Crista and I bought this house late in the summer of 2008.
- There were a wall or two without insulation.
- No insulation below the floor.
- A leaky attic access and open-ish crawlspace vents.
- A 100,000 btu draft hood furnace (installed in the early 1980's).
- A blower door of about 3200 cfm@50 Pa.
- A thermostat that probably came with the furnace, mercury switch and all.
- About 1000 sqft of above grade living space with an additional 400 sqft of basement space.
If I had wanted to get the full effect of how the house would "normally" perform I would have left the thermostat set at 68 degrees all winter long. But Crista and I did manual set backs at night and during the day when the last person left the house (if they remembered).
As a result, the weather normalized annual usage was 772 therms (+/- 41 therms). Below is the consumption run through PRISM:
The house also has a gas water heater and gas cook stove. Despite those gas baseload appliances, 95% of the gas consumption went to space heating. The house's energy intensity was about 10 btus/sqft*HDD. Not bad, but not too good either.
Even though we bought the house in 2008, it had the same energy characteristics as it did back in the mid 1980s. Well, maybe it has a bit more wall insulation. At first glance, the annual consumption is quite a bit below average (average is about 1000 therms/yr) and the EI of 10 indicates that, while there are some savings to be had, I would be surprised to see big reductions from a whole house retrofit.
A year after this, I was a little surprised.
Even though we bought the house in 2008, it had the same energy characteristics as it did back in the mid 1980s. Well, maybe it has a bit more wall insulation. At first glance, the annual consumption is quite a bit below average (average is about 1000 therms/yr) and the EI of 10 indicates that, while there are some savings to be had, I would be surprised to see big reductions from a whole house retrofit.
A year after this, I was a little surprised.
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