First plug the leaks—then review your heat source

Human beings are so short-sighted, it’s wondrous we’ve muddled along on this planet with such a high rate of evolutionary success. When it comes to energy consumption, the western world as a whole continues to indulge its gluttonous habits despite the consequences—and as individual homeowners many of us are no better.

We postpone heating and insulation upgrades that could not only reduce our environmental impact, but also increase our personal comfort and save us money.

Of course, summer in Atlantic Canada is such a sweet and fleeting pleasure, no one wants to spoil it with thoughts of wind chill and substandard R-values. The good news is, even when autumn is upon us, there’s time to undertake home improvement projects that will help to keep us cozy in the winter months, while reducing our heating costs for many years to come.

Broadly speaking, there are two approaches you can take:

• Install a heating system that is more efficient (preferably one that relies on a cheaper and more sustainable energy source).

• Or seal and insulate your house to prevent the loss of that precious heat. In most cases, the latter approach will provide the quickest return on your investment.

Experts in this field are reluctant to make specific recommendations about how best to improve home energy efficiency, because it depends so much on the age and condition of the building, and on the residents’ priorities. Some people want a uniform level of comfort in every room; others are content to have the main-floor living area warmed by a woodstove while a chill settles over the upstairs bedrooms. (Those of us who inhabit largely unimproved historic houses have been known to remark that the warmest place on a winter day is somewhere out in the yard downwind from the structure.)

There are those who prefer to leave this kind of thing to professionals; there are reluctant do-it-yourselfers; and then there are efficiency wonks who enjoy the challenge of stopping every air leak and packing every wall with insulation. Regardless, it’s a good idea to get advice from a reputable and objective source before spending money on a major project.

“I think the best thing you can do is have an energy audit done on your house,” says Steve Keeling, of Miles Industries. The company manufactures and distributes Valor brand gas heating appliances out of North Vancouver, so it has no stake in the insulation business. But Keeling advocates a holistic view of home heating.

An energy audit generally involves not only a thorough visual inspection, but also a test for air tightness using a blower door—a devise that seals off one of the outside entrances and creates a vacuum in the house, making it possible to locate and measure heat loss trouble spots.

“They take tons of information. They grill you about your house, and they check for leaks and drafts,” Keeling says. “They feed all this data into a computer program and it generates a report, and it will tell you in order of value where you’re going to get the best bang for your buck. It might say insulate your attic, or put gaskets in your electrical outlets, or do something with your windows. You learn everything about your house.

Unless you’ve got a brand new house, it’s the best thing you can do.”

Some provincial governments subsidize these audits and offer rebates to defray the cost of upgrades. Conserve Nova Scotia, the province’s energy efficiency agency, has a list of private consultants who are approved to conduct audits. The rebates are paid out only after a follow-up inspection has been conducted to confirm that the prescribed work has been completed to spec.

Donald Dodge is Conserve Nova Scotia’s program manager for existing residential homes. (Assistance is also available for commercial buildings and new homes.) He says preventing heat loss is the best way to save on energy costs, and the best place to start is sealing up those drafts revealed by the blower door test.

“It’s always the least expensive thing to do. It’s weather stripping, it’s caulking. Often you can spend under $200 and get most of that back in government rebates. I can’t stress enough; air sealing is so cost effective. A leaky house is constantly losing heat. And if you’ve got a leaky home, you’re uncomfortable.”

Once air leaks have been dealt with, homeowners should add insulation in the areas where it’s most needed. “Attics are a big one,” says Dodge. “We’re looking for R-50. That’s ideal, but you can get away with a minimum of R-40. An amazing number of homes are R-12 to R-20.”

Insulating the attic makes the top of the list for the obvious reason that warm air rises, and also because it’s a relatively easy area to deal with. You don’t need to renovate, you can see where the insulation needs to go, and gravity is on your side. The insulation is placed between and on top of the joists; essentially you’re laying a blanket over the ceiling of your home’s upper storey. Fibreglass is a good fit for those doing the job themselves, though there will always be seams between the batts. Alternatively, cellulose insulation made from recycled paper may be poured in loose, or blown in by a contractor, creating a continuous layer. It provides a better R-value per inch at roughly the same cost as fibreglass. Either way, a well-insulated attic will not only keep you warmer in winter, it will help to keep the upstairs cooler in summer.

Another weak point in many homes is the basement, and it’s trickier because of potential moisture issues. For unfinished basement walls you want a non-absorptive insulation material like extruded polystyrene. This is the stuff that comes in pink or blue foam panels, which are denser than the white boards made of compressed foam beads. It’s the same product used on the outside of basement walls, which is in fact considered a better approach because it prevents condensation problems, though that’s a more expensive job, involving excavation and landscaping around the foundation.

A particular trouble spot in basements is the header—at the top of the wall where the wooden plate sits on the concrete. Often there are air leaks to be sealed here, and then there’s the fiddly business of fitting insulation in each of those spaces between the floor joints.

“Don’t try to do this in one go, because you’ll drive yourself crazy,” advises Dodge. “Do a couple, then come back to it later and do some more.”

He points out that a growing number of contractors are using spray foam these days. It’s one of the more expensive insulation products, but it’s a labour-saver, and it’s ideal for headers because it takes care of the sealing as well as the insulating. “They can do it in a couple hours,” he says.

As for exterior walls on the main levels of the house, fibreglass batts can be added anytime the framing is exposed during renovations, or holes can be drilled to blow in cellulose from the outside. Either way, you’re limited by the thickness of the walls. Newer homes have 2X6” walls, allowing for more insulation. Foam panels can be added on the exterior, but that’s something most people would only do if they had another reason for replacing the siding.

An energy audit will also assess your heating system and recommend a replacement if necessary, but the economics may not be as persuasive. “With insulation it varies wildly, but in general payback is two to three winters,” says Dodge. “Compare that to a heating system; even if you had an old, inefficient furnace, and you replace it with an efficient furnace, you’re looking at 8 to 10 years.”

Contrary to what many home renovators believe, the payback for replacing old windows is even longer—typically in the order of 20 years or more. Dodge says while a rudimentary window may have an insulation value of R-1, even the most energy-efficient new window will only give you about R-4; it’s still a heat-seeping hole in your R-12 stud wall.

“The biggest problem with windows is air leakage around the window, and if you deal with that you’re much further ahead. There are lots of great reasons to change windows, such as re-sale value and aesthetics, but don’t do it for the sake of energy.”

It’s a case of prioritizing potential upgrades, and deciding how much money you’re prepared to spend. “For the average homeowner you run into the law of diminishing returns, unless you’re a bit of a freak like me,” says Dodge, boasting that his 50-year-old dwelling has achieved a rating of 77 on the federal EnerGuide scale—very close to the gold standard for brand-new homes. “I want to keep playing this game of making it as efficient as I can.”

And then efficient heat delivery

An energy audit will not recommend a specific type of appliance, but government incentives may be available for adding an approved supplemental heat source as part of your energy efficiency upgrade. This is an especially good idea if you have an open fireplace—something you can assume to be a major home heating liability, even without an audit to quantify the wasted energy.

Dodge says the easiest way to seal off that heat-sucking hole is to fill a garbage bag with fibreglass insulation and stuff it up the flue (with a dangling string attached to a reminder note, so the bag will be removed before the customary Christmas Eve fire is lit). Alternatively, tight-fitting glass doors can be installed—but a better solution is an insert, which will not only stop the air leakage but also allow you to produce extra heat when you want it.

“They’re great,” says Dodge. “If you want to use your fireplace, put an EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certified) insert in there, and now it’s actually warming your house.”

Inserts may be fuelled by solid wood, wood pellets, or gas. “I would say of the open fireplaces, about 60 per cent of our sales would be propane inserts and 40 per cent wood,” says Juanita Corrigan, of Corrigan’s Stove Centre in Charlottetown. “Wood inserts now are all EPA certified. You have to reline your chimney with stainless all the way up. It’s relatively easy to put an insert and a liner in. In some cases we may have to extend the hearth if you don’t have 18 inches from the opening.”

Corrigan says when oil prices shot up a couple years ago there was a rush on pellet appliances—including free-standing stoves as well as inserts. But with oil relatively cheap going into the fall of 2010, the pendulum has swung back, creating a surplus of pellets and pellet-burning appliances.

“It’s a funny market,” remarks Corrigan. “Right now we’re selling a lot of propane. People use propane for different reasons. They treat propane as a luxury. They want easy comfort, and I anticipate that’s going to continue unless there’s a huge spike in oil.”

One of the hot items in the propane and gas sector is the zero-clearance fireplace, which can be framed in without any brickwork, with the steel chimney entirely hidden inside the wall. It’s the flat-screen television of home heating. They come in all shapes and sizes; small ones may even be installed in a kitchen or bathroom wall.

“A lot of them are going to the more linear look, as opposed to a log. It doesn’t pretend to be a wood fireplace. They’ve become quite artistic.”

Though designed partly as a home décor feature, this type of appliance can save you energy if it’s used as zone heating in the area of the house where you spend the most time. The idea is to avoid cranking up the thermostat for your central heating system. Steve Keeling is a big fan of this concept.

“A lot of people could cut their heating costs by 25 to 50 per cent by doing zone heating, especially if they’re away all day,” he says. “You come home and you want to be in the kitchen and the living room, so just warm up those two rooms.”

All the heat you get from a zero-clearance fireplace is radiated through the glass, unless it’s a model equipped with a blower or a system to duct heat to one or more other rooms. Keeling cautions that homeowners need to understand the actual heating capacity of the unit they’re buying.

“Be careful—most professional retailers will honestly tell you everything you need to know, but there is a category of decorative appliances that are not meant to heat, or they just produce a little bit of radiant heat. Some of them are beautiful, but do not heat. Some of them actually dump the heat outside.”

There are also zero-clearance fireplaces that burn wood or pellets, but traditional wood heat enthusiasts tend to lean more toward the hot and heavy; they want a stove that makes itself known as a presence in the room.

“Some people grew up with a woodstove, and as far as they’re concerned that’s the only way to heat a house,” says George Hill, co-owner of Ultimate Home Comfort in Halifax. “It’s that radiant heat. If you try to put a pellet stove in, it’s not going to do it for them. About 80 percent of the heat from a woodstove is radiant—it’s the heat hitting objects and people. A pellet stove is 20 per cent radiant and 80 per cent convection. The capacity could be the same, but the kind of comfort is not the same. Once someone gets used to the heat from a woodstove it’s hard to get them off it; I call it a bone-penetrating heat.”

Of course, wood is only suitable for households where someone is around to tend the fire. A reliable and economical local supply of good quality firewood is also important, and you need to be willing and able to lug the stuff around.

Pellet stoves gaining popularity

“Wood stoves are never going to go away,” says Norm Hunt, Atlantic Canada sales representative for Forge Distribution, a company that deals with virtually every type of heating product. But because of all those lifestyle considerations that go along with solid wood, he sees a shift toward pellets, for central heating as well as space heating appliances. A pellet stove can burn for more than 24 hours without being refuelled, and a pellet-fired hot air furnace or boiler installed in the basement would typically be equipped with an automatic auger and a hopper capable of holding more than a week’s supply, or possibly enough for several weeks.

“We’re selling a lot more of those than we ever have. If you look at Europe, that’s usually where we’re going in a few years, and there more and more houses are going to pellets, for stoves and fireplaces and even hot water systems, because it’s easy to handle the bags of pellets, and in Europe there’s bulk delivery by trucks, through your basement window. They’re using quite a bit of it, because the raw material is available.”

Hunt sees cheap oil as a blip on the market. He believes more homeowners are deciding they don’t mind spending half an hour each week cleaning out the ash pan, in exchange for the environmental and economic benefits of pellet heating.

“It’s definitely a long-term trend. It’s more efficient; it’s a closed combustion system. And they’re a lot more reliable than they used to be, and more technologically advanced. There are some with sophisticated electronic controls, programmable on a seven-day cycle, and it tells you when to have a service call.”

Even if you’re not adding or replacing a heating unit, a programmable thermostat is a good upgrade for an existing furnace. It’s part of a change in thinking among homeowners, who are increasingly examining their daily habits and considering when they actually need the most heat. You should also ask yourself how much longer you’re going to wait before doing something about it. Because when it comes to saving energy and saving money, time is of the essence.