Save Energy Company was recently voted best window contractor in the Bay Area by local consumers.  The contest was hosted by Bay List and the San Francisco Chronicle.  Over 70,000 votes were cast for various businesses and there were 25 other window companies that we had to surpass in order to be voted number one. 

We are honored to have won such a prestigious award.   However, this does not mean we will be resting on our laurels but that we will continue to work hard to hone our skills so that we will remain the Bay Area’s number one choice for replacement windows and doors.  Thank you all for you support.

To see the contest results, please go to:

http://baylist.sfgate.com/winners/best-of-the-baylist/4766/remodeling/windows-and-doors

Dry rot is a problem that can come up on any construction project and it has even reared its ugly head here at Save Energy Company.  As explained in the last blog, we had decided to repaint the building and during our preparations we found several trim boards that had dry rot.  As you can see in the photo below, we were able to apply the new brown base color on the body of the building but several trim boards between the front door and window have been removed and need to be replaced.

So this brings up a good lesson about how to handle dry rot, termites or other unforeseen issues with your home improvement project when you are hiring a contractor.

First of all, the contractor should explain when they prepare and go over their bid with you that there is always a possibility that unforeseen circumstances like dry rot may come up during the project.  If you don’t talk about it beforehand then you are more likely to be disappointed and upset when it does happen later.  No one like surprises, particularly when it comes to extra costs that they weren’t expecting, so we make sure that every client knows that dry rot is a possibility and can be mentally and emotionally prepared for it should it arise.  We charge an extra $85/hour plus material to do those repairs.  That said, we usually only discover dry rot on less than 10% of our jobs and the repairs are usually under $100 total.

So when you are getting bids for a construction project make sure to ask if there are any other hidden costs that could come up.

Dry Rot on Front of Building

Luis L and Alberto R. sweeping up

 

This morning the company started scraping, sanding, power washing and generally prepping the front and west side of the building for new paint.  After applying the first choice of a light brown, that color was rejected by the women of the office as “just not right.”  Our Production Manager, Randall Scott, a fifteen year veteran of running his own painting contracting firm, stepped in and darkened the body color to a rich brown.  At this point we’re still not sure that is the color that is going to make everyone happy, but it’s the five gallons of the color we have, so on it goes it tomorrow.  Could very well be a classic case of “too many chefs.”   

It has been seven years since we opened shop here in Petaluma after leaving our home in San Francisco, and seven years since our last paint job.  The front of the building faces south and takes a particularly hard beating, especially from the six months or more of steady sunshine.  The building itself is over sixty years old and there were many cracks and crevices that were appearing from under the old paint to force our hand into upgrading it’s protective coat.  Mercifully, Luis and Alberto were available today to get the project started.  I just hope at least 51% of the staff likes the new look because it will probably be that way for another seven years.

I’ll post the finish product and we would welcome your comments, good or bad, about the new color scheme.  But don’t worry, we’ll still maintain the blue and white logo you’ve seen for the last 27 years, as well as the fabulous people, products and work that stand behind it.

I had taken three sets of three day classes last year and passed the written test last July but hadn’t had time to “road test” my knowledge much since then.  In other words, I was cramming the night before and trying to remember what I had to do to pass.  Mercifully, Laura from Equilibrium in Oakland had offered to do some training with me on Thursday before taking my test on Friday with Andy Wahl of Concord as my tester.  I had decided to use my business partner’s, Pat’s house for the training/test.  Laura arrived at 8 AM and we spent the next 11 hours setting up blower doors, checking for carbon monoxide and just generally stuffing as much information in my head as she could.  I am eternally grateful for her organizational skills and for the fact that she has had a teaching background which helped me relearn all of this quickly and efficiently.

The next day I had an opportunity to study up with Andy a bit as well before taking the test.  Three hours later I we were packing up and I was ready for a nap or a beer or both.  Thank goodness for a three day weekend!  And while he couldn’t or wasn’t allowed to say whether or not I had passed the test, I felt like I did well enough to pass and would  be quite surprised and upset should I find out I hadn’t.  Our long term plan as a company is to use this certification to continue to help our clients leave as small a carbon footprint as possible.

Andy Wahl, John and Laura Seidman

So while I spent most of the day working in and around the house Saturday, yesterday I got up early and drove out to Point Reyes National Seashore to hike to Abbott’s Lagoon.  When I say early I should mention it wasn’t so early that I missed the opening of Bovine bakery in Point Reyes Station at 7 AM although I was their first customer.  It’s a little over a mile to the lagoon and then I headed north to Kehoe beach and back.  Upon returning to the lagoon at about noon I took the opportunity of a break in the stream of people coming in to jump into the water for a quick dip.  It was a wonderful day and my motto has always been, “if there is water around, get in it.”  So I did, and got back into my car  a half hour later feeling refreshed and renewed.

The point of this story is that even if you can’t get away for a long weekend try and make the time to re-create.  As hard as it is to carve out that time you’ll be glad you did.

Re-creating at Abbot's Lagoon

John fearlessly blogging away.

A few months ago when I was told that I would have to start blogging, using Facebook and Twitter and basically doing all the things I had been avoiding for the last few years, I was a bit put out, to say the least.  We’re talking about a man who doesn’t even own a television for goodness sake.  Not that I’m totally against technology, I obviously use my computer and cell phone all the time, but we’ve never had the best relationship and I know it’s entirely my fault.  I’m fifty one years old now which is old enough to remember rotary phones and black and white TV, but still young enough to not long for them.  I like technology as a tool but haven’t been too happy with how it has taken over our lives and so I try to fight back when I can.  I know my son is indoors far more than when I was younger and when he is, he’s not reading enough for my liking.  But I can let go of a lot of that, see it as my own issues and try to let him figure it out on his own whenever possible.  It’s not like he’s overweight or anything, he is a rock climber and a pretty darn buff guy to be honest.  I just happen to like the outdoors and think it enriches one’s life to get out as much as possible.

So when approached with “social media is the latest and greatest marketing trend” from my advisors, you can imagine my reaction.  At first I said “no way” and then I said, “fine, I’ll hire someone younger than me to do it,” so I wouldn’t have to be the one getting the message out.  We found out however that since I have the 27 years experience and as the owner of the company that knowledge is what people need to know about, it was up to me to learn how to do it all and start posting.  As you can see I am a bit behind but something happened last week that helped motivate me a great deal more.  I went to an all day Social Media Conference held right here in Petaluma at the Sheraton hotel and had my head and negative thinking turned around completely.

To start with, of course I wasn’t thrilled about sitting all day trying to learn this stuff but about half way through there was one speaker that put such a different spin on it for me that it opened my eyes to what this was all about.  His point was that it was basically about community and being the civic minded beast that I am this was a message I could embrace.  He said that traditionally a company would broadcast out it’s message and hope that people would not only hear it but believe in it as well.  But it was a one way communication at best and  now a days we mute or Tivo our way right through commercials and never think twice about it.  Except for during the super bowl, we don’t want to hear a company’s message of why to buy their goods and services, we’ve heard it all before.  And we don’t want to be talked to, we want to have a conversation with the company.  Better communication, what a concept!

Now along comes Facebook and other communities and when someone becomes a fan (or “likes” a company, to be completely up to date) and we know that person, we don’t have to hear the company’s message, we already feel comfortable with them,   Social media is just a really good referral.  A good, local referral from someone doing good work or deeds in your neighborhood, and that is the essence of what Save Energy Company has been striving to become, a great and trusted neighbor.  Not only that, think of the amount of waste we’d be stopping as well.  Whenever we do a direct mail piece like ValPak or Money Mailer, we know that a 1% response rate is considered good by industry standards, which also means that 99% of it is thrown out or recycled.  Such a waste, but that has been the traditional way of doing business.  We’ve already dropped all our ads out of the Yellow Pages, and won’t it be wonderful when we don’t have those clogging up the land fills throughout the country any more.  Talk about being green!

So I’m a fresh convert, I drank the kool aid, but I think this really can be a great way for the world to go.  Hopefully there will be newer and better forms of communication coming our way as well and when they do I’ll be as open as I can to them.  In the meantime, I’m here for you.  Let’s chat!

As I mentioned in my last blog, we are attending ACI’s annual Home Performance Conference here in Austin, Texas.  It’s been three days of classes, seminars and a trade show and even though Randall and I have been here since Monday, today marked the official opening of the conference.

The keynote speaker was John Tooley of Florida who fired up the Home Performance crowd with a talk entitled, “Our time is now.”  It was a heartfelt speech about how for the last 25 years the folks at ACI have been holding manufacturers and contractors feet to the fire about doing the right thing as far as the proper installation on energy efficient measures such as insulation, HVAC and new windows and doors.  Their voices have mostly been obscured by the promise of quick and easy money during the boom years and also by inertia; installing what was thought to be the proper way day after day, month after month, year after year.  These installations have been poor at best and reckless at worse.  For years these handful of contractors and educators were coming forward and demanding that the contracting industry do a better job.  By viewing the house as a system and using tools such as a blower door, duct blaster, and infrared camera they argue rather convincingly that homes can be made more energy efficient, comfortable and safer when being worked on either as a new home or as a retrofit of an older home.

The conference, the 25^th annual, had its biggest attendance to date with over 1,900 participants, nearly 1,000 more than just a year ago.  With new incentive coming out of Washington, individual states and even certain counties within each state (such as Sonoma’s and now San Francisco’s loan against one’s property taxes) the focus is once again on weatherization.  Should the Home Star or “cash for caulkers” energy proposal pass this year, we can see an even greater federal push for energy efficient programs in the near future, and many in the audience we here to see what all the buzz was about.  While no one was willing to guess as to whether or not this new push would last, there certainly was much excitement in the crowds I encountered these last three days.

I will have some final thoughts after the conclusion of the conference later this week.

Affordable Comfort Conference in Austin, TX.

Touched down in Austin Texas about an hour ago and settling into our hotel room in advance of the five day conference starting tomorrow.  What the conference is about is how contractors throughout the country are taking a new approach in tackling a homes energy usage and comfort levels.  What they are proposing and in fact implementing throughout the country is spending more time analyzing the home as a system and not just as a random group of individual components.  This approach has gained a strong foothold in the environmental field where instead of looking at say a polluted stream or an endangered species living by that stream and trying to observe them only, they have been looking at the whole ecosystem to better understand what may be encroaching into that area that would adversely affect the stream or species.

In the construction filed the trades are split up into specialty trades or subcontractors.  If the general contractor working on a new home doesn’t understand that all the different trades must work in tandem and stay on top of their installations, the house and its occupants will suffer.  For example, if a Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioner (HVAC) contractor doesn’t proper install their equipment, then the homeowner may be heating or cooling his or her crawl space or attic instead of the living area.  This results in many people paying much higher utility bills and/or living much more uncomfortably in their homes year round.

So the point of the conference is to educate contractors of these construction defects, train them on how to locate and correct them, and set them loose to go out and help the people of their communities to live more comfortably.  I’m excited and looking forward to sharing more with you as the week goes on.  Stay tuned.

A federal law passed more than two years ago finally takes effect on; appropriate enough, April 22, Earth Day.  On that day the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will begin enforcing its regulations covering work performed in homes that might possibly contain lead paint. Because the vast majority of houses in San Francisco were built before 1978, this law is set to affect nearly every homeowner. The 1978 date is critical because that is when the government finally banned the use of lead-based paints.

Lead never decomposes, leaving a risk for homeowners, their friends and family, and any future occupants.  Lead also binds to soil, so exterior remodeling of homes may result in the contamination of lawns that will remain hazardous for years. The EPA’s standards have been enacted to drastically reduce the risk homeowners take when hiring a contractor to perform work on their homes. Processes and procedures have been developed that remediless and renovators are required to follow. Unfortunately, these mandatory steps will add additional time and materials, and additional costs to many typical home improvement jobs that disturb any painted surface.

Home improvement projects will now require more set up, clean-up and tear down work.  Special equipment, such as HEPA vacuum cleaners with HEPA filters, must be purchased. Individual contractors who directly oversee the project must be trained and certified.  All employees must receive additional training. As a consequence, the cost for this extra work will have to be added as a surcharge to the regular price of each remodeling job. While this surcharge will vary depending upon the type of job being done, it is estimated to be in the 5% to 10% range.

While the government has long offered tax credits for green home improvements like solar panels, federal tax credits are also available again this year for other home improvements such as window and door replacements.  The credits were available last year as well and those credits are still available at a deduction of 30 percent of the cost of materials.  Labor costs are not included.  So if your project cost say $10,000.00 and $2,000.00 of that total was for the labor to install it you would be eligible for a tax credit of 30% of the $8,000.00 balance or $2,400.00.  However, there is a cap of a total rebate not to exceed $1,500.00 for each home.  Other items eligible for the tax credits include additional insulation, new water heaters, and heating and cooling improvements. There is no income limit on this, but everything has to be installed by Dec. 31, 2010.

“If someone is thinking about making an energy-efficient improvement, this is a time to do it,” said Amy McAnarney, executive director of the Tax Institute at H&R Block in Kansas City, Mo. “You just calculate the cost of the improvements less the labor component and take up to 30 percent of that cost.”

For more information please go to the IRS’s website at: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=206869,00.html