Debbie found the coolest thing the other day... Here in Portland (and
some of the surrounding PG&E service areas I guess) you can get a free
energy audit for your house by the Energy Trust. This basically
entails a person coming to your house and doing some inspection on the
insulation, furnace, water heater, crawl spaces, and water flow at
each tap. Then they recommend what types of energy efficiency
improvements would be most worthwhile and cost effective for your home
AND they offer cash incentives for making the improvements. On our
home I can get a total of $650 in incentives for the work we were
planning on doing anyway (blowing in insulation and sealing air
leaks). (You have to have them inspect BEFORE you make changes,
otherwise you don't qualify for the incentives.)
They also offered to install 10 compact fluorescent bulbs, low-flow
aerators on all your faucets, and replace your shower heads with
(rather nice) low flow shower heads. (We decided to install the bulbs
ourselves, so they just left us a nice pile of them on the table.)
You just call them to set up a 1 - 1.5 hour appointment: 1-866-ENTRUST
https://www.energytrust.org/residential/hes/index.html
Can't beat the price! Especially with energy costs going up right now
it's a good time to think about it.