Perhaps you would be interested in the article I wrote regarding energy conservation. Air leaks are the largest source of heating and cooling loss, resulting in increased energy costs. The same air leaks that cost us heat loss in the North can cost you cooling loss in the South. thanks, Mark D. Tyrol, P.E. Battic Door Attic Stair Covers PO Box 15 Mansfield, MA 02048-0015 tel. 508.320.9082 fax 508.339.4571 email: mark@batticdoor.com web: www.batticdoor.com Reduce Your Heating Bills This Winter - Overlooked Sources of Heat Loss in the Home, by Mark D. Tyrol, P.E., www.batticdoor.com - November 2004 Imagine leaving a window open all winter long the heat loss, cold drafts, and wasted energy! Well if your home has a folding attic stair, a fireplace, and/or a clothes dryer, that may be just what is occurring in your home! These often overlooked sources of heat loss and air leakage can cause your heat pour out and the cold outside air pour in costing you higher heating bills, causing cold drafts, and wasting energy. Air leaks are the largest source of heating and cooling loss in the home. Air leaks occur through the small cracks around doors, windows, pipes, etc. Homeowners are well aware of the benefits of applying caulk and weatherstripping to these areas to minimize heat loss and cold drafts. But what can you do about the three largest "holes" in your home the folding attic stair, the fireplace, and the clothes dryer? Here are some tips and techniques that can easily, quickly and inexpensively seal and insulate these holes. Attic Stairs: Do you have a folding attic stairway in your house? When attic stairs are installed, a large hole (approximately 10 square feet!) is created in your ceiling. The ceiling and insulation that were there have to be removed. And what is installed to cover this opening? A thin, unsealed, un-insulated sheet of plywood! Did you know that your attic space is ventilated directly to the outdoors? In the winter, the attic space can be very cold, and in the summer it can be very hot. And what is separating your conditioned house from your unconditioned attic? That thin sheet of plywood! Often a gap can be observed around the perimeter of the door. Try this yourself: at night when it is dark, turn on the attic light and shut the attic stairway door - do you see any light coming through? These are gaps - which add up to a large opening where your heated/cooled air leaks out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year! This is like leaving a window open all year round! An easy, low-cost solution to this problem is to add an attic stair cover. An attic stair cover provides an air seal, reducing the air leaks. Add the desired amount of insulation over the cover to restore the insulation removed from the ceiling. Fireplaces: Approximately 100 million homes in North America are constructed with wood or gas burning fireplaces. Unfortunately there are negative side effects that the fireplace brings to a home especially during the winter home-heating season. Fireplaces are energy losers! Researchers have studied this to determine the amount of heat loss through a fireplace, and the results are amazing! One remarkable research study showed that an open damper on an unused fireplace in a well-insulated house can raise overall heating energy consumption by 30%! A recent study showed that for many consumers, their heating bills may be more than $500 higher per winter just due to the air leakage and wasted energy caused by fireplaces! Why Does a Home With a Fireplace Have Higher Heating Bills? Hot air rises! Your heated air leaks out any exit it can find, and when your warm heated air is drawn out of your home, cold outside air is drawn in to make up for it. The fireplace is like a giant straw - sucking the heated air from your house. This is like leaving a window open all year round! An easy, low-cost solution to this problem is to add a fireplace draftstopper. A fireplace draftstopper is an inflatable pillow that seals the damper, eliminating any air leaks. The pillow removed whenever the fireplace is used, then reinserted after. Clothes Dryer Exhaust Ducts: Have you ever noticed that the room containing your clothes dryer is the coldest room in your house? Ever wonder why? Your clothes dryer is connected to an exhaust duct that is open to the outdoors. In the winter, cold air leaks in through the duct, through your dryer and into your house, while your heated air just pours right out! Dryer vents use a sheet metal flapper to try to reduce this air leakage. This is very primitive technology that does not provide a positive seal to stop the air leakage. Compounding the problem is that over time, lint clogs the flapper valve causing it to stay open. This is like leaving a window open all year round! An easy, low-cost solution to this problem is to add a dryer vent seal! A dryer vent seal will reduce unwanted air infiltration, and keep out pests, bees and rodents as well. The vent will remain closed unless the dryer is in use. When the dryer is in use, a floating shuttle rises to allow warm air, lint, and moisture to escape. If your home has a folding attic stair, a fireplace, and/or a clothes dryer, you can easily, quickly and inexpensively seal and insulate these holes. At Battic Door, we have developed low-cost, green solutions to these and other energy-conservation related issues. For more information please visit our website www.batticdoor.com or send a S.A.S.E. to P.O. Box 15, Mansfield, MA 02048.

How efficient do you want to be? I think the advice will differ if you're looking to achieve Net Zero or PassiveHaus standards vs the current stretch code. I'd suggest that in the northeast it's probably a poor decision to shoot for less than the stretch code requirements for insulation and ACH numbers. Going for the level of perfection that PassiveHaus demands stretches all but the most generous budgets. We opted for an intermediate level in suburban Boston; rigorous sealing of all air exchange we could find; insulation to ~R30 in the walls R60 in the ceilings with a wrap of rigid foam on the entire exterior to prevent conduction through the framing plus blown in cellulose and some spray foam depending no the area; reasonably high efficiency heating and cooling; solar panels that supply about 30% of our needs; decent, but not outrageous windows (a mix of Marvin Ultimate and Integrity), energy recovery air exchanger, etc. Our utility bills are about half of what they were in a similar size house built 14 years ago, but more importantly the house is extremely comfortable in both summer and winter. The house is built to last--plenty of 2-300 year old houses up and down our street, and I'm quite sure the upgrades for energy efficiency were quite worthwhile.

Within budget, energy efficient and functional, doesn’t seem like a lot to ask till you start to put it all together. This design has finished up being 250m2 and it will be sitting on 3000m2 section. We built on the same land some years ago. We then split the land in half and planted lots of fruit trees in and around the existing mature tree’s. It’s flat……almost and has fields on two sides. Other than the house that we built on the front of the section it’s very private. We also planted on the new boundary between the existing house and this new section which is now well established. The front section had no trees and I used to look out my kitchen window and imagine my new future home with all the trees with paths running through them. We never thought that building this new house would take so long to get started and leaving our rental house each week to go mow the section, pick fruit and trim foliage was depressing. Well, we made it but the budget is tight and a lot of thought has gone into making it the best it can be, including all the rooms we need and being as energy efficient as I can get it. It’s only just been sent off for costing so changes are still possible. I can give you the reasons for the design but I am more than happy to hear your thoughts. The outdoor room with slider facing south and the north facing slider gives me Mother Nature’s Air Con and I get to enjoy more of the land that surrounds the house. You will notice that there are no doors on the lounge or the kitchen – it’s just budget and a sit down with DH of what we need over what we want. To the right of the entrance is bed 1 (DH office) and a ‘bath’ room. This was a solution to the future sale of the house in NZ. Let me explain – When I arrived from the UK 12 years ago, I found it strange that ALL NZ homes had a room with shower, bath and sink with a separate loo (which often didn’t have a small sink!?!?) It’s the same today but they do tend to add a baby sink in the loo. This is seen as very old fashioned in the UK and most renovations include knocking the loo through to the bathroom. So, if I had to sell the house in the future maybe a Kiwi could handle a shower room and bathroom – they don’t like change or different and I learnt this on my first build 12 years ago! Halls are to a minimum as much as possible, I saved on a door again between family and hall……..ummm not sure yet, can I live without one? You may notice how straight and lined up the roof is – I wanted a covered BBQ area to the back so that helped to line up the roof and I pulled the roof out over the garage too. It could be seen as a boring house and I would love to go gable crazy but needs, wants and budget played a huge part here. However, input and thoughts on the subject will be helpful. The bedrooms are small but acceptable here. You may question the huge scullery but this is for work needs not an excessive want. A few things you can’t see – we have so many power outages here that we will be looking at solar panels even if it is just to the kitchen. We want to upgrade insulation etc. With a bit of research I have chosen to have the kitchen company build the vanities. I have a choice between cheap, nasty but affordable or $1700 looks OK. Going off the built in we had made in the last house I am thinking the kitchen company will give me the look I want at a cost I can work with. Love to hear what you think

I think you are exactly right jannicone, although I whenever I consider that point, I sort of shake my head. I get that most people don't value energy efficiency like I do, and that's fine, but sometimes experience's like schreibdave's seem a bit irrational to me. Our new, roughly 2600 sq ft home will cost the same or less per month in total utility costs to live in than our current 900 sq ft home. It will also be a lot more comfortable (temperature, air quality, etc. etc.). Yes, it costs a little more up front, but the much maligned-in-this-thread payback period for the difference in cost will be well within the period of time we plan to live in the house. Most of the energy efficiency aspects we chose were not THAT expensive. I guess I just don't understand why most prefer the trade-offs required for lower initial cost, which usually means houses built as cheaply as possible (except for the granite countertops). It seems like finding the lowest possible initial cost is all people consider, regardless of the balance of cost of ownership. With the right choices, it costs much less money overall to have a somewhat higher initial cost and pay for that in the monthly mortgage payment, than have a somewhat lower mortgage payment and pay much higher energy costs every month forever (in a less comfortable house). We knew before we started building that almost no one would be willing the pay the same premium we are willing to for the energy efficiency aspects of our home if we needed to sell it. In my rural area, people regularly accept $300+/month energy bills, even on houses where the cost of sealing some ducts and adding a little insulation would pay itself back in less than a year, and the house would be more comfortable. People around here have $ for everything else in the world besides replacement windows for their leaking, single pane windows, which would start saving them money every month very quickly. I don't get it. (Apologies if I sound smug, I just don't understand "saving" money on less insulation and poor windows so you can buy a much larger HVAC system and nicer countertops.....does not compute).