‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”
That question — with a few extra sinister-sounding “ll’s” added to “lurk” — was part of the opener for an old radio drama called “The Shadow,” a noirish thriller featuring a man whose special powers as a crime-buster included invisibility. The immediate answer to that opening question, spoken in a hushed and menacing tone, was “The Shadow knows.”
I recalled those lines recently because I was feeling a little apprehensive. It was almost as if I had called in a private detective — perhaps the likes of The Shadow — to see what they could uncover about my spouse of 50-plus years. But it wasn’t about Bill; it was about our house.
Staff from the Center for EcoTechnology (CET) in Florence were coming to make an energy assessment. What would they be looking for, and what would they find, in our comfortable house, a saltbox built around 1900, enlarged and remodeled a couple of times by us since we’d bought it in 1961? Would we be scolded for our wasteful ways? Our neglect of basic forms of maintenance? Was there something besides mouse droppings and the dehumidifier lllurking in the unfinished basement?
I shouldn’t have worried. The young man who arrived to spend a couple of hours making the assessment was pleasant and well informed, with not an ounce of menace. And unlike The Shadow, he was completely visible.
He had a laptop to take notes on, a portable printer to make those notes available to us. He had a ladder to get up into our crawl space/attic — a mysterious place accessible only through a cafeteria tray-sized hatch — and a cell phone with which he could light up our dark spaces and take pictures.
He didn’t seem too appalled by our habits. We keep the thermostat at 68 during the day and 55 at night. That was good, he said. There were a few spots around doors to the outside that could be better weatherstripped. They’d recommend sealing the leaky spaces between the ceiling of our unfinished basement and the first floor.
CET would also recommend adding to the insulation in the crawl space at the top of the house to help keep things warm and cool, as needed. Those were things they’d do with considerable incentives from Mass Save, the state program that helps homeowners consume less energy.
They’d recommend as well removing the insulation on the ceiling of the cellar. That insulation had been incorrectly installed upside down years ago, as I’d discovered, and it was the question of finding someone to replace it properly that had made me get in touch with CET in the first place.
When he finished, I didn’t feel as though our household had been found in flagrante. But I did learn one significant secret: The exhaust fan from the bathroom, which is vented through the crawl space and then to the outside, was not exhausting properly. The exhaust hose had broken and the damp air from our showers was simply hanging around up there potentially causing trouble. Easy to fix, he said.
He talked to me about the various incentives and rebates the state provides for energy-saving repairs and replacements. I would study those. No, we didn’t want to replace the original windows on the front of the house with something less leaky, but which would likely have plastic mullions. We could, if we wanted, put sheets of plastic over the windows. No way, I said. Aesthetics still count for something.
He had brought a batch of LED bulbs to replace our incandescent ones and a power strip to help us save power on our TV and DVD player. These were a sort of reward for undergoing the assessment.
The bulbs are all installed, though the power strip awaits my reading the instructions. But it will get done. The evil that lllurks in the hearts and energy usage of men was evidently only minimally found in our house.
Marietta Pritchard can be reached at mppritchard@comcast.net.