Is Your Home an Energy-Guzzler?
If your Florida home is more than 10 years old or so, the answer is probably "Yes." That doesn't mean that your home is poorly constructed. But the fact is, from the 1950s through the 1990s, energy conservation was not a high priority among home builders or home buyers in Florida. Electricity was cheap, so there was little incentive to make homes more energy-efficient.
That was then. This is now. Energy prices are on a constant upward march, and while there are occasional breaks, the combination of worldwide population growth and economic development plus finite energy supplies means that the trend is clear: energy prices are likely to increase. Not to mention the damage we are doing to the environment by relying heavily on fossil fuels.
The illustrations below show some of the ways in which the typical Florida house wastes energy and some of the measures that can be taken to reduce a home's carbon footprint.
The first step in making you home energy-efficient is to find out exactly how much energy you are using, and how much you might save by making various improvements. The tool to finding these things out is an ENERGY AUDIT, which we discuss in the next section.
