ABOUT THE PODCAST
The Wise Home Energy Show airs regularly on WYSL Radio, where Jeff Flaherty cuts through the noise on home performance, energy costs, and what actually works in Upstate New York homes.
Jeff's been in the building science trenches for over 20 years, and this show is where that experience gets put to work. No sales pitch, just straight answers on insulation, air sealing, heat pumps, rebates, and the mistakes that cost homeowners money. If you own a home in Rochester, this is worth your time.
WYSL 1040 AM
WYSL 1040 AM is Rochester's Voice of Liberty, broadcasting local talk and community programming across the region. The Wise Home Energy Show airs as part of that lineup, bringing practical home performance advice to homeowners across the greater Rochester area every week.
LATEST EPISODES
Each week, Jeff Flaherty and the Wise Home Energy team tackle the questions Rochester homeowners are actually asking, from ice dams and energy bills to heat pumps and rebates that won't last forever.
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.
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.