The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Every evening my local news channel flashes a pie chart on screen that gives the results of some type of viewer’s poll. If the subject of the poll interests her my wife will often say something like “Wow! Can you believe that? People are stupid! What were they thinking?” And while I will admit that it makes me take a second look myself, I quickly dismiss it. Results from a poll like this mean absolutely nothing. I love it when they show the pie chart with the little blue slice that tells you that 33% of the callers are in favor of something that you think is crazy. The part that they don’t tell you is that only three people responded to the question-2 against it- 1 for it. How scientific does that sound?

I think of this today after an online discussion (if you want to give it that much credit) that I had with an individual about weatherization. They commented on a picture I posted of an HVAC duct system that was full of trash. Pencils, barrettes, gum wrappers and other household junk that a little kid might play with were inside the duct…and it was filthy. The conversation quickly jumped from finding a contractor to clean their system to why the government would buy lazy people cellphones and duct cleaning. I personally don’t know if the government does either, so I jumped out of the loop. What I do know is that for the last two years the government has assisted low income citizens with the energy efficiency of their homes. Has it worked perfectly with no abuse? What do you think…it’s a national program?

Here is what I do know; of the 15,000 homes weatherized in Georgia I have only personally viewed about 200 in 20 of the 159 Georgia counties. There was a group of roughly 25 monitors hired by The University of Georgia that scrutinized 10% of the total amount of work done by the government. We talked to the homeowner, looked at the work done, and looked at their complete file. Did I see some abuse? Sure. Did I see some life changing results? Sure. Did I see a study with enough participants to be considered meaningful and scientific? I believe I did.

I am as guilty as the next person of condemning the typical recipients of government assistance. The people we all imagine are straight out off of the People of Walmart website; they are people that want something for nothing. But this is not what I saw. I saw elderly widows heating their homes with a gas oven that you could only stand to operate with the batteries from the Carbon Monoxide detector removed. I saw children of single mothers studying for tomorrow’s algebra test with a coat on and blankest nailed over door openings to keep the heat from a small electric heater inside the un-insulated room. I saw wheelchair bound husbands at home with the kids while the wife worked two jobs. I saw people without enough to eat that had two years ago had paid income tax of five figures. I saw someone with a Lexus in the driveway. I saw all of this in only 20 counties of 1/50^th of the United States.

So we want to know what works and what does not. There are several ways to find this out, but let’s look at two:

Bring up the level of insulation, air sealing and heating in people’s homes to modern standards using conventional fuels (gas and electricity). Study the results and determine what give the greatest payback. The homeowner saves money on the operating cost of their home for the life of the home. Pass these results to the average person that wants to save money.

Give billions of dollars to companies that want to manufacture expensive solar panels in the United States. If they fail, they simply file bankruptcy and you have nothing to show for money spent. Well you do have a pile of solar panels that maybe you could sell to the Chinese? I doubt it…give maybe.

We put men on the moon by trial and error; we didn’t just borrow the money and shoot them straight up there. By weatherizing homes and studying the results we accomplished two things. We brought many homes into the 21^st century and we found out what works and what does not. We completed our study and gave the gift that keeps on giving!