Greetings Eco-Panels friends;

Below is a nice testimonial from a client ‘Jan’ living “…high on a mountaintop in the Asheville / Black Mountain area of NC”.  They moved into their home late summer and we have already been seeing record low temperatures and record high snow-falls for this time of year and so I dropped her a note to see how they were doing.  They fully bought into our philosophy of when you have a super-insulated building envelope you do not need fancy and expensive sources of heat (or cooling).  In fact for their upstairs (it is a 1,600 sqft two story home) they have simple inexpensive baseboard heat.  Please take a look at the e:mail thread below.  I have not edited her comments one bit.  She used our standard 4.5” thick wall panels (rated at R26 at 52degF) and built and insulated her roof traditionally (contrary to popular belief, most of a home's energy loss is NOT through the roof).

Unfortunately we still see some home energy "experts" trying to get people to spend money on very expensive geothermal heat-pumps or other high end systems for heating and cooling (just because there are tax credits doesn't mean you come out ahead) when really just a downsized high-efficiency HVAC system or even a mini-split or simple baseboard heater is more than enough.  When you have an almost perfectly insulated building envelope, you'd be amazed at the ready sources of heat (and cooling) energy already in your home!  People just have to change the way that they approach this (of course we understand that almost 200 years of stick-frame construction is a hard habit to break).

Regards,
Charles Leahy

Eco-Panels

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From: Jan
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2014 8:49 AM
To: Charles Leahy
Subject: Re: How is the house?

Hi Charles,

We are incredibly happy with our house. It is warm and cozy and we have not yet needed to turn on the baseboard heaters! We have had a couple of small fires in our wood stove, and the heat easily warms up the bedrooms upstairs. This morning, although the outside temp is 19 degrees and the wind is strong, it is toasty inside and we haven't needed to start a fire or turn on any heat.

Thanks for checking in. Hooray for Eco-Panels!

All the best,

Jan

Good morning Jan,

That is an amazing story!  I love it. Do you have any other sources of heat for the home beside the wood stove or the baseboard heat?  I do know that refrigerators actually put out a fair bit of heat (which will be retained for your benefit!), and other appliances or lighting may put out heat as well.

Regards,

Charles Leahy

Eco-Panels

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From: Jan  
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2014 9:46 AM
To: Charles Leahy
Subject: Re: How is the house?

Hi, Charles,

We do have a mini-split unit sitting on the open stair wall in the living room. We used it a month or so ago for a couple of days in the morning when it was chilly. A half hour would do the trick. But it's been off since then, as we have't been the least big cold. It seems if we have a fire towards evening it keeps things warm for 24 hours, even in this kind of weather.

And of course the kitchen puts off heat as I cook. Also the clothes dryer, on the days it gets used. But all in all, it's a much warmer space than we've ever had. The workers commented in the summer how they'd just step into the house if it got too hot outside, since it was so nice and cool. No need to go to the basement for relief.

We're very content--you make a good product.

Jan