For $150 up front I now save hundreds every year

by Robin Green
(Toronto, Canada)

Our EnerGuide for Homes scores

My 2003 home energy audit involved a blower door test to find leaks and drafts, assessment of attic insulation and wall insulation, estimates of electricity usage, and so on. My initial score was 44/100, where a score of 100 would indicate the most energy efficient home around. Here are a couple of figures from the initial assessment (the one on the left in the photo):

Estimated annual electricity consumption: 9,692 kWh
Estimated annual gas consumption: 5,901 cubic meters

As well, the auditor determined that the air leaks in my house added up to a 14 x 14 inch hole of air flowing freely between the indoors and outdoors.

As a result of the audit, I made a number of major changes:

Had Icynene injected into the ground floor walls, which were plaster and lathe with just 1 1/2 inches of dead air space between the plaster and the double-course brick. This made the ground floor much warmer (cost about $1,700)
Replaced all the original 80-year-old windows with new energy efficient ones (cost about $6,400)
Wandered around the indoors with a tube of silicone caulking, and beaded along any quarter round, the top of baseboards, and around window and door frames to seal off leaks coming through the walls (cost about $10!)
Sealed the panes of a kitchen window we never open, to keep out drafts (cost about $5)
Raked the blown-in insulation in our attic to make it more level (cost - nothing!)

The end result was that my score went up to 62/100 - a significant improvement; the 'hole' in my house, as determined by the blower door test, went down to a 6x6 inch hole, and the estimated energy consumption went down as follows:

Electricity: from 9,692 kWh to 9,331 kWh per year
Gas: from 5,901 cubic meters to 3,726 cubic meters per year

We received an $800 rebate from the Government of Canada (this was before the idiotic Tories axed the program) and a $300 rebate from our natural gas supplier, and we've saved a lot on natural gas since then, so I'm pretty sure the entire cost of the upgrade has been paid off within the past few years, plus we're more comfortable.

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