One of the themes here will be how we “green” this house and our practices. I’m hoping to get an energy audit so that we can understand our baseline energy use and know how much progress we are making. I suppose it may give us some idea of our major opportunities for energy savings as well, though as a fairly committed greenie, I think I already have a good sense of what those are. I hope to develop a list of projects and assign cost estimates to each. Here are a few energy-related ones I can think of off the top of my head:
- Lighting. The previous owners left a lot of incandescent bulbs around, so we can install CFLs,or we could skip CFLs and head directly for LEDs. Like a lot of decisions we’ll make, finances will be a major consideration.
- The Boiler. We have an old boiler–from the 1950’s. The house inspector took a look at it and felt it was in good shape for its age, and noted that we should expect it to last for quite some time longer. But with gas prices set to increase, I want to know how much we could do better on efficiency and how long it would take for any savings to pay for the cost of a new boiler.
- Ceiling Fans. We are planning to have more electrical outlets installed and when we do, we’ll get a ceiling fan installed in wifey’s office too. This should help make the most of winter heating and maybe head off the need for another AC unit in summer.
- Attic Insulation. Dad suggested we get the attic insulation re-installed. There are some obvious gaps near the eaves, and the installation looks like it left many more seams than are necessary, running short bits across the spaces between rafters, rather than running rolls parallel in those spaces.
- Thermostat. Finally we have a programmable thermostat! I’m excited about making use of this.
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