🌎⚡️: Get Electric! (In Your Home)

Raise your hand if:

If you’ve got your hand up, this delightfully digestible guide -- the first in a partnership between INI and Rewiring America -- will help you prepare to fix every single one of those issues.

Our goal? Be ready when it’s go time.

"Go time?"

You got it. There’s plenty you can do to electrify your home right now, but once the vast majority of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA, if you know) kicks in next year, you’ll be able to save a ton of cash along the way, too.

How much cash?

It depends. Once IRA’s fully operational in 2023, it’ll apply broadly across the US, but, first, every state will have some discretion in how they distribute the dough, and second, your household income will play a part in what discounts and/or rebates are available to you.

The point is: we’ll get into the nitty gritty on those later, when we know more.

For now, we’re talking broad strokes. High-level stuff.

A word of advice: You’re going to want to find/befriend/bribe/hold hostage a fantastic electrician to help clarify how much new power your current fuse box (also called an electric panel or breaker panel) can handle, and whether you need to upgrade it (it's the brains of the operation).

The goal today is to:

Along the way, we'll:

I'm not going to spend 6000 words on the minutiae, you're already here, I've got you right where I want you. In order of the reasons most likely to persuade your partner, here’s why electrifying your home is a real winner, in bullets:

On that last point:

About 42% of United States carbon emissions come from our homes and the vehicles we drive to rec soccer practice and back.

That’s obscene, but more than ever, it’s easily fixed (the emissions, not rec soccer, don't even get me started).

So. Let’s build a home electrification to-do list, shall we?

Open your favorite spreadsheet application and make 4 new columns:

And then come back to this post.

Ready?

Forget for a second that half of the 20th century’s most popular catch phrases are fossil fuel brainwashing (actually, you know what? Don’t ever forget what they did to you).

For now, understand this:

“Cooking with gas” can “make everyone in your home sicker."

It poisons the air. It can go boom boom. It makes your kitchen hotter. It makes your pots and pans a danger. The fossil fuel industry knows it, and now you know it. It’s science.

Enter: Induction stoves.

In going induction, you can replace your entire range (gas stovetop + oven) or just the gas stovetop on top. Either way, I love you.

These sleek marvels may be new to you, but Europe’s been steaming mussels and wine on them for decades, and they’re the same stoves ADORABLE contestants use on the Great British Bake Off every damn week.

Let this be a lesson: If something’s good enough for Prue Leith, it’s good enough for you.

Close your eyes, dream with me: Your toddler demands plain pasta for the 643rd day in a row.

You, broken inside, go to boil water.

But this time, on your new induction stove, her Octonauts-themed macaroni elbows take just 40 seconds to boil, don’t give you asthma, and don’t smell like the set of Backdraft.

This is the world I’m pitching to you right now, and that IRA helps subsidize, send tweet.

⚡️What You Can Do:

This may surprise you, but it takes a lot of energy for a machine to evaporate water out of clothing (to say nothing of the microplastics in your bloodstream haha sob sob sob).

Anyhoo!

For, well, eons, we hung clothes or animal skins out in the actual sun to dry, and that’s still great, but maybe not possible if you’re forty stories up or the reluctant member of a HOA that forbids it (ugh). Still want to go old school? Hang them inside!

The point is: Fossil gas dryers are completely unnecessary, and a real bummer.

Just think: Everybody from Andy Dufresne to John Wick to Carrie and Charles to Neo and Agent Smith to Spider-Man and Mary Jane to Noah and Allie had to (eventually) stop kissing and/or killing each other in the rain to go home and put their wet clothes in a dryer that directly contributes to climate change.

Remember kids: Fossil fuels ruin movies, too.

Electric driers, on the other hand, do not. It’s time to get one.

⚡️ What You Can Do:

If you’re among the 12%-ish of Americans with a methane gas-powered dryer, it’s actually pretty easy to swap out to an electric version.

Most US homes use fossil gas or actual oil to heat and cool. Oil. In your house! That’s nuts. What are we, whalers?

Enter: Heat pumps. Like induction stoves, they’ve been around forever. But what the hell are they?

A heat pump is a single electric appliance that can replace both your heating furnace and more traditional AC. They, basically, use electricity to move heat from one place to another.

In cooling mode, a heat pump acts like an air conditioner, moving the heat from inside your home to the outside.

In heating mode, heat pumps go into reverse-mode and pump heat from the air outside your home to the inside — even when it’s freezing cold out!

If this doesn’t sound complicated at all to you, you’d be correct.

What is a little more complicated: swapping out your existing units and HVAC infrastructure for a heat pump.

I'm not going to lie to you, it's a bit of work (none of which I’m going to get into today, this is a digestible guide preparing you to do the work, we went over this at the top).

But it’s worth it, I promise. Adding a heat pump is the gateway drug to saving oodles of money, and making your home more air-tight and a much more pleasurable place to live.

⚡️What You Can Do:

Check with your local utilities to see about home energy assessment rebates and see if they have any recommended energy auditors. When they arrive, they're gonna ask about hot and cold rooms, but you did your homework, you’re welcome.

TL;DR: Heat pump water heaters are like heat pumps for air but instead of transferring air around to make your home’s air hotter, they make your water hotter. Got it? Great.

Better: They can save you hundreds of dollars a year and help the icebergs not melt quite as fast.

BETTER: Compared to installing heat pumps for air (above), heat pump water heaters are often hilariously easy to swap in.

That’s it?

⚡️What You Can Do:

The first 120v heat pump water heaters dropped this year (not actually dropped, that would be bad, “dropped” like the kids say), with more to come as demand rises. They’re starting to become available in warmer climates.

This is a paradigm shift.

For colder climates, you can get a 240v heat pump water heater.

Fun last thing: When it’s go-time and the plumbing is done, you and they can literally just plug the 120v version into a regular outlet and then hug your installer because neither of you can believe it’s this easy.

*Feel free to hug your installer if you get a 240v version, too. Who the hell doesn't need a hug right now?

Caveat: We need far fewer cars.

OK! So. Electric vehicles (EV’s) are growing more popular -- like twice as popular -- every year. This is good news.

EV’s are:

EV’s have fewer moving parts to break and be serviced (bye bye belts and oil changes), and are 3-6x cheaper to drive, saving you (again with this, I’m so sorry) hundreds of precious dollars a year.

Charging at home requires at least a 120v outlet, which admittedly can take quite a while, but upgrading to a 240v “Level 2” system can speed things up considerably.

If you live in apartment or condo complex and can’t add your own plug, your building may or may not offer charging services, or you might be able to find a charger close-by on a utility pole. You might also be able to run an extension cord from your house out to the curb.

If neither of those are true, let’s all agree to use the growth mindset and say “not yet”, and then petition your landlord/building owner/city council for more urban charging options until they give up. (Some states REQUIRE landlords to allow it.)

Side note: More and more workplaces offer chargers. Do you even go to work anymore? IDK. I work in downtown Colonial Williamsburg. Horses don’t need chargers (yet!), but we’re working on it.

Finally, it’s not just you that wins here: EV’s don’t have tailpipe emissions, which not only directly contribute to massive drought and Miami’s future status as one of those underwater snorkeling attractions, but expose anyone near your car to shitty, toxic pollution.

⚡️What You Can Do:

There’s even more you can electrify to tie the whole place together -- rooftop solar, batteries, your fuse box, your children -- but we’ll address those down the line and as the options become more plentiful.

In the meantime, you’ve got some fun detective work to do (check out the links below) and I’m going to get back to building out the rest of these guides and trying to prevent the next pandemic.

As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for giving a shit.

— Quinn (Twitter, LinkedIn)

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