Being an Energy Retrofit Installer may sound complicated but it can actually be one of the most interesting, and one of the most fun jobs on the planet. You get to improve and help preserve a lot of older buildings, some of them architectural treasures.

One week you may be checking out the energy efficiency of someone's ranch house, discussing how bring their utilities bills down and improve safety and comfort for the family that lives there; and the next you may be touring an elegant old hotel to see how it can use energy better without losing any of its comfort, class, or style.

Or maybe you'll be making a factory or corporate complex a healthier and safer place ~ for which the people who work there will be very thankful.

You might be doing energy audits, recording various characteristics of what's known as the building envelope: walls, ceilings, floors, doors, windows, and skylights to see if and where heated or cooled air is escaping, making the furnace or AC work overtime, and you'll be able to suggest the best fix each place, where it be replacing a door or window, or just installing some insulation of weather stripping.

With your skills and experience, you'll be able to factor in all of the variables, like where the building is located, what kinds of energy are used and when it's used the most, how the local climate and weather affect the building's ability to use energy more effectively, and how the age and condition of the home or building factor in to the way it uses energy

Even more important, you'll be improving the lives of the families who live in the homes you help to make more energy efficient, and you'll be helping businesses to create a better, more pleasant place for employees to work, and most importantly, you'll be making a difference in preserving the environment and giving your kids and theirs a better, healthier place to live.

Those things alone make this one of the best jobs in the world.