Making Homes More Energy Efficient

i had no idea.

 

Side note: I was taking a free class (offered thru a grant) titled Energy Efficiency in Building Systems (focuses mainly on commercial buildings). There's a whole world of stuff that I didn't know about and took for granted when it comes to buildings, HVAC, shading, issues, insulation, etc.

If you're curious, the class web page and slides are up at Energy Efficiency in Building Systems. Unfortunately, most of the slides wouldn't make much w/o the lecture. It met 2x a week for 4 hours each time for an entire quarter. The instructor and guest lecturers knew 1,000,000x more than me about the subject.

California has a fairly complex (to me) set of standards for residential and non-residential new construction called Title 24: California's Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential and Nonresidential Building. The instructor was involved in revising one of the previous the title 24 standards. 2008 is the most current standard, There are older standards like 2005 and more at Archive of Building Energy Efficiency Standards.

Too bad you're not in CA and my class (the 2nd one) was the last one. There are working on getting it accredited and being offered for a fee.

I'd imagine anyone involved in construction, building design and architecture in CA would know about all of this stuff.

Also, unrelated to doing anything on the house itself, I think everyone should own http://www.p3international.com/products/special/p4400/p4400-ce.html or one of the fancier models (a bunch more listed at http://www.p3international.com/products/index.html). It's great for finding how much power something uses, identifying power pigs and devices that use a lot of power when "off".

 

I had an energy assessment done. Single biggest thing I could do was insulate the attic, which I did.

Depending on how progressive your state is, you can get tax breaks and grants for the energy audit and for energy saving steps you take based on the energy audit.

The problem, especially in stressed economy, is the pay back is years vs. cash now and most people are too strapped to do it.

It is in national interest to get US to world standards of energy efficiency (energy trade deficit, energy wars, environmental degradation) so US should increase subsidies and low/no interest loans and encourage people to do it along with active energy savings such as installing solar water heaters and electric panels, higher efficiency heaters, AC units, appliances.

We have programs for these but combined with bad economy, they are just not enough to move the nation. We need to increase them. Maybe we don't need that new military base in Darwin, Australia.

 

Blown in insulation in the atic, all new windows including the basement. House color changed to white, roofing changed to light gray from black. Next year new high effiency furnace and central air. New insulated doors. That brings my nat. Gas and electric to under $ 80 dollars a month budget billed by both utilities. All appliances were replaced 2 years ago and are energy star along will all my electronics.

 

And that way you can live your life with no compromise but cut your bills in half.

Have done the same to my house here in the UK and my bills are a fraction of what they were. The attic and wall insulation were the biggest bang for my buck. (there are tax breaks here for that too)

 

I do energy audits for a living. The average heating energy reduction for the houses we have audited is around 50%. Half of the energy is wasted in other words. Air infiltration is usually a large factor, but the range is very large from 10-60% IIRC. It is also something which is hard for a homeowner (or even an auditor) to judge without tools.

In my opinion everyone should get an energy audit of any house they are contemplating buying. The hidden differences between similar seeming houses can be as high as 300% variance in heating (and cooling) costs.

 

I am closing in on retirement and have been trying to complete all of the energy audit recommendations I had over 10 years ago by the utility company. You get a 10% discount on energy bills by passing the audit and having plans to complete the rest of the recommendations.

The first big item is what others have said was attic insulation and something as simple as adding insulation to attic doors. I replaced the metal rectangular HVAC duct under the house two years ago with the new round, plastic, flexible duct with R8 insulation. I replaced the front door with an Energy Star rated door and storm door. This year I have just replaced a 19 year old 11 SEER package Heat Pump with the highest rated 16 SEER Energy Star rated one. I plan to replace the other two entrance doors this year. Next year I plan to replace all of the windows with energy efficient windows.

The utility company now has rebates for the 16 SEER Heat Pump and for the duct replacement in the neighborhood of $500 that I will be able to apply for.

We have the correct air filters in the HVAC returns and my wife changes them religously every month.

With four kids raised and out of the house our utitlity bill has steadily gone down with just the wife and I now with occassional visit from kids and grandkids.

The payback is long but it is well worth it and the right thing to do for the environment, not to mention helping out with retirement costs.

 

Not always though. My loft/attic insulation cost me £150/US$240 (subsidised by my utility company) professionally installed with 15 year guarantee. I saved more than that in the first year alone.

It's a no brainer.

 

I live in a low humidity, high desert, northern climate with hot summers. I am lucky to have tremendous opportunities for passive heating and cooling, and I am having a wonderful time improving my home through self-education and as much DIY as I am able.

It does take time, but I only pursue projects that have immediate positive ROI compared to current costs. By this I mean that the utility savings cover financing charges and the capital costs over the lifetime of the project.

Short list of completed and in-progress projects:

1. Closed down swamp cooler, and installed whole house ventilation instead
2. Bought 168 square feet of window. One installed, six to go
3. Built storm windows (thanks Corwyn for the tip)
4. Switching out electric water heater for NG
5. Electric will be < 200 kwh a month once water heater is replaced
6. Polyurethane roof

 

Far and away your cheapest energy dollar is the one you don't have to spend,,, through conservation. The bottom line is, energy costs (both price and environmental) are gng up. A dollar spent today on insulation, up graded efficient appliances etc are quickly recovered.

One big bugaboo is people who buy an energy start fridge to save ener, and then move the energy hog to the garage as a beer fridge,, now using more energy!

Personally, early 1900s farm house, up graded all the insulation we can, replaced all the windows, passive solar green house for ~20% of heating load, window quilt night shades for windows sun porch roof glass. Simple flat plate solr hot water pre heat, +96% demand gas hot water, zone sace heat with 90% rinnai gas space heaters, (main heat is wood, sourced from saw mill, mill ends) line dry 90% of the laundry, all CFL bulbs, every appliance on positive off power strips. And the biggest is a planted wind break, and shade trees. We live in a spot with very cold winter winds 60+. Multiple lines of trees of various densities and heights have reduced our heating loads during those wind events by 50%.

The bottom line, strt doing the smallest things first, including a good energy audit!

Icarus

 

It generally takes VERY efficient windows to make replacing windows worthwhile. I generally recommend interior storm windows (see my website for instructions on how to make them yourself: Green Fret Consulting - Interior Storm Window ). You can make them for your whole house for the price of one or two replacement windows, and get equivalent savings.

 

Home improvement loans are running around 4.0% (30 year). This means that you pay $4.78 monthly per $1000 borrowed. If you are considering a home energy improvement that will save you $100 per month, you can spend $20,900 dollars on it, and still have lower monthly payments.

That does NOT include tax benefits, nor inflation of fuel prices, nor increase in home value.

 

It's not just the energy savings (and importantly money) that make it worthwhile. Our upstairs was always a little bit colder despite the heating being on, yet when it was insulated it's now warmer.

Though saying that it's warmer in winter and cooler in summer. OK we don't need a/c over here but it makes the house more comfortable. In fact we don't have to have the heating on as much now in winter - just the fire.

 

Good point on the windows. I tell clients w ho are considering triple glazing to spend thier money on added ceiling insulation, gives waaaaay more bang for the buck.

To said, if you re strting from old double hunts, with large sash weight channels, with loose putty etc, going to a simple doulble glazed wood or vinyl replacement is a huge step forward, if not for the R value of the window (u value) but because you can make the house very much tighter.

Icarus.

 

Assuming the improvement lasts 30 years, yep.

This is exactly how I pick green projects.

 

At my church, I helped arrange for subsidized energy audits for interested church members and friends. (No tax deductions were taken for donation covering the subsidy). We had 18 families take up the offer of a subsidized audit, of which 8 responded in a timely fashion to a post-audit survey.


1) Mos survey respondents, after having had the audit, would not have been willing to pay full price (here, about $400). That matches our earlier attempt, where we entered a professional energy audit into a church fund-raising auction and got few bids (and no bids near the full cost of the audit).

So, even after having had an audit (and we went to great pains to pick one of the best auditors in the area), the majority of survey respondents didn't think it was worth the cost. The liked the audit, they just would not have been willing to pay for one.

2) The auditor claimed that recommendations were only made when they would be cost-effective. Despite that, survey respondents only did about half the recommended fixes, and did or planned to do only about 70%.

3) For our 18 houses, the auditor estimated the average energy savings from all recommended changes at just over 11%. For fully 6 out of 18, the auditor recommended no changes.

4) Even with the 50% compliance rate with the recommended changes, and the estimated $300 per audit subsidy, and the low estimated average potential savings per house, a back-of-the-envelope calculation says this was a reasonably cost effective way to reduce C02 emissions, costing maybe $15/ton C02 avoided (assuming a 30 year life of the audited houses).

5) As an aside, the auditor claims that, after attic insulation and sealing up the shell of the building, typically the most cost-effective change is duct sealing. He does that with a new proprietary chemical process (kind of like fix-a-flat for your ducts). The up-front cost is large (like $1800), but he claims that the energy savings are equally large. He also claims that for almost all houses, he has to turn down blower speeds after duct sealing, because the increased back-pressure of actually sealed ductwork will burn out the blowers if he doesn't.

6) They auditor just hated attic fans. Claims that almost all attic fans are a net negative for energy savings. Unless you have huge amounts of free ventilation in the attic area, or your ceilings are sealed tight as a drum, the negative pressure created by the attic fan, inside the attic space, sucks conditioned air out of your house. Claim was that the additional loss of conditioned air (plus the energy to run the fan) more than offset any savings from reduced attic air temperature, in a properly insulated attic.

 

If you live on or near the U.S. northern border, you definately know about drafty issues. We've had an assessment done about 8 years ago, and have only fixed about 70% of our issues. With a home built in the 1890's ... there are ALWAYS issues.

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Good for you!

Either you live in an area of remarkable houses, or the auditor was missing things. In Maine, we do have the oldest housing stock in the country. I have NEVER recommended no changes. And I have audited a house which exceeded Passivhaus standards, and another near zero-energy house. And I would feel like a failure if I could only find 11% improvements.

There 'most bang for the buck' does vary by house (which is why it is important to get an energy audit). Attic insulation, for example, is a rare recommendation around here, mostly because people have already done it.