Back in the 1970’s, there was a bit of an oil embargo, and suddenly the oil that we took for granted became very expensive. For people in the US, it came as a very rude shock. Up to 1970, the US was the main oil producer in the world, like the way Saudi Arabia is now.
The oil embargo helped bring about a new people movement in the US, where sustainability, low energy, growing your own food came to be thought as a way to change to a low energy world. The shift to the low energy world lasted until the early 80’s. One of the many interesting projects that came out of this was the Master Conserver course http://www.culturalconservers.org/library.php. The course looked at things like:
- Home Buyers checklist
- Heat Loss calculations
- Home Insulation
- Weathersealing and caulking
- Hot water conservation
- Indoor Air Quality
- Energy efficient windows and doors
The list goes on. All the topics had instructional handouts that contain a wealth of knowledge that is difficult to find in books nowadays.
We are fortunate that someone saved all these handouts, scanned them and made them available for our generation. Please save a copy of them so that the valuable information in these handouts can be saved, and more importantly, be used to make our own homes more energy efficient. The address is http://www.culturalconservers.org/library/masterconserver.pdf