Completely agree about the rentals. Nobody has the incentive to do anything. Bad arrangment.

Our original house had pretty much NO insulation in the walls ( common California maybe but this is OHIO! ) The house was built in the early fifties by a couple of guys who got drunk one weekend and said "Hey, let's build a house. How hard could it be?" Since we were replacing the rotting cedar shake siding anyway, while they had it ripped off I had holes drilling in the out wall and insulation blown in. The new section has insulation with an R factor twice what code required. The new Pella windows and doors all the way around are about 10 times more energy efficient than the old stuff we had and the skylights are basically a sealed tube of air with a lens on each end. The result is a real pleasure.

Since i work at home, the clients are probably getting some benefit to this as well. I'm definitely more efficient this way and having a piano in the office keeps me from leaving often. ( easy remote conferencing has definitely changed my life - most of my clients - many of whom are other developers - are all over the US and Canada and most of them I've never met face to face. Commuting - from my bedroom - is also nice - and I can do it naked - without the legal repercussions that had become so tiresome when I did that and worked downtown <s> )

>>Now have an office with a cathedral ceiling
>
>So your customers are supposed to pray - either that you'll eventually do the job, or that they won't become indentured slaves when you present the bill?
>
>>Funny thing is, even with a second furnace and air conditioner our utility bills are lower than they were before we added 35% to the size of the house !
>
>So it should be. You did mention that you've redone the insulation, right? And that you got things done right. Now calculate how many years have you been heating/cooling the yard and universe in general.
>
>One trouble with energy economy here is that in rental homes (and there are so many people out there who have to use them) nobody gives a damn about insulation. The owner doesn't care because the tenants pay the energy bills, and the tenants won't invest because they don't own it. Anyone who feels like jumping in and saying that the market will force the owners to invest should just visit one of those places and see how much do the salespeople there know about the homes they rent. I'd bet they wouldn't have a clue about what sort of insulation is in use, what sort of glass paneling is in the windows ("double?") etc etc. These businesses will invest in repainting the parkings and manicuring the lawns, because that's what sells. Energy bills? Who cares.