How Energy Efficient Are You?

Now these are the times to get up and renovatin' here in Canada. The federal and provincial goverments are making it way too easy to make such great improvements to your home. Basically its a no-brainer. There are tax credits, grants, and in our case, gift cards!

The furnace in this house was the original, so 32 years old. Furnaces have a lifespan of about 25 years, so our old girl was way beyond her years. So when we started looking into replacing it, we realized just how sweet of a deal it could be. Basically we paid $6000 for a new high-efficiency furnace, and once you add up all the rebates and grants we will end up paying $3000. And you know me, I love a bargain ~ even if it is on a furnace! Plus, because we bought it at Home Depot during one of their promotions, we get 10% back in gift cards.

We had an Eco-Energy home inspection in April. Basically they come in and measure how efficient your home is. Our house was a 62. A house as old as ours averages about 74 (on what scale I don't know, but I do know 100% is the best you can get). So then they leave a list of suggestions of things you can do to improve your home's efficiency. Then they come back within 18 months (maximum) and re-test to see if you have improved your home's efficiency. Because the city has a rebate that has a deadline of September 30th, we will have to get all of our retrofits done before then. So AKA, our time goal!

So here she is, in all her furnace beauty. A Trane something or other...
(*Here is my disclaime:. I went down to take the furnace picture, only to realize it was covered in stuff/junk/treasures. Now the basement is fairly disorderly at the moment due to the impending renovation. Just sayin'!)

A few weekends ago we also got new dual-flush toilets. I'm still quite excited about these little puppies. We were sportin' 13 litre per flush toilets, so now we have a 6L or 4.1L flush option. Huge difference. They figure that 30% of a home's water usage is in the toilets! So Rona had a huge sale on low-flow toilets. We bought these bad boys for $104 each, and we will get $65 back per toilet. The part I didn't get is that you have to buy all the fixin's (seat, bolts, wax ring, etc), so that did mean a bit extra, but still pretty affordable for two new toilets that will not only reduce our water consumption, which is great for the planet, and lower our water bill.

(*And hey, how many bloggers are brave enough to put their crapper on the internet!)

Options in the bathroom...how fun!

They also recommended air sealing, which is probably the cheapest thing you can do to improve your home's energy efficiency. Basically you take off the mouldings around each door and window and put some expanding foam in the gaps.
You can also caulk at the top and bottom of the baseboards to reduce air loss. I know, I'm still having a hard time with this one? I'm losing air out of my baseboards??? Say what? We opted not to do this one, but rather just around the doors and windows. According to Rob your home still needs to breathe to some degree. Especially in the winter when we have our windows and doors closed all the time.
When the guy (I do have to mention the man's name was Vern. Isn't that totally awesome?!) did the inspection, he basically sealed our house. Really it was incredible. I had to shut all the doors and windows and he put this giant fan thing in the front door (which was completely sealed). He then took me through the house with a little smoke gun thing (or maybe it was dry ice or something), and put it in front of an outlet. The smoke was blowing away. Then he went right beside a window. Again, the smoke blew away. So I became a believer. Somehow, somewhere, the air and heat in my house, gets sucked out via these seemingly tiny holes.

So we bought these little suckers, for only $4.50 per package (8 outlets and 2 light switches). So cheap,and so simple to use. Just take off the outlet plate, stick the foam behind there, and screw it back on. Voila, little to no air leakage!
We are also going to insulate our two outer walls in our basement. There is no point insulating the shared walls (we are a middle unit). Now here is the oh so brilliant part. We are using our Home Depot gift cards to do this. So we will get our gift card kick back, and then turn around and get another kick back from using it to insulate. Yes, yes, I know. Utterly brilliant!

Because there was already some insulation already going on, we are going to use this foam system on one wall. No wood studs, no fluffy pink stuff with fiberglass everywhere. Just lovely foam on metal tracks. I had never heard of stuff like this before. The only downside is that you have nothing to hang heavy pictures on (because you have no studs).
Then on the other wall, we will just stick with the fluffy pink stuff. Mainly because we already have it, and its generally cheaper to use this stuff. Then the hope is to get a finished room down here where the kids can have their toys, and a bed for people who come to stay. Currently its basically just a den of chaos...
Eventually on this side we will have a beautiful craft/tool room for the Hubby and I. That will likely still be a ways in the future, but I'm already dreaming of it. It will be small, but to have a separate place to work on things (AKA, not the dining room table) will be divine!
So anyway, there you have it. The Energy Efficient Nepper's. Well not entirely, I'm sure there are many more things we could do. But for now, I'm pretty pleased with all the improvements we have been able to make. Not only is it great for the planet, but hey, a little money saved each month is always nice too!