Ed Newman

At Lowes, Home Depot or any hardware store in the electrical area or the weatherstripping isle you will find a small box of white foam gaskets about the size of a wall switch plate. These things cost about 10 cents, but you wouldn't believe how much outside air that they will prevent from entering your home on the outside walls. At a home in Park City this morning before we powered up the blower doors for the energy audit we noticed these electrical outlets on the outside walls. The outside air temperature was 42 degrees, inside it was a toasty 70 and these plugs were venting in nice cool outside air.

Check around your outside wall plugs this weekend - it will surprise you.

Disconnect your garden hoses - Save Your Faucets.

The first winter storm of the season will enter the Great Basin tonight, snowfall above 5,000 foot level. Over a foot in the Wasatch Mtns.

The lows in Salt Lake Valley will be getting down to the low 20's. SAVE YOUR FAUCETS - drain and disconnect your hoses. Save yourself from expensive faucet repairs next year. I have heard of faucet repairs costing into the hundreds of dollars, higher with finished basements.

The NSA spy agency has selected Bluffdale, UT as the site for their new 200 acres site 30 miles south of Salt Lake City. The project involves national security so very little public information has been made public. Construction starts June of 2010, completeion date March, 2013. This will be the third data center moving to Utah. Oracle and eBay are moving to West Jordan.

Maxed out power grids are the reasons for the moves. The NSA has maxed out the power grid in the Baltimore area. The new NSA facility will use 65 mega watts of power - enough to power 52,000 homes.

As an energy auditor, we have noticed that we have a new customer this year - the US Federal Government. The new federal building initiative mandates that all federal buildings have an energy audit performed. They started with the larger Dept of Interior buildings. We have done several buildings in excess of 50,000 sq ft, and the list keeps growing.

I am also a subscriber to the Grant Money Opportunities Posting Updates (daily) and every morning I quickly scan through the grant opportunity postings and look for DOE listing about energy audits and weatherization and can pick and choose what are in my area.

BUT - I also get to see other "gubmint" grants and how our money is getting spent. Check these out:

SHOREBIRD SURVEYS IN PERU???????????????? You should see all of this waste of money being spent on projects when so many of our own people here are broke, unemployed and loosing their homes.

-----------------

DOI Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service

Shorebird Surveys in Coastal Peru

Modification 1

http://www07.grants.gov/search/search.do?&mode=VIEW&flag2006=false&oppId=498

-----------------------------

USAID Agency for International Development - Colombia USAID-Bogota

MONTES DE MARIA "Enhanced livelihoods Initiative"

Modification 3 http://www07.grants.gov/search/search.do?&mode=VIEW&flag2006=false&oppId=492

---------------------------------

USAID Agency for International Development - Russia USAID-Moscow

HIV Prevention for At-Risk Populations in Russia Modification 2

http://www07.grants.gov/search/search.do?&mode=VIEW&flag2006=false&oppId=495

------------

DST ends early Sunday morning. I know, what a pain resetting all of your clocks. You can change the ones in your car or truck when you are stalled in your next traffic jam. I usually change the ones around the house when I discover them.

BUT - there is one that could actually cost you $$ money if you don't change it. The clock on your programmable thermostat. You might even find yourself stepping out of the shower in the cold air, because the thermostat doesn't know that you are getting up an hour earlier in the morning. It is also trying to heat the home after you leave because it doesn't know you left an hour earlier.