Man Pays $444 To Heat His Home For A Year

"I can pull out my iPhone and tell you how much electricity we're using right now,” LaBine said.  “Sort of cool."

Showing it off is as easy as opening the Ap on his iPhone and watching the meter drop as he turns off lights in his home. 

LaBine even has a use for the hot water that goes down the drain when you’re taking a shower.  You see that water warms the pipe it travels through.  So coiled piping wrapped around that warmed-up waste water pipe serves as a way to heat up the fresh water entering Labine’s home from the street.  LaBine says the difference is 35-degrees and that reduces the workload on his solar-powered hot water heater.

Speak with LaBine and you’ll find that insulation may be his most valuable investment.  He has stripped down the outside of his home and re-built it with a four-to-six inch thick insulated “shell” that he calls a “double-wall.”  On the inside he’s insulating walls with ground-up recycled newspapers, a product his current employer Airtight Services, Inc. is currently using.  And speaking of airtight, LaBine’s classic old windows have been retro-fitted with additional panes of glass and tight seals where necessary.

On his wall LaBine tracks every detail complete with graphs and charts.

"So last year when you pull it out our heating bill was $444,” LaBine said while also pointing to a graph that shows he used just 120-therms; a fraction of the roughly 1,300-therms he used in the mid-90’s when he first moved in. 

Cooling his house in the summer is even cheaper, costing barely $50 annually.

"Everything I do has to do with efficiency and sustainability, (the) next project is going to be water," LaBine smiles.  “I collect rainwater now but it's just for gardens and washing the cars and stuff like that but we're going to at least flush toilets with it."