The State of the Union at 3am is Sweaty

I'm not saying you should keep your house at 45 degrees, but how do most Americans sleep at night with their house so warm at 68 degrees? I thought we all looked forward to cool summer nights - why do we keep our homes set at a warm summer night in the wintertime?

My wife and I bought a very warm comforter (only a few dollars more than a light comforter) and were saving big on our gas bill by letting our home cool off to around 60 at night. We raised it back to 68 after having our baby, but quickly tired of the sweat-drenched nights. Once she hit 8 months old, we bumped it back down to 65, about as high as we can tolerate.

But it's hard to blame people with programmable thermostats being so complicated to use (the model in my bedroom has 18 button)s. Next-generation thermostats like Nest lower the technological bar, but they're really expensive. Maybe we should subsidize those instead of shoveling taxpayer money at new climate-disrupting, water-polluting fracked gas pipelines that won't solve our energy problems?

Why Settle for the Same Cookie-Cutter Living Space as Everyone Else?

Much of this TEDx Talk displays some of the worst habits of TED Talks - I'm a jetsetter and I'm here to tell you mainstream environmental solutions are like so 5 minutes ago because NIMBLE and other buzzwords.

But the concept at the heart of it is interesting - how many rooms in a typical house go unused for days at a time? Here's a test - if you visit a home with a dedicated dining room, check how much dust is on the dining table.

And it's not just rooms. How much does the average bachelor use the oven he's paying to rent? Wouldn't a toaster oven and/or a hot plate save 10 square feet of floor space for a better use, save money, and be more convenient (faster heating)?

McMansion Misconceptions

Covering the arrest on corruption charges of Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson & his wife, WAMU Reporter David Schultz tweeted on Friday:

Far and away, weirdest thing to come out of today's Jack Johnson proceedings: Johnsons' home heating bill totals more than $1,000/ month ... Judge was going to prohibit Johnsons from making transactions >$1k. their lawyers objected, citing mortgage & pepco bills

I'm very thankful for my tiny apartment power bill as compared to friends with large suburban homes. I tweeted:

Friend in PA with a medium-sized (for this era) house says his highest power bill was $900, so it's definitely possible

David replied:

That's more than I pay in rent, srsly. Insulation folks, it's all abt the insulation.

I realized David was limited to 140 characters here, but when I hear things like this, I worry conservationists have oversold the potential of insulation & energy efficiency. I'm guessing Jack Johnson has an obscenely gigantic house that you could cover in the world's biggest Snuggie & it would still require huge amounts of energy & cash each month to heat.

In the last 40 years, we've seen major advances in insulation like double-paned windows. On top of that, appliances today don't need nearly as much juice as they did a generation ago. So why has per person residential energy use nearly doubled in the last 35 years?

The answer is simple -- we've wasted all those insulation & efficiency gains by building ever-larger houses. The rises in residential electricity use & home sizes have mirrored each other:

Don't get me wrong, efficiency & insulation are critical pieces of the bigger puzzle. But as long as our government policies continue to encourage larger homes, it's the equivalent of attacking the obesity epidemic by encouraging people to order a Diet Coke with their Super-Sized Extra Value Meal.