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November 13, 2005
Welcome to Planet Earth
So, will we now realize that we have no absolute right to houses with five and a half bathrooms per family? Not yet, it seems for this family quoted this week in Newsweek about the "energy agita" that is finally gripping some people:
Gina and Ron Martin's home in mentor, Ohio, is just plain big. It has six bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, a cavernous basement, a spacious patio and a pool in the backyard. But the last thing the self-employed housing contractors suspected when they bought their dream house in 2004 was just how big the heating bills were going to be. Last winter their utility bills averaged $400 a month. Although the price of heating oil has inched down in the past two weeks, the Martins are anticipating bills of $700 a month this winter. They expect the price of energy to keep rising—and many experts agree with them. Once their three teenage kids leave for college, the couple plans to downsize. "We loved this house, now we hate this house," Gina says. "We are a hardworking middle-class family that is freaking out about a gas bill. Something is very wrong with that picture."
What struck me about this quote is the way they see having to worry about "a gas bill" as something that should not happen to a hardworking middle-class family. What can I say? Welcome to our limited, finite planet. Try not to finish it all at once.
Posted by zeynep at November 13, 2005 05:06 PM
Comments
This gives new meaning to "your home is your castle". Castles are so expensive to heat/cool -- it is prohibitive on that feature alone for many potential castle buyers. Being that he is a housing contractor -- who did the design and insulation for his house? You can have a large house and be energy efficient too. I remember this house in Maine that was large (half of the house was under a hill) and it had a Russian stone furnace, solar panels, and the sunny side was all windows. The real waste here is poor design (I bet he drives a fuel-inefficient truck or SUV too).
Posted by: EWR at November 14, 2005 05:03 PM