Daily Home Renovation Tips

The next recommendation on our ecoENERGY Energy Efficiency Evaluation Report concerns our windows:

This came as no surprise at all. Our house is 20 years old. From the front living room we can hear a person walking on across the street, the cars driving by, and it is very cold in that room from the cold air coming in through the bay window in the front:

Here is the reports more detailed explanation of ENERGY STAR rated windows which we found interesting and enlightening and think you will as well:

I like how they also provide additional resources for more information.

We have a lot of windows, 36 per the recommendation above. Our plan is to replace all the upstairs windows, including two sets of bay windows, as well as two windows in the basement. This won’t be all of them, but our investment for this will run into the …… gulp…..5 figures. Remember, these have to be ENERGY STAR rated windows. This are not cheap. And, by the way, February will be Windows and Doors month here at Daily Home Renovation Tips when we have a month long series of postings the middle of each week on the installation of our new ENERGY STAR windows, new front door, and other related postings.

The remainder of the recommendations do not provide, per the report, as large a potential for savings nor for the available grant money. However, this does not mean we will ignore them. However, our financial investment will be focused on the ‘biggest bang for the buck’, i.e. new windows.

The third recommendations the instantaneous or tank-less gas water heater.  Yes, the total incentive (Federal and Provincial) is $400 ($200 X 2). However, from what we can tell the cost of this device is in the neighborhood of between $1,000 and $2,000 for the unit and related materials materials plus the cost of installation from what we can tell. If these numbers are accurate it could be a worthwhile investment, net the $400 combined incentive. We will investigate it this spring when things have slowed down a little in our home renovations.

Here is a more detailed explanation from the report on this device, also knows as an tankless water heater:

Lastly, a very nice explanation of this device can be found at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Next week we will continue our examination of the ecoENERGY Grant’s Energy Efficiency Evaluation Report, looking at the last three recommendations for our home and other information and charts contained in the report. This includes learning about the new ‘drain water heat recovery (DWHR) system that we had never heard of previously but are very excited about.

To continue with the next article in this series on our ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit report, simply select this link to Part 7.