home energy efficiency improvement

Our first personal experience with home energy efficiency improvement happened some time ago, when we moved to live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The concern was ? ?Would our (natural gas -fired) furnace be able to keep the house at the temperature setting on the thermostat, and keep the family warm??. We had a bi-level house (i.e. rooms upstairs and downstairs from the front door). Manitoba gets pretty cold in winter, and when we moved from (the greenhouse that we came to call) Ontario, we had doubts that our furnace could keep up, and that we would slowly freeze. Ok, maybe it wasn?t that bad, but the gas bill did worry us.We became really upset when it was -40 ?C outside, and the weather section of the news showed Windsor (Ontario) at +5 ?C. They fondly, cynically say in Winnipeg ?But it?s a dry cold?. That just means that your skin can freeze, and you don?t know it. Frostbite. Lose a finger tip. (For those readers still using the Fahrenheit scale, did you know that -40 ?F and -40 ?C are equivalent?) Very cold. Our first winter in our Winnipeg house, we could put our hand against the electrical outlet on an outside wall, and we could feel the cold, cold air just ?pouring? in to the room. Talk about low hanging fruit ? a trip to the electrical section of the local hardware store for foam insulating gaskets helped cut down the air infiltration a lot.

Another thing that we did pretty quickly was to make our doors a much smaller source of air infiltration. They were bad. Draft excluders. Fiberglas stuffed in the door jambs. Caulking. Duct tape. Then we started a program of adding extra insulation. There was a long, straight wall in the living room/dining room that you could almost see the frost forming. We probably didn?t do it like the ?experts? would have, but we did it anyway ? 1.5 inches of foam on the inside of exterior walls, followed by 0.5? gypsum drywall. (In North America, drywall is an accepted interior finish, because of its relatively low cost and good fire retardant properties.) We had to improvise with the electrical outlets, but managed. Also, at that time, a good product on the market was a sheet of clear plastic that you could tape around your windows, and ?tighten? it by heating with a hair dryer. This did a good job of containing the window leaks, and it was quite inexpensive. That was a big help, too, and light still came in, when the curtains were drawn open. We also turned down the thermostat, and wore sweaters.

We didn?t spend a lot of money, and the results were noticeable. So, that was our introduction to energy, and energy savings. Today, our windows are pretty tight, so we don?t worry about the leaks there. (Our patio door is another story, though.) Back to present day.

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