As houses get tighter, they becaome less able to 'breathe' on their own -- they need mechanical ventilation. Put another way, energy efficient houses deserve healthy indoor air.

The first question I usually get when I start talking about insulating and buttoning-up houses is, "Won't my house be too tight?" It's a very logical question.

Standard residential construction in much of the country is 2x4 framing with fiberglass insulation, achieving a paltry R-10 or so in the walls. If insulation is installed at all on the foundation walls, it's rarely more than an inch thick, and insulation is almost never put under slabs. In Vermont, we typically do a lot better. Act 250, enacted nearly four decades ago, required developers to improve energy performance and that led to a widespread switch to 2x6 framing in home building.

Bottled at Source — Hand Pump #1, Atal Ayub Nagar, Bhopal, Madya Pradesh, India.

Not suitable for human consumption.

Total Fat 0g Cholesterol 0g Sodium 22mg Dichlormethane Carbon Tetrachloride Chloroform

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But summer has hardly started!

As we fire up the grill and hope that the rain will let up enough for us to enjoy summer, we should also remember that the days are now getting shorter, and in just a few months we'll be firing up our heating systems again.

Now's the time to think about how we can keep our heating costs down next winter. Here I'll present a few of my top priorities in preparing for winter: