consuming to invest 13

CONSUMING TO INVEST 13

Insulating And Caulking

Insulating is a religious mantra, chanting far and wide throughout the land.  Why?  Because until the oil crisis of the 1970’s, almost everyone’s efforts at insulating, if at all, were a cruel joke.  Being a nation of plenty ( the reason we felt those lousy Indigs were incapable of adequately holding the place as they clearly had no interest in really developing it-so Baby Jesus must have meant for us White folk to put it to proper use ), energy was always, up to that point, abundant to the point of ridiculous.  We’ve all heard of the typical New England homestead requiring a dozen or two cords of wood for each winter.  Well, those winters are pretty bad I imagine, but I’d wager those houses needed some serious insulation.  Not that they’d think of perhaps having less rooms ( needing heating ) filled with less babies, because the one thing God has a problem with more than not killing heathens that don’t go to his approved church is not having enough kids to fill up the place you just cleared out with a good dose of smallpox.  Of course, being humans, and on top of that, being American humans, we took the religion of insulation and kind of overdid things.  Things like insulation improperly so now we just have leak proof stucco boxes that trap heat and cold in nicely, along with black mold, but are so flimsily built that in effect all you have is a structure of insulation wrapped around support beams with a thin shell of concrete surrounding it.  As soon as a couple of bullet holes or wind blown object impact at velocity, your insulating shell has its integrity breached ( think of it as a thin hulled spacecraft ).

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Now, this is one of those prices we have elected to pay, to stuff many more bodies into this country than the place can adequately support.  At this point, even if all the suburbs are bulldozed, I’d wager we could not feed everybody organically ( read, without oil inputs ), so many people are being stuffed into our borders.  Obviously, we can’t decently house them.  Oh, we have Potemkin Villages for them, all right.  Whether apartment building or detached house, the design is similar, with warped two by fours, pressed board sheets on one side and sheetrock on the other, wrapped in plastic sheeting and then rigid board insulating sheets an inch think covered with an outside stucco, the whole concoction sheltered from the rain by asphalt shingles.  This mess is hurriedly slapped together by semi-skilled underpaid workers, then sold with thirty year financing at ungodly mark-ups.  For the poor but independent, there are mobile homes built at one third the “quality” but for only half the price.  Yep, those are well insulated though.  At least compared to what we used to have.  I’d call it one step above a terrorist gas attack proof room with all the air trapped out with plastic and duct tape.

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Here is another wonderful story about the modern infatuation with insulation at the expense of ignoring everything else.  When I was growing up in California,  we moved on average once every other year until I was in sixth grade, where we settled down just outside Vanderburgh Air Force Base on the central coast.  My parents stayed together a year or two more but had decided to split before that last move.  Very modern and California of them, but how can you blame them if they hated each other and their job as procreators was finished?  So, Mom gets a job right away with the city of Lompoc ( former flower seed capital of the world, population 25k, now just a punk-ass middle class enclave of 60k+ with zero agriculture ) as an energy consultant.  She basically went around and counseled insulation to make homes more efficient.  And she had job security, as you can see from the 32 year population jump.  Yet, here is the thing.  If the dump goes below sixty degrees, it is a biblical apocalyptic event.  It is no where as hot as the southern part of the state, but no where near the cold of the northern end.  It is still almost Mediterranean.   At the same time as this takes place, the city is seeing its aquifer depleting at inches a year ( so God knows how much deeper the wells are now ).  I’m sure water conservation is also preached, but I’d wager never intelligently enforced ( by, for instance, levying heavy fines for having a lawn ).  They sure by gum did their part for energy conservation ( at the behest of the private power company lobbying-you know, socializing those loses and privatizing those profits ), but they wouldn’t curtail growth. 

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So all this treasure and blood spilled for insulation, the first feel good response to losing energy independence, was not so much wasted as just used as an excuse to build more and more residences ( as efficiency rises, more people pour in to use the energy savings and in the end more energy total is consumed-I know there is a Rule/Law on that but can’t remember ).  And they aren’t built to last.  They can’t withstand abuse or neglect.  This system, like all we are living with now, has zero redundancy.  The reason you over-engineer is to weather emergencies.  When you under-engineer, ANY mishap becomes more of an emergency than it needed to be ( prime examples being the plastic panels on car bodies.  One ding and, presto, an $800 replacement.  When it was steel, you hammered it out and bondo’ed it.  Of course, strangely, that plastic car costs a lot more up front AND in replacement parts ).  Once you can’t replace shingles for $10k or put $3k into a new pant job, or fix the stucco crack for $500, your wonderful insulated home quickly becomes unlivable.

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So, not only is your job to insulate very well, it requires you to do so with redundancy built in.  Over-build, over-support and over insulate.  THEN, you have a dwelling that can hold up to some abuse and neglect.  Insulating is the best investment of your money, as you start down the road to semi-independence from the System, but you had better be insulating a proper structure, not a modern McMansion.  And don’t half-ass it.  Insulate for far more severe weather than you think you’ll encounter.  It is not going to go to waste.  As energy becomes more and more scarce ( the practice of throwing money at exploration to get increasing yields is over many moons now-it is now far less bang for your buck ), and costlier, insulation keeps you comfortable even as your energy input declines.  One day, it might even save your life ( after years of saving your money ).

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