Air Sealed the house

[Piotrsko]

There are local and federal tax rebates for home insulation but they require a contractor's installation, permits and related governance intrusion (at least in Reno or Lost Wages) Unsure if the original survey for efficiency is included....

The annoying thing is indoor air quality remediation because your byproduct pollution from everyday living is expensive if you want efficiency

[Goldenstate]

I can certainly understand the requirements for having a contractor to verify the correct installation of energy savings improvements in a home.

I had some sun screens installed on three sides of the house as that was all that was cost effective for my location. No need to put the screens on the north side as the sun only made contact with those windows about 4-6 weeks per year. Had to do the whole house or no tax write off. The cost savings of not doing the sun screens was better than the write off so it was an easy decision to thumb my nose at the smaller savings of the government write off.

As I started to seal up the top plate and install the interior wall insulation, I began to notice that when opening a door from the outside, I could feel a pressure wave against the door like never before. As I continued to seal up the house, the pressure wave effect on opening the door was slightly greater all the time. If I had a window open, the pressure wave on opening the door was not there.

Another thing I noted was sometimes I could seal up the top plate and insulate a wall section or two, the water suddenly became warmer faster and even hotter at a faucet or shower than ever before. I had not expected that bit of a bonus, but sure does feel nice now that the weather has turned colder. Made me think that perhaps I could have tried to focus on wall sections that might contain hot water pipes to get the warmer water bonus first.

[redpoint5]

My pantry motion sensor lights come on when strong gusts of wind occur outside. I took a peek with FLIR this weekend and couldn't find the cold spot. I'll wait for a very cold and gusty day to see if I can locate the problem area.

I've got a flimsy yet large dog door in the basement that should probably be duct taped, since we don't have dogs yet.

I need to foam the holes I drilled from the attic between the walls to run cat6 cable. I figured between the walls, with fiberglass insulation over the holes would be fine, but it probably still creates drafts, especially since I didn't seal the wall penetrations for the 2-gang box I installed. Maybe I'll just buy a bunch of those foam seals for 1 and 2 gang boxes and install them when I paint the interior.

Very rough math, my highest heating month is January (switching to Aerohead mode)...
*My energy monitor says I average about 70 kWh running the HVAC blower in January
*The blower only comes on when the furnace is on (and gas furnaces are either on or off, no variable output)
*It consumes 700 watts while running
*70 kWh per month divided by 0.7 kW blower consumption = 100 hours of furnace operation in the month of January.
*100 hours divided by 31 days = about 3hrs 20min per day, or 13.4% of the time.
*120,000 BTU (furnace consumption) = 1.2 therms
*1.2 therms per hour times 100 hours = 120 therms
*120 therms times $1.33 per therm = $159 to heat a 3,600 sq/ft house in the month of January.
*Confounding factors include 2 NG fireplaces that have no method of measuring use, and are omitted from the heating calculation above.

The way for me to track efficiency improvements is to monitor HVAC blower energy consumption in the heating months (Oct-May)

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by ALS

I'm hoping people on here realize after reading our stories that there is lot more money to be saved over the long run, by making their homes more efficient.

Not only it pays off, it's also much less of a PITA than having to do repairs or retrofits more often