hope to see and hear you next week on the Carolina Contractor Show have a great day everybody Thanks for listening to the Carolina Contractor Show.
Speaker 1:Visit thecarolinacontractorcom.