environment Archives | House and Hammer

cat sitting in cast iron skillet for some reason

I used to love them, but gas stoves are really bad news

(Note: No cats were cooked or otherwise harmed in the creation of this blog post; Athena just likes to sit in a frying pan sometimes, like a total weirdo.) When we bought our house, one of my must-haves was a gas stove. My parents had an electric range growing up, and the first time I…

heat pumps cut tons of carbon - heat pump on the side of a Victorian house

In data: Here’s how heat pumps can cut carbon and save the world

We installed a mini-split heat pump in our home in 2021 — not a whole-home system, just one wall-mounted unit in the living area, because that was all we could afford at the time. (The rebates are much, much better now — you can get $10,000 back from MassSave, plus up to $2,000 in federal…

air source heat pump - converting oil furnace to electric heat pump

Step by step: Converting from an oil furnace to electric heat pump before winter

It’s hard to think about heating oil in the midst of the hottest 21-day period in Boston’s recorded history. But while gas prices started dipping downward the past month, the cost of heating oil in Massachusetts is still up 72% compared to a year ago, at around $5 a gallon. That could leave many New…

poland spring plastic water bottle on the beach - how to reduce plastic waste

10 ways to use less plastic at home

I was listening to Alie Ward’s delightful + insightful Ologies podcast the other day — an older episode about ocean health with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. There are a million reasons to listen, and to do more to help our marine ecology, but there was one startling statistic Dr. Johnson dropped that I hope will haunt you…

house swallowed by rising sea levels - flood insurance climate change global warming real estate

Climate change, flood insurance, and why you should buy on high ground

I always wanted to live by the ocean. That’s why we settled in Quincy almost a decade ago, a few blocks from Wollaston Beach, where we can sometimes smell the sea from the subway platform. During our house hunt, we researched all kinds of data — pricing, walkability, property taxes, schools, commute times — but…