Well that explains a lot

[tcepsa]

I just got done having a home energy inspection. We have determined that while my heating and cooling hardware is in reasonably good shape, the thing that I live in isn't actually a house; it's a sieve.

This is actually both good and bad. The bad is, of course, that I'm using quite a lot more energy than I need to use to heat this place in the wintertime (and why I'm still cold regardless). The good news is that due to the scale we're talking about here the first couple of fixes should have a huge return on investment ^_^

Comments

[blushing-grace.livejournal.com]

Fixes like what? More insulation? New windows?

[tcepsa.livejournal.com]

Actually the windows were one of the least problematic places (except for the ones in the basement, which I suspect are original). More insulation, and probably something (like the hard pink insulation) to help create more of an air-barrier. Right now it's just basically loose insulation up in the attic, which it turns out apparently if there's much of a pressure differential between inside the house and out the air will go right through it. If I understood them correctly, the inspectors' words were along the lines of "Right now you basically have a good filter in your attic, but not a particularly significant amount of insulation. You need to try to modify it so that you won't be able to have as much airflow through it."

So yeah, overhauling the top floor's insulation both in the attic and along the eaves is the primary concern, followed by some sort of treatment for the basement windows and weatherstripping for the doors. They'll be sending me a detailed report of their findings in a couple of weeks, and I'll be going from there.