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Although the cost of equipment has come way down, for most homeowners the biggest obstacle to going solar remains price: For a typical house in this area, you’ll have to plunk down at least $18,000. You’ll eventually get your money’s worth, but it will take time.
Making simple repairs or improvements and changing wasteful habits will yield enormous energy savings for most families.
Most of us want to reduce our energy usage, regardless of upfront costs, but limited budgets prevent many homeowners from paying for expensive improvements. Here are affordable-to-most projects that will, in relatively short periods of time, pay for themselves via lower utility bills.
Some purchases and improvements move you toward minimizing or even completely eliminating your home’s net energy consumption. Unfortunately, most families can’t afford them.
To get new shingles without a shakedown, identify several reliable contractors and collect bids from each, get in writing exactly what will be done, and then keep a close eye on the job as it progresses.
When hiring a roofer, quality of work should be your primary consideration. Once you have identified roofers that measure up on quality, get several fixed-price bids for the work. You’ll find big roofer-to-roofer price differences for the same job.
Different types of roofs have different lifespans. Your inspections will reveal whether the entire roof is due for replacement.