EnerGuide Results

A couple of weeks ago we had our visit and scientific evaluation from EnerGuide, and now the results are in! Anytime over the next 18 months we can apply for a grant between $216 and $4,580. The grant value will roughly equal our first year of energy savings. The funds for this program are available on a first-come, first-served basis. The government of Canada has allocated $73.4 million dollars to the EnerGuide for Houses Retrofit Incentive. Our energy rating is 47 out of a possible 100. Of course to get a rating of 100, we'd pretty much have to have to be "off the grid".

Our results for heat loss were no surprise to us. Out of a rating of 50 (lower number= more energy effecient), the basement is rated at 49 (there was no insulation at all), air leakage and ventilation at 41, the main walls at 40, windows at 38 and ceiling (attic) at 8. The next step is to see what's financially possible, i.e. small investment= big return. With the windows being currently rated at 38 and improving to 9 (after installing all new windows with double glazing, argon stuff, etc.) and it costing a fortune to replace, we probably won't be doing that improvement... although we will be replacing the front windows.... eventually. The basement is the easy one to bring down to their suggested 13 (from 49). We've already started insulating and putting up vapour barrier (dont' worry, it's in the next post), and for the heating... well, you've already met Slim... which was a huge incentive to get the evaluation in the first place.

In our results there's also a chart that shows the energy use for the heating system in gigajoules (GJ). They estimated that The Beast used 180GJ of energy to run. If all the upgrades they've suggested are implemented, the energy usage drops quite dramatically to 50GJ. Now that's energy saving! Too bad windows cost so freakin' much!

Once everything is updated, insulated, spray foamed and weather sealed, we'll be calling back our friendly energy advisor and aksing him to bring his big yellow fan to see how close we came to their suggested rating of 75.

Energuide Followup

We're getting close to the deadline for our Energuide Followup. The program has been cancelled, and we only have a few weeks to finish repairs. We had the house tested before we replaced our furnace, since having a new furnace made it worthwhile on it's own. We still have a lot to do, we have to seal all 3 attic hatches upstairs. We have to caulk some of the leaky beadboard on the ceiling in Seth's room. The seal on the front door, and the bottom seal on the basement need to be fixed. The insulation in the basement needs to be finished. There's only one wall left to go in the basement, I started working on the hallway again, so the basement was put on hold. I need to get the door I'm refinishing out of the workshop, so I have room to work down there. I need more foam insulation for the concrete walls as well. I think I need to take a week off work, which is a possibility.

Energuide Final Inspection

We had our final inspection for the energuide program yesterday. I think it went pretty good, better than I expected. Our first inspection, gave our house a rating of 47, out of a possible 100 in terms of how energy efficient it was. The attic hatches didn't have latches on them, so I think one of them blew open during the air test. Well, our house is now a 71, after insulating the basement, filling a lot of cracks, and changing the furnace. We're getting around $1400 back from the government, based on our improvements, although we have to wait 30 to 90 days to see that money. The inspections were 100 a piece, so it's really 1200 back. That makes it more than worth it. The new government has a new program they just introduced, so we may try to take advantage of that when we replace our windows. We're only replacing the ones that aren't original, which is almost all of them. That won't be for a while, we'll be saving our pennies for a while, to afford the windows we want.

Upstairs door finished, and energuide progress

Here's some pics of the door I just refinished. It turned out pretty good, there's still some paint residue, that I'd like to get rid of eventually. The painters tape ripped the paint right off the wall as well. I knew painting first was the wrong order, we were just so sick of the wallpaper glue walls.



















The hardware turned out really nice. This the second door finished in the hall, I think the other one was finished almost 2 years ago. Only 2 more to go, the bathroom and the bedroom. We can't really leave those ones off, so they'll be more difficult to finish.













I've been working on sealing up the attic hatches as well. The doors were done, they needed frames though. So I built 3 frames and installed those, using my new brad nailer. I measured the frames for the one with the thicker walls, it has a layer of 3/4" wood, then 3/8" drywall, and the door was mounted behind. So the other hatches, the frame is sticking out. I'm going to have to get creative with the trim. At least it's just in the kid play room. I would have bought 4" wood for those frames, and then ripped them down. I guess I should have measured them all. Now we just have to spray foam around the gaps, and add weather stripping to all the attic hatches.

I took the 1/4" plywood of the last wall in the workshop as well. I took the insulation out as well, even though it didn't look that old. I prefer the roxul insulation, since it's partially and air barrier, it's fire resistant, and has a higher R value. It looks like they had some rot on this wall, it's all been replaced, it looks like maybe 10 years ago. There is a mystery pipe coming out of the wall too. I think there may have been an oil tank in this room at one point. There was an underground tank in the backyard as well, that's been removed. I thought I could smell a little bit of residual fuel oil. And when I moved the shelf away from the wall, I noticed some condensation. It doesn't look like there was a major leak. I've already fixed the draintile on 2 sides, looks like the front is next. I think it has draintile, I don't think they damproofed the wall though. So we'll have to dig it out, parge it with mortar, and cover it with tar. We have to dig in the front anyways, so it's not that much extra digging. We still have the galvanized supply pipe, that needs to be replaced. I have to call the city, and see what's involved in that. I can't even see where it turns off, since it's been buried at some point. So I guess we've had a busy weekend here, still a long ways to go. I need to book an energuide appointment, I'll book 2 or 3 weeks from now, so we can get it all done.

Energy Advisor Visit

Things have been on hold here for the last few weeks, mainly because Derek has been working overtime. We also didn't want to get too far into plumbing, insulating and framing the basement because of the new furnace going in, and the EngerGuide people coming to assess the house.

Our Energy Advisor, Tim, was very nice and brought with him a big yellow fan (which Seth was immediately drawn to) reminicent of The Old Man and the Street's "Big Red Fan of Death." The first thing that Tim did was to measure the outside of the house, and all the windows he could reach. Next he measured all the windows inside, and checked out our beast of an oil furnace and water heater.

After checking the attic and hip spaces, it was time to set up the big yellow fan. Tim had brought with him this really neat contraption that expands to fit your door, and has a black fabric centre with a hole in it for the fan. Along with this crazy doo-hickey (I forgot to ask what the offical name of it was) was another piece of technology that has a red rubber tube coming out of it and two large dials. This is what measures the amount of air leakage the house has. Tim had some problems getting the top dail to read 50- it went only as high as 45, and that was after he had taken off the guards to the fan and had it on it's maximum speed. As it turns out, one of the hip space hatches was left open (and insulation was sucked out into the dormer which was discovered at bedtime... aaaahhhh!) and that's why he couldn't get a good reading. This is probably going to work out for the best because the house reads as very "leaky" (remember that attic and hip spaces are considered outside spaces or cold zones) and we'll end up getting a larger grant. We will know the results within two weeks and I'll let you know what our energy rating is on the scale of 0-100.

Tim left us with a plethora of information, including a 3 page report on how to read the 5 page report that we'll be recieveing in two weeks, and a great book about how to insulate your home. Here in Vancouver our winters are mild and wet, and the summers aren't too hot (what's air conditioning?) but it's the amount of insulation that makes a difference. Tim said that most houses only have the minimum of R12 in their walls and attics, and so far that's what he's measured for ours- he recommends to fill the joists with the insulation and even to place more ontop if you've only got 2x6 joists.

We decided to do the EnerGuide Analasis not only because of the homeowner grants, but because of the One Tonne Challenge. Not only will our heating and electrical bills be lower, we'll be helping stop the greenhouse effect. Even if you don't have incentives like Energuide it's best to do what you can, everywhere you can... reduce, reuse, recycle!

And on a completely different note: The door is painted...

Busy Little Bees

The last few days have been absolutely crazy. We've had family gatherings, community park parties, I lost and found my watch (man, we have great neighbours!), playdates, ballet and Sparks, grocery shopping, Survivor, and of course shopping for a new furnace.

I think we've pretty much settled on the Lennox G61V "The quietest furnace you can buy". The quotes are within $200 of eachother, which doesn't make it any easier to decide, and all offer us slightly different packages/warranties. I think we're leaning toward Kirkland Metal Shop, their quote is in the middle and they take our silver beast of an oil tank, and a 10 year parts & labour warranty is only an additional $250. And, he was the nicest fellow of them all. Sears, however never called back.... humph!

Right now there are so many different rebates out there, it's hard to ignore them all. With the installation of a high eff. furnace, Terasen (our natural gas company for BC and Alberta), will give you a rebate of 350bones on your bill. Lennox also has a sale on the G61V- $300! And then there's Energuide...

EnerGuide is a fan-tas-tic idea, and should be implemented all over the globe... or at least those signed to the One Tonne Challenge (which is to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide by 1tonne/person). There are some sample homes which give you a great idea of how much of a homeowner grant you could be eligible for. A HomePerformance Energy Advisor comes to your home and works with you to determine what priorities are suitable for your home. The first step is to do an evaluation, which is a science-based analysis. This describes the home's current performance and estimated energy costs. It also creates a heat loss profile and offers advice for improvement. I have no idea how this is done, or anyone who's done it, but we've scheduled the appointment and we'll let you know!

After you've made as many of the recommended changes, or as many as you can afford (windows can get pricey!), you schedule another meeting with the Energy Advisor for another analysis. He will process the grant application on your behalf once he has reassessed your home. He will prepare all the paperwork for you to sign, and at the same time may be able to tell you how much you are eligible to receive. Eligible homeowners will receive a non-taxable grant cheque from Natural Resources Canada within 90 days.

Weekend, Workshop and Sealing up the Cracks

It started on Saturday, with more work on the Energuide stuff. I bought all the weatherstripping a while back, I go the medium thickness and the extra thick stuff. If I were to do the hatches again, I would make the frames, and put the doors in them in the workshop, and get everything so it closes nicely, and seals properly. Instead, we did the doors first, then built frames that fit in the opening after. It works pretty good on 2 of the doors, on the other one, I had to cut tapered pieces, and use various thicknesses of weatherstripping, and it still doesn't seal that good. I got the hatches sealed up pretty good though, I had to use plier to pull them shut, so I could get the lock in. I think the weather stripping will compress over time though. I'll probably have to put handles on them though, I'm thinking.
The ceiling in Seth's room is bevel board (it's like a plainer version of beadboard), so I've been caulking the joints with latex caulk. I've just been doing where it changes angle, and where it meets the drywall. I still have a bit to do on that. The upstairs is pretty much finished after that. It would nice to add more insulation in the attic, but we're going to be taking out the crappy drywall job that the previous owner did, so if we did cellulose, it would all just fall out. I need to add soffit vents, and those pieces so the insulation doesn't cover them as well, so I don't think we have time either.
I finished insulating the basement as well. All except for one bay. I want to replace the spigot, with one of the anti-siphon/frost-free ones. We only have R4 on the concrete portions of the walls in the workshop, it's a lot better than nothing. I nailed strips of plywood, sandwiching the foam insulation, to attach the drywall. I used a hammer drill, galvanized nails, and pieces of wire. It really hold the pieces on tight, and it's a lot easier/cheaper than tapcons. I put up 2 pieces of drywall, enough that I could put the workshop back together. I rehung the cabinet on the wall, and moved the location of the workbench. The layout seems a lot better, the workbench isn't right in the path of the laundry room. The outlets are too low on the wall with shelving now though, so I'll have to figure that out. I spent probably half of Sunday reorganizing the shop, there's still a long ways to go. I can start designing my other workbench soon. I aready have the top and vises, I need to get some wood to make the base. I guess it would all make more sense with pictures, I'll take some soon.

The little things add up

It's Blog Action Day, and we've decided to participate, along with a lot of other blogs over at Houseblogs. We've been doing lots of little things over the last few years, to reduce our energy consumption, and all the small things, seem to be adding up. Our last electricity bill said we used 50% less electricity than last year. We've replaces all our bulbs with compact fluorescents, we unplug our wall warts (a/c adapters), we put our television and electronics on a powerbar that we turn off at night and we generally try to turn off lights when we leave the room. The reduced the amount we pay monthly on our gas bill by $10 per month, since we've been using less gas too. We have a high efficiency furnace, that replaced our 1950's oil beast. We insulated the basement, and tightened up and insulated the knee walls up stairs, and filling a lot of cracks. Our heating costs are less than half what they were when we moved in.

We've also taken advantage of the energuide program. With the rebates on our furnace, the high efficiency model ended up being cheaper than a mid efficiency. I think we would have thought long term, and went with the high efficiency anyways. Good thing we did it when we did though, since the current government cut funding for the program.

We have a lot more to do, but the small and big things are adding up. Adding more insulation in the attic is probably the best thing we could do. We're going to be replacing our windows, as soon as we can afford it. I know that's not the best bang for the buck, but it's something we want to do anyway, since the 1970's replacements don't suit the house. We'd like to do a solar roof someday, but with the amount of sun we get, and current cost, it's not worth it yet. Hopefully our roof will last until we can afford a solar roof.

Final Energuide preparations

We had a snowboarding day at work on Friday, so we all got to go snowboarding on the company's dime. So Saturday started out a little slow. I mainly worked on caulking all the cracks in the bead board ceiling in Seth's room. That probably only took an hour to do, and most of that time seemed to be moving toys out of my way, so I could work. We have to repaint the ceiling now, since there's white stripes of caulk everywhere.

Sunday was plumbing day. I bought a MAPP gas torch, since I heard they were so much better. It's a self igniting one too, so it lights every time you press the button. For some reason, somebody thought it would be good idea to put the plumbing right against the concrete wall. since I'm working in that area, and the spigot is there, I added a frost free anti-siphon spigot. I haven't done a lot of work soldering copper, so I was a little nervous. I know enough people that can bail us out if we run in to problems though, and of course we ran in to problems. And I did run in to problems, it turns out that it is important to open every fixture to drain the lines. I thought the pipe was empty enough, I guess not. So my father in law came out and brought his fancy acetylene torch, and his flux and solder, which seemed to be better as well. So now we had water back to the house. He left me with the rest to do myself, which is good, since I really want to learn to do this. I read in my plumbing book again, how to solder. I'd already cleaned everything really well, I think it was just the water in the bottom of the pipe. The 5 or 6 joints I did for the spigot worked perfectly, so I was really happy.

It was supposed to rain all weekend, and the sun was out, so before adding insulation to the last bay on this wall, I added an outlet for the driveway. I bought all the stuff the night before, a gfci recepticle, cover etc. I got the outlet in, it's not connected yet though. I filled all the cracks outside on the wall with fire resistant silicone, around the spigot, the electrical service etc. We're going to have to repaint that wall anyway, so it's not so bad that I made a bit of a mess. Now I just have to finish insulating, and we're mostly done. I only have one day left, the inspection in on Tuesday.

Kill The Beast!

Yesterday we laid "The Beast" to rest. It had served us well over the last 2 winters, but alas it was not meant to be. The Beast was at least 50 years old and needed repairs and maintenance, and twice-a-year-refilling of it's silver mate in the backyard. Goodbye Beast, and I know it'll be hard for you to hear this, but you won't be missed... after all, we have "Slim" now!
Slim is our Lennox G61 Variable Speed Motor Gas Furnace. It's lovely. Slim is less than 1/4 the size of the Beast and is 96.4% AFUE! "Al" arrived at 8:30am yesterday for the installation, half an hour early- how often does that happen?!? He immediately began to perform surgery on the Beast, removing his innards and severing the plenum. Soon enough, Mitch "The Man" arrived to assist Al in taking the Beast to it's (not really) final resting spot... the front lawn. (I'm glad they had someone that works there that has a truck because the Beast wouldn't fit into their van!) All in all we're pretty satisified with Slim and his installation, some things aren't what we'd thought they'd be like- the exhaust/intake pipes are a bit low and looks a little sloppy outside against the stucco, along with some minor scratching on our new concrete floor.

Let's hope that Slim is as good as he's made himself out to be...

On another note, everyone is sick: both kids spent the entire weekend vomitting, and Derek and I are losing our voices to sore throats due to colds. Needless to say, not much is getting done.

Next up: Energuide Report