Rethinking Lifestyle

As the days get longer, and the sun actually starts to feel warm, we have been looking back at this winter. And what a winter we had. Officially it was a cold one, with 75+ days below -30C, and more snow than average.

Our gas bill shows how hard it was, and we have been discussing the options for reducing it.

If you search for hints and tips to reduce your bills, there are some low-cost things that we can all do:

• Check for leaks and drafts and use caulk and weather stripping to reduce them
• Hang curtains in front of windows (and doors not in use)
• Have your furnace serviced
• Replace air filters on your forced-air furnace
• Wrap your hot water tank in an insulated jacked
• Wrap insulation around hot water pipes
• Install a programmable thermostat
• Use low flow shower heads
• Seal flues in unused fireplaces
• Use ceiling fans to mix the air

These are all fairly simple, and we’ve done all of them in our house.

Stepping it up a financial notch, we come to:

• When replacing your furnace, replace it with a high efficiency one
• When replacing your hot water heater, replace it with a high efficiency one
• Insulate older homes
• Increase insulation in attic and over basement and crawl-space

And to help you plan your projects Hydro offers a ‘home comfort and energy assessment program’.

However, I doubt these are enough to really cope with a winter like that we’ve just had.

We have made some observations of what works for us. For example, when there is just one of us at home and mostly in one room, rather than heating the whole house to the same level, we reduce the thermostat and use an oil-filled space heater in the room we are in. We also turn off the heat at night. A wood stove seems a good idea in these circumstances, so long as we harvest the wood ourselves.

Our house faces south, and our living room gets heated significantly on a sunny day – +27C last week on a -27C day, with the thermostat set to 17C. We would like to maximize this, and have been looking into windows with ‘solar gain’ glass (it doesn’t reflect it) for when we replace our living room window.

We are also considering increasing the insulation when we replace the siding on our walls – an extra 15cms should make quite a difference to the heat loss. Extra insulation will help reduce heat gain in the summer too.

And finally, we have been considering a solar wall, to gather that much needed sunlight in the summer. They cost about $2,500 to buy, but youtube is full of videos of home-made projects costing less than $100, using aluminum cans or sheets of glass/plastic painted black, with some quirky and attractive designs.  I’m looking for someone who has built and used one in Manitoba to write an article to share knowledge on ‘free’- heat!

I would be interested to hear what your solutions are too…