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Show Page twenty-eig- The National Enterprise, ht MFS tmmmimwimRGnmiimmia geb MAINTENANC sea aasKw monopoly Continued from page one owners have responded by having contractors install or rockwool to reinsulate their homes. The average contract, says Mountain Fuel spokesman Dale Zabriskie, is between S250 and $350. bringing $2 million to participting contractors in less than two years. fib-ergl- as obtain its list of contractors, the utility wrote letters to about 80 local insulators, soliciting participaIntion in the program. terested, qualified companies signed contracts to receive leads from Mountain Fuel on a rotating basis. To Under the contract, for each reference which results in a job, the contractor pays the utility $10.00. Upon completion of the job, Mountain Fuel pays the contractor cash, and adds the total amount to the customers monthly fuel bill, tacking on a one percent financing charge. The customer pays off the w ork over a negotiated time period. Mountain Fuel pared its list of contractors by reputable applying stringent personnel and insurance standards to applicants, including a requirement the contractor be covered with $500,000 liability insurance. Such standards, says one state official, have disqualified many smaller businesses. Also, Mountain Fuel recognized only two of three types of insulation, eliminating cellulose from consideration because of alleged fire hazards. Contractors dealing solely the newspaper-base- insula- d tion wrere automatically barred from consideration. The utilitys apparent bias against cellulose insulation is now being rectified, under pressure from cellulose manufacturers (see related story, page six). But. meanwhile, cellulose contractors have been hurt. Higher prices DHEiH3D0Sni3JSB dBms UEuzaHEB fomf iaiinai!iEgEiit 3Ili!IiV itssi State and federal officials said last week they are investigating claims contractors on Mountain Fuels referral list charge higher prices than those not on the list. Curious about the claims, the Enterprise called contractors for price quotations, asking how much it would cost to insulate a hypothetical house with a 1250-square-fo- ot thermal resistance factor of 30. Williams Insulation, an IN member, quoted $528,75 using rockwool and $506.25 using fiber-gla(R-fact- or) s. Solar-X- , a XU 87$ msnsssisos) fflymsm non-l- N contractor, quoted $450 for fiberglas, rockwool or cellulose. A hypothetical customer could have saved $75.00 using the non-IN fhsaimagg(g5iii (? 3CPSD OBJ? 5) fESNffiS town) June 8, 1977 |