After almost a year of preparation, we are finally getting ready to make our older home more energy efficient with a good size home energy efficient renovation. I admit that I am both excited and a little bit scared.
It all started by getting a professional energy audit done. You can usually get energy audits done through your local energy company. In our case, however, we took it one step further by hiring a certified company to come in and do a major energy audit of our home. This involved attaching a large fan to the front door to pressurize the home as well as meters to measure temperature and energy loss. We found some unexpected leaks as well as an identification of our biggest problem areas.
The energy audit also gave us a financial breakdown. It showed how various improvements could save us real dollars, and which improvements would merely break even or actually lose us money in the long run.
For example, one thing that surprised us was learning that replacing our windows wouldn’t be as big a savings as we might have thought. We still may go through with the replacement anyway, since there are other reasons to replace them, namely resale value, a reduction of insects in the house, an ease of cleaning, and fewer arm bruises when the windows slam down on my arm in the process of being opened.
Our contractor is scheduled to meet with us this afternoon to go over the plan of attack. The major areas will be insulation the attic and the basement. Because it won’t cost much more to actually finish the basement, we will be pricing that out as well. We may do some of that work ourselves, such as installing floor tiles, while leaving the harder stuff to the professionals.
I’ll keep you updated on how things go as well as share any information or tips that I learn along the way on this project.
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