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About Me

My name is Paul (that’s my little helper, Mason, in the picture with me) and I am a bit of a fanatic when it comes to making sure my home is energy efficient. My wife and I have bought, rehabbed, and sold multiple houses over the years and have built two new homes over the last decade.

I am hands-on when it comes to making sure a home is energy efficient. I’m the guy who hires contractors but oversees every step of the process because I want a project done correctly. Of course, I always take advantage of free labor from my son 🙂

As a result of our rehabbing and new home projects, I have gained a lot of distinctions on simple, effective ways to make a home more energy-efficient. Complex, expensive solutions can work great but are out of reach for most people. I focus instead on affordable, mostly do-it-yourself solutions to keep our electrical bill under control while providing a comfortable living environment for my family.

A Family History Of Home Building And Energy Efficiency

My wife showing off her leveled storm window install - increased energy efficiency!

Long before my son came along, my wife and I were buying old houses, ripping them to the studs, and upgrading them into energy-efficient homes. In her younger days, my wife knew no boundaries. She would bust out walls with a sledgehammer, crawl under a house and help me level it with pier and beam reinforcements, and drag electrical wire through an attic.

These days, she’s promoted herself more to the role of manager and prefers to oversee the process. She stops by after work and checks on our progress, making sure are building specifications are up to code. And by that, I mean “her code”.

Thankfully, my son has been up to the task of taking on these additional duties.

Any time we have rehabbed a house, we have done our best to make it a structurally sound, energy-efficient home that our own family would live in. In fact, we did live in one of them and I have a sister who lives in one to this day.

We Have Lived Through And Rebuilt After Natural Disasters

In addition to building for the fun of it, we have done our fair share of rehabbing homes out of necessity.

We’ve lived through three major hurricanes which all devastated Southeast Texas:

  • Hurricane Rita – 2005
  • Hurricane Ike – 2008
  • Hurricane Harvey – 2017

And more ice storms and tropical storms that I can count. We’ve been part of hauling off destroyed personal items of friends, helping them tear out sheetrock with wet insulation, and finally rebuilding.

Having lived through all of this, we have also suffered extended power outages many times. Fuel was not available, food and water could only be obtained through military relief centers that people without fuel could not get to, and neighbors who had medical devices such as CPAP machines could not use their devices.

My Purpose

The goal of this website is to share with you all of the helpful tips and solutions that I have found so that you can ensure an energy-efficient home for you and your family. I also want to provide you with all of the insight and tips that I can to help you reduce your dependency on the power grid and incorporate alternative energy sources such as solar power into your home efficiency strategy. And lastly, I want to help to make sure that you are ready for extended power outages with the essentials that you will need to survive and provide for your family.

Thank you for investing time with me. I want to make sure that I do everything I can to ensure that your investment in time reaps tangible rewards in monthly savings, home security, and power-outage survival.

If you have any questions, you can reach out to me via email.

Sincerely,

Paul