Energy Efficiency Update

Yesterday we had a home energy audit by Next Step Living, which provides the audits free of charge (the electric & gas companies pay for them). We found out about the opportunity at a booth at the Lowell Folk Festival back in July, which, by the way, was awesome. The food, the music, the food, the people, the activities, the food....well, you can see what we loved the most. We tried Jamaican meat pies, some kind of Burmese fish concoction, various things grilled on sticks, peirogi, Polish rosette cookies, and all of it was delicious. The Folk Fest is also very much focused on being "green," so all of their plates, cups, and silverware are compostable. At the end of the event, they sort all the trash (we saw them doing this), and start the compost pile. Each year, they give away bags of compost made from the previous year's trash! Check it out:





So that's out in our garden now! But I digress...



We had our energy audit (for free!) yesterday, and it returned mostly good news. Our heating system is about 82% efficient. This isn't awesome, but it's pretty good for the kind we have (boiler w/ steam). So there's not much to be gained from replacing it, which means we probably have another 10 years or so (barring any terrible mechanical failure, which seems somewhat unlikely) until we need to deal with that investment.



We already had mostly all of our light fixtures filled with energy efficient bulbs, but he gave us one free one. He also gave us (and installed) a new, low-flow shower head. It's actually pretty awesome, particularly given that our old shower head was kind of broken and needed to be replaced anyway.



He went up in the attic (yikes!) and checked out the insulation. It turns out there's pretty decent insulation up there, and probably not much can be done to improve it. He did recommend re-doing the attic hatch with foam insulation board (polyiso) and new weather-stripping, which we'll do soon. He also thought that the bathroom fan pipe could be insulated, but said it wasn't a big deal, since it's a short run.



He did a blower test and checked out the heating system and the oven. The oven was producing a bit more CO than he' like to see, but he said as long as we're using our hood, it should be fine.



He also looked into solar options (we'd love to get a few solar panels!) but it turns out our house isn't fit for it. The main part is slate (which doesn't work for solar panels) and the back flat roof is too obstructed to make the panels worthwhile. Sigh. So there isn't much new we can do, but it was nice to get a clean energy bill of health.

Storm Door Installation

Today Jake installed the second of the two storm doors we bought at Lowes' a while back. It's on the door that leads from the pink room to the "L" porch. It looks great, and it seems like it went a lot more quickly than the previous one. Carter even helped with the installation, if by "help" you mean "took a nap on the instructions."



Now that the heat is on, this storm door should help keep us toasty and energy efficient!

Oh, and by the way, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Thermostatic Adventure!

Today we finally installed the new programmable thermostat we bought a while ago. We even got a rebate for it from the gas company.

Here you'll see the snazzy old-school Honeywell. It was a bit of a challenge to remove it (Jake perhaps will update here) but with the help of someone else's blog, we figured it out. The next challenge was "which wire is which"?



To our great relief, we finally got it all hooked up. And no one was even slightly shocked!

Of course, the old thermostat was round; the new one is not. So you can see some of the quite charming wallpaper that lies underneath the pink paint here. It's sorta tan with both black and white trees on it (or at least that's what we could figure out from this patch).




Jake here. That old thermostat was a monument to simple design inside and out. Inside was just a mercury switch on a heat sensitive coil. No batteries or circuit boards. No bothersome labels telling you which wire was which.

After removing the old thermostat, we had a white wire and a black wire. The new thermostat has plugs labeled Rh, Rc, W, Y, G. The manual for the new thermostat told us what those plugs are for, but the manual for the old thermostat, being nonexistent, had nothing to say about the wires. In the end the winning combination was white to Rh and black to W, but I suspect that the reverse would have worked as well.

More nano-projects

The energy efficiency guy from the gas company suggested that we put some insulation up on the hatch to the attic. So today I made nice with the pink panther, using my ever trusty staple gun.

Also, we had some drainage issues in the driveway. Pile of leaves were getting stuck in the drain pipe, shown here. Check it out, we finally found a grate that fits right in there.

Minor Project Updates

We've been busy with school and Halloween lately, so not much time for projects. We've done a few small things, like putting up lightswitch and outlet covers in the basement. We also put up a nice paper lantern in the kitchen. The photo shows it here attached to the ceiling fan in the kitchen. You can also see our lovely pressed tin ceiling and cheerful kitchen curtain on the window over the sink.

I also did a bunch of weatherizing, including the gaps in the door to the pink room. But that's not really photo-worthy.

The painters are all finished with the outside. We're pleased with how it looks, but a bit frustrated with the contractor. We have paint chips and paint drips everywhere. Time to bust out the shop-vac. The painting contractor is supposed to put up gutters for us, but we haven't heard from him in a while. We are learning that it's hard to get house jobs done. Sigh.

Weatherize This!

On Friday, a kind man from the gas company came to help make our home more energy efficient. So today, I went around putting in new light bulbs and sealing up electric outlets. I don't really have any pictures of this, as it was not exactly a very exciting home project. Oh, but I did weatherize the mailslot (unfortunately, our mail gets delivered to the front door, not through this adorable mail slot). Just wait til we start putting up weather-stripping! Oh the excitement.

But what is exciting is that we've gotten the front room into working order. We still need many more book shelves, and we need to do something about the plywood floor. But Jake's in there playing bridge right now. Check out the lovely photo: