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Liz Scriven and Keith Sunshine have been living at the Jackson National Fish Hatchery since 2003 when Liz became a fish hatchery employee. Their house was built in 1957, but is well built and has upgraded windows, door, blinds and insulation. Liz and Keith describe themselves as "reasonable environmentalists" saying that they try to "live simply" to reduce their energy use and carbon imprint.
Upon inputting their energy usage into Teton Area 10x10, they were impressed to see that their energy use really is below Jackson and national averages. How do they accomplish this? They say it is really not hard, just use less and follow the basics. Short showers, reduce other hot water use for laundry and dishes, air drying clothing, efficient area lights, power strips
they turn off when not in use. but one big item is that they do not use electric heat. In the winter they heat their house with their wood burning stove. At night the temperature inside is allowed to drop until a fire is started again the next day. Some days they say the inside temperature drops into the 40s, but they try to maintain temperatures in the 60s when they are home. In the shoulder seasons they simply layer up instead of turning on the heat. As such, they were happy to see that they do not experience high winter energy bills that most others are accustomed to. In fact, their energy bills are generally in the upper 30s plus extra for green power.
They recently did a Lower Valley Energy audit and were both happy and surprised by the outcome. They were pleased that their house performed well and is sufficiently weatherized. But they were surprised about some minor insulation missing in the attic and that their older basement windows performed so poorly. Overall they were both very happy with the audit and the LVE suggestions.
Their next challenge: trying to see how they can reduce their energy use by an additional 10% by 2010. Now let's see about that missing insulation and those basement windows.
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