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The Wise Home Energy Podcast on WYSL Radio

LATEST EPISODES

Every episode covers real homes, real problems, and straight answers on insulation, heat pumps, and energy costs in Western New York.

Past Episodes

2026

  • June 2026 - Stop Guessing, Start Measuring: Three Real Cases Where Diagnostics Made All the Difference - Jeff Flaherty is back from visiting a peer group of home performance contractors across the country, and he's got a full case load to unpack. A contractor told a client that Jeff installed an undersized furnace. Turns out the contractor put in an oversized AC unit and never ran a Manual J calculation. Jeff did, and a NYSERDA quality assurance visit backed him up. He also walks through a landlord whose heat pump bills doubled after a fire left a dropped ceiling with no insulation above it, a homeowner panicking about injection foam that may not have been the right product to begin with, and why the blower door test is the one measurement most contractors skip because they don't want to be held accountable to the results. Plus, what the Erie Canal has to do with home performance, and why calling five contractors who all agree doesn't mean they're right.

  • May 2026 - Ice Dams, Insulation Myths, and Knowing When to Walk Away - Jeff Flaherty breaks down some real-world lessons from recent jobs, including a Cape Cod ice dam mystery traced back to a half-inch gap around a ceiling light, a frustrating dispute over skylight leaks that got blamed on insulation work, and a town home attic that another contractor quietly packed wrong. He also covers why fiberglass keeps getting installed despite being a poor air sealer, how to actually compare competing quotes (hint: white out the price), and the RG&E insulation rebate running dry. Plus, the one-liner that finally nails who's really responsible for ice dams, and it's not your roofer. 

  • April 2026 - Energy Bills, Bad Foam, and the Homes Nobody Fixed Right - Jeff Flaherty just got back from the National Home Performance Conference in Columbus, and he's got a lot on his mind. He breaks down why New York energy rates keep climbing and what you can actually do about it, including an ESCO option that dropped one customer's bill from $1,761 to $631. He also walks through a string of recent jobs gone wrong: open cell foam installed without fire paint, ducts buried under insulation in a crawl space, a tankless water heater pulling unfiltered outdoor air into the house, and a contractor who stood next to a roof full of heat loss clues and missed every one of them. Plus, why Jeff will sometimes do a job that isn't his preferred design, but won't put his name on the outcome. 

  • March 2026 - Ice Dams, Oversized Furnaces, and the Magic Paint That Fools Home Buyers - Jeff Flaherty kicks off a packed episode with something most homeowners have never seen before: a utility report that identifies individual appliances from smart meter data alone. From there he digs into a string of recent jobs where shortcuts came back to bite people. A homeowner who just paid for an expensive insulation job got zero documentation and zero blower door results. A five-year-old home has mold creeping back on the roof deck because the mold remediation company painted over the problem instead of fixing it. An oversized furnace installed by a "friend" is costing someone every month. And two homeowners are being told they need new roofs when the real problem is air sealing. Jeff also covers a negative review that actually makes Wise Home Energy look good, why bigger equipment is almost never the answer, and what questions you should be asking any contractor before they touch your home. 

  • February 2026 - Why Ice Dams Keep Coming Back (And What It's Actually Costing You) - It's been a brutal winter in Rochester, with over 100 inches of snow on the ground and utility bills to match. Jeff Flaherty breaks down everything homeowners get wrong about ice dams, starting with why the roofer is the wrong person to call. He walks through the short-term fixes that work, the ones that don't, and why spending $5,000 to steam ice off your roof this year almost guarantees you'll do it again next year. He also covers the freeze-thaw cycle that turns a good roof into a damaged one, why skylights and finished third floors are among the hardest ice problems to solve, and what brown ice on your roof is actually telling you. Plus a cautionary story about a church where a falling icicle ripped a gas meter clean off the building. The bottom line: between March and October is the right time to fix this. December is not. 
  • January 2026 - Bad Furnaces, Broken Installs, and the Test That Proves It - Jeff Flaherty kicks off the new year with a rundown of the latest rebate changes, including a new $5,000 to $10,000 heat pump incentive and why dual fuel systems are still a smart option for homeowners who want to keep gas. He also covers why single-stage furnaces should never be installed, period, and why a private equity company quoted $2,500 more for one anyway. From there he walks through a geothermal system that was undersized by 10,000 to 16,000 BTUs from day one, a farmhouse that needed a blower door after COVID protocols prevented one during the original install, and a homeowner convinced that new windows and weather stripping were the answer when the real problem was a 6,200 CFM air leakage reading. Plus why contractors who skip the blower door aren't just cutting corners, they're avoiding accountability, and what that costs the homeowner in the end. 

2025

2024

2023