I've been thinking of ways to save on energy at my personal home.  This summer my mind was on putting up a wind mill.  These are great but after some research, I realized that it would cost me around 12k or more to have one installed and I wasn't yet convinced that this is where I should start my energy savings.  No, that's probably the last thing I will do because of the initial capital outlay.  So, I then changed my thinking to having additional insulation put into my attic.  A company affiliated with Home Depot came out and gave me a bid to spray reflective barrier on the underside of my roof and blow in additional insulation.  The price tag for this was going to be about $4500 considering the size of my attic etc. and this was half off the regular price because this is apparently the off season for this type of project.  Now my thinking has adjusted to maybe having tankless water heaters installed in place of the existing traditional water heaters that are always cooking the water to a certain temperature and burning electricity even if you aren't using them.  I don't have a price tag for this project yet, but the first thing I'll have to do is get a bid from an electrician to provide the proper electrical service for a tankless water heater.  Next will be to get bids from some of my favorite local plumbers.  Although the cost of gasoline has gone down in recent weeks, we tend to forget that just a month or so ago we were all suffering from the high gas prices with no end in site.  This has put me in a energy saving mode which will cost quite a few dollars up front to implement the one of the above described projects and start the savings.  On the other hand, I'm also in a conservative mode with regard to my spending which puts this mode in direct conflict with my energy saving mode.  I just want to do something to help us get away from so much reliance on energy.  I think I'll call an electrician today and get things rolling on the tankless water heater idea.  Oh, did I forget to mention that my wife wants to update our Kitchen and the cost of the energy saving projects would come into direct competition with that?  I guess I need to sell a few more homes if I'm going to get any of these projects done without going to the poor house!  Know anyone needing to buy or sell, give me a call or shoot me an email?

There's an old saying, "You have to spend money to make money".  It seems to be true also that you have to spend money to save it.

By Bernie Christian