The Tellings are on a quest to save energy and money at home. They’re using Microsoft Hohm to understand their home energy usage and learn what they can do to improve their home’s energy efficiency. We’re following Joel, Miki, their kids and even the family dog Morgan on this journey. Here’s the first introduction video of the Tellings. Note their home improvement list is much longer but we needed to cut it down in the video for time’s sake. If you’re interested in their additional projects feel free to reach out to us or Joel as well.
Video Excerpt:
“Oh ok, I’m Joel – I’m Miki, there we go…that’s us. This is Morgan, this is our dog Morgan, we Cindy who is three, she’ll turn four in April, we have Riley who’s two and we have David that turned one in November.
Q: How did you find Hohm?
A: Well at first I know Google announced the powermeter, initiative thing, whatever, and obviously they’re based out of state (Joel and Miki live in Seattle) and their goals are a little bit different but then it was probably a blog post or something on some sort of tech website like lifehacker or gizmodo something where…oh Microsoft Hohm is doing this initiative as well. Then I signed up for the beta and then, I think it was, I got an invite and I signed up and once you guys had Seattle City Light in there I was able to get some numbers and then to get them plugged in to get slightly real-time data… and my profile is at 67%.
Q: What projects would you like to implement to save energy at home?
Joel: I wrote those down too
Miki: I thought of one too
Joel: Ok you go first.
Miki: New front door. Our front door is ah..30..40 years old now and it’s a double front door so if you put your hand up there where the doors meet you can actually feel cold air just rushing into the house.
Joel: Um we need to get better insulation in the attic, the insulation in there is pretty knocked down so the ceiling joist are this high (Joel measuring with his fingers) and the insulation is just about that high. It’s just a little bit over it so you can brush it away to step on the ceiling joist, I mean which it should be…That high (measuring with his fingers again).
At some point we can get that blown in…Ah that sounds hard I think I’ll just pay someone to do it. But then again I don’t know what kind of return we’re going to get on our investment and so I can’t yet justify that cost until I find out more. That’s all I got – that’s my list… it’s a good list.”
Stay tuned to find out what energy efficient home improvements Joel and Miki will start making. If you have suggestions on additional projects they should implement leave a comment below.