Your First Step

The first thing anyone should do if they want to save money on energy and be more sustainable, is to get a home energy audit done on their home.  We had ours done back in the early spring.  We should have done it even earlier as it turns out we missed on $500 worth of savings when we put in our high efficient wood stoves.  Here is the web site with the details  http://ecoaction.gc.ca/ecoenergy-ecoenergie/index-eng.cfm

After they come to your house and run the test, they will give you a report that should sum up what you can do to improve.  The government rebates about half the cost of the visit ($150).  I was surprised they didn't make mention of solar hot water even though you can get funding for it.  They take car of all the applications for the rebates and this program can save you thousands of dollars depending on what you end up doing.

We had our follow-up visit last week with our energy advisor Keith Blenkinsop from Home NGR Savers (www.homenrg.com).    He re-tested the house to see if we meet the 10% improvement that we need for the rebates on the insulation and sealing.  He will also put in for the rebate on the solar hot water heater.  With any luck we should get over 2K back from the government. 

You can see the test machine in the pictures below.  The fan assembly fits into the doorway and sucks all the air out of the house causing negative pressure.  He then measures the flow of air to get the number of times the air will change in the house every hour.  While he was running the test I ran all over the house feeling for cold air coming in. I found a couple of places that needed some improvement and already took care of them.

Remember to do what you can!

Keith doing the testing.