Speaking of Heating Bills...

 As a continuation on the series about timing of renovations and home upgrades, the best time to replace your heating system is after insulating your walls and attic and ultimately, when it is showing its age.  If you have just installed a new system, this is not the time.  If, like ours, your system is over 35 years old, it's time to start planning.  Obviously it's not ideal to allow your system to completely die before replacing it.  When you are ready to replace it, move away from fossil fuels.  There are several systems out there that are very much in the mainstream.  Just because you currently have a gas furnace, doesn’t mean that you can’t upgrade to an all electric one.  Don’t worry, I’m not talking about electric resistance, which is expensive to run.  I’m talking about a heat pump.  These are super efficient and relatively inexpensive to run. 

Again, there are often government sponsored programs that can help you pay for this. Mass Save will cover $10,000.00 of an air source heat pump, and $15,000.00 of a ground source heat pump.

Our existing, dated gas furnace.

We have decided that it's time to upgrade. We had an issue with the furnace last year on a zero degree day and woke up to a very cold 40 deg. F. house. It was fixable, but in the end, this furnace is over 35 years old, and pretty inefficient. We are working with Mass Save to do a new, whole home heating system switch. The new system will be a Mitsubishi mini split heat pump system. I'll post an update after the project is completed in a couple of weeks!

The best time to insulate

Continuing on our series about timing, we thought it would be best to start at the beginning. Insulating your house depends a bit on what you already have.  Our house had 1.5 inches of foil faced fiberglass batt insulation in the exterior walls.  Restated, we had almost no insulation in our house...  The best time to insulate a house like that is, as soon as possible.  I would also say, the best time to insulate your attic is as soon as possible.  Heat rises, and it will rise right out of your house without a properly insulated attic space. 

Let’s say however, that your house is pretty well insulated, meaning that the exterior walls are fully filled and the attic is perfect.  If you plan to replace the siding on your house, this would be a good time to add some continuous exterior insulation.  Think of it like wearing a sweater in the winter (normal insulation), but then you go outside and realize that a big puffy winter coat would really be a great addition.  This is what I’m talking about.  Wrapping your house with a layer of insulation is like putting on a winter jacket.  It helps bridge all of the gaps between the buttons, or in this case, the wall studs.  I’ve put together a fairly standard detail drawing of how this might work.  If you are talking to a contractor about this kind of work, show it to them and tell them you are interested in continuous insulation.  It will add money to your project, but the benefit will be noticeable in the winter when your heating bill goes down.

There are some options here in terms of types of insulation and there is an opportunity to make a better decision. When we talk about insulation "in" the walls, cellulose is, by far, the best. It doesn't have the highest R-value, but it is easy to retrofit an existing home, it's made from recycled paper, and, most importantly, it can dry if it gets wet. (walls are prone to develop moisture either from temperature changes, or the fact that you breathe inside your house... and your breath contains moisture.) Foam insulation is not ideal. It contains lots of harmful chemicals and tends to shrink over time, negating the effort now. That said, there are some very difficult areas to insulate, so this might be the right solution given the circumstance.

Exterior insulation is a little different. There are a couple of options, but usually you want to go with a rigid board type of insulation. Mineral wool, or a wood fiberboard are good alternatives (see below for links) They are good at wicking moisture, and they are good insulators.

There are other ways, and if you are interested, feel free to reach out and we can talk about some other alternatives. They are just a little too complicated to explain here.

Sometimes there are government programs that can help you to pay for a project like insulating your house.  A quick google search will probably help you determine if there is a program near you.  In our case, we live in a town that uses National Grid (local utility), so the Mass Save program helped us.  They paid for 75% of our insulation project, bringing our total out of pocket cost from $7,500 down to $1,200.

Mineral wool: https://www.rockwool.com/north-america/products-and-applications/products/comfortboard-80/

Wood fiber board: https://gutex.de/en/product-range/products/walls/

(this product comes from Germany, so it is likely more expensive due to shipping etc.)

Our own insulation project:

Holes in the exterior where they "blew in" cellulose insulation.

Fiberglass insulation (pink) between the floor joists in the basement.

Spray foam (yellow) sealing the joint between the wood framing and the foundation.

Ways to Make Your Home More Environmentally Friendly: Intro

House projects can be daunting and, if you don’t have a frame of reference for it, you might have a hard time deciding where to start on a project, or even which project to start with.  Even for us that was a challenge.  It occurred to me that there is a very rational way to look at this problem.  There is an order in which home updates can and probably should happen.

Sometimes it's easy to prioritize a particular project and know exactly when to do it.  In the case of our moldy carpet, we decided to immediately rip it out, but then paused and decided what the best replacement would be.  We waited 2 months, did some research and saved some money, then bought what we felt was the most sustainable flooring we could.  The flooring is sustainable in several ways.  It is going to last a long time, the material itself is renewable and it was purchased through a company that puts environmental concerns first.  It was not the most expensive thing we could buy, nor the cheapest.  We also tried to make a good decision about the way we installed the floor, knowing that buying a little more up front would allow us to have a seamless transition down our hallway to the bedrooms.  We know that this flooring will not need to be removed until it has completely worn out (hopefully a long time).  My goal in talking about this is to show that even in a crisis, it is important to stop and think long term about your project.

Sometimes however, it isn't so easy. Those reasons can be wide ranging from financial hardship to a lack of time to do it.

So, over the next few weeks, we are going to explore this topic of when and why to do projects, as well as some suggestions on how to make your decisions as sustainable as possible. In the meantime, here is the final result of the flooring project!