Rob Beckers
31st May 2008, 09:18
Last Thursday I had an energy audit done. In part to find out just how bad this big (2547 sq. ft.) old (well, 21 years only actually) house is, in part because it is required to take advantage of the Canadian ecoEnergy retrofit rebate program (http://www.oee.nrcan.gc.ca/corporate/retrofit-summary.cfm). The way it works is that you have an energy audit done. This results in recommendations of what to improve. You then have 18 months to make improvements. Finally, you have another energy audit done to verify the results and receive your rebate. There is a fixed rebate for specific upgrades. Also, Ontario matches the federal rebate with a provincial one, doubling the money one receives (this may be the same in other provinces, I do not know though). Sample rebates are: Installing solar hot water nets one $500 + $500 (federal + provincial), installing an on-demand hot water heater instead of the tank-type is good for $250 + $250, a new window is $30 + $30 each, and the mother-of-all-rebates; replacing a regular furnace with a ground/water-source heat-pump nets one $3,500 + $3,500. There are many more items listed that result in rebates, improving insulation and such, and the maximum one can receive is $5,000 + $5,000.
The energy audit itself cost $350, minus an Ontario rebate of $150 (no federal rebate for that one), making for $200 total plus tax. The process took around two hours, with the auditor taking note of all the insulation values (ceiling, walls etc.), and heating equipment. This was followed by a blower-door test to see how leaky the house is, and a walk-through with a little thingy that makes smoke, to see where the leaks are located.
I'll have to wait another week to receive the official report. However, the auditor noted that he rarely had to run the blower motor that hard to depressurize the house, indicating massive air leakage. It explained in part the massive gas furnace we have (his comment was "we usually find this BTU size in a building like a church), luckily it's a 92% efficient 2-stage furnace. The walk-around revealed there were no large holes that caused the air leakage. The cause, for the most part, were the windows. Air was leaking alongside the window frames, because there is no house-wrap on this house, no foam between the window and walls, and the vapor barrier has not been taped to the window frames. Just a little fiberglass insulation stuffed between frames and walls.
Besides the poor installation, the existing windows are also in bad shape. They are regular two-pane casement windows, no low-E, no argon, so they have a U-value of around 0.6 or 0.7 for the whole window, at best. Besides the poor U-value there's of course the massive air leakage as well. On many of them the mechanism to open/close the window no longer works, or doesn't work well. We knew we were going to have to replace them at some point, and are now considering biting the bullet and doing them all. With 20+ windows that's not a decision to take lightly, the total tab for good windows will likely run around $40K. Getting back $60 per window from the ecoEnergy program doesn't really make a dent in that. Then again, heating outer-space is not cheap either, and probably not going to get any cheaper any time soon.
With that in mind, if anyone has recommendations for good, well-insulated windows I'm all ears! Especially for brands available in Canada. For those in the Ottawa area, recommendations for shops/installers are very welcome too.
When I receive the official report I'll post more.
-RoB-
The energy audit itself cost $350, minus an Ontario rebate of $150 (no federal rebate for that one), making for $200 total plus tax. The process took around two hours, with the auditor taking note of all the insulation values (ceiling, walls etc.), and heating equipment. This was followed by a blower-door test to see how leaky the house is, and a walk-through with a little thingy that makes smoke, to see where the leaks are located.
I'll have to wait another week to receive the official report. However, the auditor noted that he rarely had to run the blower motor that hard to depressurize the house, indicating massive air leakage. It explained in part the massive gas furnace we have (his comment was "we usually find this BTU size in a building like a church), luckily it's a 92% efficient 2-stage furnace. The walk-around revealed there were no large holes that caused the air leakage. The cause, for the most part, were the windows. Air was leaking alongside the window frames, because there is no house-wrap on this house, no foam between the window and walls, and the vapor barrier has not been taped to the window frames. Just a little fiberglass insulation stuffed between frames and walls.
Besides the poor installation, the existing windows are also in bad shape. They are regular two-pane casement windows, no low-E, no argon, so they have a U-value of around 0.6 or 0.7 for the whole window, at best. Besides the poor U-value there's of course the massive air leakage as well. On many of them the mechanism to open/close the window no longer works, or doesn't work well. We knew we were going to have to replace them at some point, and are now considering biting the bullet and doing them all. With 20+ windows that's not a decision to take lightly, the total tab for good windows will likely run around $40K. Getting back $60 per window from the ecoEnergy program doesn't really make a dent in that. Then again, heating outer-space is not cheap either, and probably not going to get any cheaper any time soon.
With that in mind, if anyone has recommendations for good, well-insulated windows I'm all ears! Especially for brands available in Canada. For those in the Ottawa area, recommendations for shops/installers are very welcome too.
When I receive the official report I'll post more.
-RoB-