FAIL

I have failed.

And yet, I'm somehow okay with that. Why? Because while trying to be green, I got me a lot of green! Our Home Energy Audit was completed not too long ago. Last week the government finally got around to mailing out the last cheque.

And today I finally got around to updating my blog.

Thanks to Energuy Canada Ltd., who completed my audit, I successfully qualified for an ecoEnergy Retrofit Grant. "Successful." Now there's a word I'm not often associated with.

The original energy audit stated our house, built in 1939, rates 35 out of 100, sitting nicely below the 1939 average of 44. We were a troll under a bridge, staring up at the 44 enviously. In other words, on the mushroom scale, we were a lug nut. Whatever that means.

First came the notice from Energuy Canada. (Check out their website. I went to college with one of the owners, and designed the triple logo.) Their letter included an awesome EnerGuide/Natural Resources of Canada sticker to affix to our electrical panel. And I'd like to point out that stickers are the best thing ever. I still have my sticker album from when I was 8. It's full of puffies, fuzzies, and scratch 'n sniffs, which I may or may not have spent too much time sniffing. Which is why I often run off on tangents. Like this one.

Moving on...

Had we successfully implemented all of the recommendations, we could have reduced our energy consumption by 24% and increased our home's energy efficiency rating to 51. Our new EnerGuide number is significantly higher than our old, at 47. But it's still four percentage points shy of our goal, and 28 below Ontario's new-home average of 75.

Where we failed was a broken window. The first auditor (from a different company) failed to notice that it was leaking worse than a paper roof, and even told us that it did not require replacement.

But that point is moot, as the next thing to arrive was a juicy cheque from the Federal Government for $1,890 followed by a matching cheque from the Provincial Government for a grand total of $3,780. Which will all be spent on scratch 'n sniffs.

I'm Wanted

While contemplating the existence of Zombies on the weekend, I watched an interesting event unfold outside my front window. A minivan slowly slinked, stalker-style, up my street and came to a stop in front of my house.

I ducked.

Honestly, I have no reason to duck. Nobody is out to get me (that I am aware of) and we never experience drive-by's in our happy neighbourhood. But I ducked anyway.

Spying through my own front window, I watched a child of maybe 9 or 10 years jump out of the back and run up to my front door. I waited for the doorbell, but there was nothing but the eerie silence of my quiet neighbourhood. No blood-curtling screams of "Help! I'm being kidnapped!" or "Call Robocop!" Nothing.

A second later the small human ran back to the waiting van. The rear door slid shut and the van slowly drove away, turned the corner, and disappeared from view.

Eagerly wanting to know what that was all about I ran out the front door to try and see where the van went. But something stopped me. It was a note.

The note was typed on a regular piece of paper: "Wanted: 3-4 Bedroom Home In The Totally Sweet Area. We are a five-person family looking to purchase in your area. If you are interested in selling, please call or e-mail us.
555-555-5555 or stinkinrich@sympatico.ca"

Based on the events I witnessed, this family seemed to be hand-delivering notes to only the houses they really liked. I watched them drive past plenty of houses larger than ours, so size did not appear to be the only factor.

This is now the fourth party to express interest in purchasing our humble abode since we moved in. (*The following sentence not intended to insult Realtors, especially Lela, Stan, Peter, Larry and Mark.) All of the interested parties wish to circumvent a Realtor, and thus avoid their high fees, stale coffee breath and annoying, pee-stained catch phrases.

But with four interested parties, two of which contact me on a fairly regular basis to inquire when we plan on moving, perhaps I can LAUNCH THE BIGGEST BIDDING WAR EVER! MUHUHAHAHA! Early retirement, here I come!

Crack Bad. Caulk Good.

Despite what you may have heard, I am a good boy. Being environmentally conscientious, I had an energy audit done on my 1939 home last year.

Our home, at the time, rated 35 out of 100. The standard for new homes in Ontario is 75. Our objective is to raise our efficiency to 51. This increases the resale value of our home, and saves us money on utilities.

The audit indicated our attic insulation was worse than a hobo's cardboard box, averaging around R-10. Secondly, some of our original windows were performing poorly, allowing air to escape easily. Thirdly, we had no insulation in our basement which essentially made our basement walls act like a heatsink. Finally, we had airtight issues due to gaps beneath our baseboards plus a massive, Oprah-sized 1" gap under our back door, straight to the outside.

Seriously. That's like leaving a window open all winter, for almost 70 years.

The audit had a deadline of 18 months, and with old man winter already clenching his cheeks and squeezing white shit all over us, it was time I got back to work.

While Suz girled it up by baking a cake, I did guy stuff in our living room. To keep from damaging our 6-inch baseboards, I wrapped a towel around my pry bar and popped off the quarter-round trim. Hidden behind was a large gap. The swell auditor suggested I fill this gap with silicone to stop cold air from creeping in.

Using the palm of my hand I felt a few spots where cold air was coming in. Cold air coming into your house needs to be heated, and therefore causes your furnace to come on more often. To stop this, the gaps needed to be caulked.

I used Mono Ultra interior caulking. It's made in Canada. The type I used comes out white then dries clear, but takes 7 to 14 days to dry properly. It didn't matter to me though, because I knew the quarter-round trim would cover it all up afterwards.

It took me 60 minutes to take off the trim and fill the cracks along the two exterior walls of our living room.

As for the door gap, we had our back door replaced with a steel French door that has a modern-type airtight seal. This was probably our biggest problem and hopefully will make a big difference when we have our house re-tested.

Energy Audits are a wise decision. Even in new homes, they can indicate where something wasn't done properly and show you where you can save money. I would recommend it to anyone. If you're in the Toronto or southern Ontario area, I would strongly recommend the friendly, expert folks at Energuy.

Cat-lateral Damage

I don't know how people do it. I don't know how crazy old cat ladies can have dozens of insanity-inducing cats, except maybe for the fact that they're, well, insane.

To have multiple cats is expensive and exhausting. We learned this with our recent experience with three quarters of a half dozen cats. That's four cats for the mathmatically challenged. (That's "4" for the alphabetically challenged.) Our two girls, plus my parents two boys.

Every few days our house began to smell. The smell was like cats. Their food, their pee, their crap, their little pink buttholes, their litter. So every few days we had to clean out two litter boxes; one for the upstairs cats, and one for the downstairs cats.

The winter seemed to fly by as we spent every spare minute cleaning. If it weren't for Roomba, our house would be condemned right now due to inhabitable conditions as a result of an unacceptable build-up of unsanitary elements that would pose a health risk to anyone walking within 30 feet of our home.

But even Roomba couldn't fully compete with our kitties. Their fur wasn't the problem. It was the litter that got out of hand. Digging-litterbox action fired the tiny clumping granules all over the floor. And despite our best efforts, we couldn't stop it from getting underfoot.

Kitty litter plus hardwood - and gravitational forces pulling body weight down onto said litter/hardwood combination - do not go well together.

The damage is done. The granulated bentonite clay particles, which are normally used for absorbing our cats' excrement, have devalued our home by 0.1% as they've scraped our hardwood floors with their crunchy, sand-flavoured edges. Dang. Maybe I should've titled this post 'Collitteral Damage.'

Replacement Windows

Every year millions of people eat at Jack in the Box. And every year millions of people replace their windows. Yet I've never known anyone who has had to do either of these things.

Because of this anomoly, I didn't know what was a good price, didn't know which companies were reliable, didn't know how much damage to expect to our trim, and didn't know how quickly the job could be done.

The one thing I did know, was that our looky-outy things needed to be replaced. Why? They were 69 years old. When things reach that age, stuff happens. Bad stuff. Our wooden windows were totally rotting, some panes of glass were totally cracked, the locks were totally broken, and they were covered in liver spots.

However the worst part was the cold air leaking in, and warm air escaping, causing those particular windows to fog up (seen on left). The problem areas were noted during our home energy audit in September.

If you'd like an audit, check out www.energuy.ca It's not the company I used, but it should've been. Cam, one of the most decent guys I know, will hook you up with the goverment, and get you some sweetass rebates.

On Wednesday, our installers came and ushered our sunroom and our master bedroom into the modern era with double-pane goodness. In all we had 14 windows replaced (just under half our total of 34 windows) along with two exterior doors. By comparison, our last house only had 12 windows in total.

Our sunroom was once the eyesore of our house, with flaking paint and rotting wood. But now, with the perfect white capping, it's going to be my favourite place to chill this coming summer.

Once the work was complete, I immediately noticed how much warmer our master bedroom has become. The windows are warm to the touch and look fantastic, as we ordered the non-broken glass variety. The low-E argon gas is, sadly, invisible, but I've been assured it's doing its job.

For those interested, I'll let you know if we see any visible savings on our heating bills in the upcoming months.

Losing

I keep losing things. My most recent rash of losses began when we bought this house. I was losing heat throught my ceiling and attic because my insulation was, in some places R-0, in others R-10, and in a lucky few places, R-25.

This caused a loss of money, as I continually paid more and more on my Natural Gas bill each month. To put this into perspective: my old house was 850 sq. ft. and my entire annual gas bill, including gas dryer and water heater, came to about $720.

In our new house of about 1700 sq. ft. (built in 1939) I am paying almost that much for January and February, and we use an electric dryer now.

We decided to have a Home Energy Audit done on our house because the goverment gives grants to cover the cost of lots of improvements. The audit costs about $300, but identifies the weak areas of your home, indicates what you should do to fix them, and informs the goverment of everything. Once you've completed your work, the auditor comes back for a second visit, tests your house again, and reports the improved numbers back to the goverment, who then cuts you a fat cheque for a million dollars.

When the auditor came in late September, I took pictures of his fan system that evacuated the air from our house. This is how air leaks are found. Here's where the losing theme comes into play again - I lost the pictures I took (along with the pictures I took of me making my Doc Brown costume. Yes, even more losing).

Our audit indicated, among other things, that we currently have a low level of insulation in our attic, and that if we improved the Resistance value to R-40, we'd receive $400 from the Provincial Gov't and $400 from the Federal Gov't. Sweet!

The Report:

Your house currently rates 35 (out of 100). If you implement all of the recommendations, you could reduce your energy consumption by up to 24% and increase its energy efficiency rating to 51. The average efficiency rating for a 1939 house in Canada is 44.

The standard energy efficiency of new homes built in Ontario is 75. To qualify for an "Energy Star" rating, your house must be 80-100.

We got estimates for doing the work, and things got even sweeter. We could insulate our 900 sq. ft. attic with blown fibreglass for $810. But, if we wanted to save even more money, they suggested doing R-50 for an additional $80. I said yes. Who wouldn't? Maybe someone who didn't have $80. But not me!

The crew came within a few days and filled our attic with practically 3 feet of fluffy, scratchy insulation, pumped through a large plastic tube. It was all over the floors and stuck to our clothes.

Upon completion, our house was so warm that everything began melting. We've had the a/c on 3 days this week, and there's no end to the heat wave in sight. But seriously, I have to say I'm quite pleased and hope that my losing streak is now over.