Daily Home Renovation Tips

Editor’s Note: Over the holidays we are re-publishing selected articles related to our ecoENERGY energy conservation experiences. Some of the grant amounts may have changed. To access the more than 20 articles we have written on our energy conservation experiences through the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program, simply use this link to access our ecoENERGY Energy Conservation page.

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Yesterday, we reviewed the EnerGuide Rating we received and explained how the report indicates to interpret the numbers.

Remember, the scale and numbers in our Energy Efficiency Evaluation Report are:

• 70 - Rating our house received
• 80 - Potential rating our house could receive if we implement all of the reports recommendations
• 66 - Average rating for a house in the same age group as ours 

Also yesterday, we indicated we had some concerns on these numbers. Here are our concerns in no particular order:

• Should we accept that the best our house can do is to achieve the 80? What do we need to do in order to achieve a rating more than 80? What are the costs to do this and what are the benefits? Is a score of 100 even achievable?
  • We would have liked the report to address this, even at least in a cursory manner.

• What is this scale? What is the background of how it is determined? Where can I go to understand how this scale is calculated?
  • While relative scores are useful, a little background on the scale would have been useful we think. The report tends to assume that either we already know what the scale is or that most will be satisfied with just the comparative numbers.
  • To be fair, the report does state that the gain from 70 to 80 would result in an estimated 33% reduction in our house’s energy consumption and that this likely would occur form implementing all of the recommendations. This helps a great deal to understand the numbers.

• If the average rating for a 20 year old house in Canada is 66, what is the rating of a new house (1 to 5 years old)? What specific construction techniques help newer homes achieve that rating?
  • It would have been useful to understand the average newer home score and the major reasons for the difference to a 20 year old average score, grouped by those reasons which can be addressed without major reconstruction of the home

Please do not misunderstand. The report is very good. We like it a lot. There are just some pieces of information in this first section that we would have liked to have presented to us in the report because we tend to be a curious lot here at Daily Home Renovation Tips.

And, the report does give us web sites we can go to for more information on energy conservation related money saving tips and energy conservation related home renovation tips. Additionally, the evaluator did leave us with a plethora (my word of the day )  of booklets on energy conservation during the visit which was really good as well as some web sites we could also go to for further understanding and energy conservation information.

We will continue with our examination of the Energy Efficiency Evaluation Report we received for our house tomorrow with the Recommendations section of the report. This will include those items specific to our home (not too different from many homes), the potential for savings and amount of related grant money available to use for these recommendations.