A home energy retrofit pathway sets out a plan for making your home more comfortable, resilient and energy efficient. Your Registered Energy Advisor will assess the current energy efficiency of your home, recommend specific upgrades and help you develop your retrofit plan.
Creating Your Home’s Deep Energy RetrofitPlan
A good retrofit plan bundles upgrades into three steps to improve your home’s energy efficiency. Depending on the age of your home or past upgrades, your starting place on the pathway may vary.
Generally, planning and completing these steps in the recommended order maximizes the efficiency and impact of your retrofit.
For instance, if a retrofit plan leaves out the insulation and other building envelope upgrades identified in Step One, and your home is losing a lot of heat, a new heat pump or furnace will need to be larger and use more energy to compensate for that extra heat loss. That’s a more expensive option to buy and operate over the long run!
However, if you live in a newer home with an excellent building envelope your energy advisor may recommend topping up insulation in the attic and moving directly to Step Two.
Three Steps in a deep energy retrofit project
Step 1 Inspecting And Upgrading Your Home’s Building Envelope
Heating our houses is the largest user of home energy. Your home’s building shell is inspected for its air leakage rate and insulation. Upgrades may include insulation in the basement, walls, exposed floors, and attic, along with window and door upgrades, and sealing and draft-proofing cracks and gaps around your home.
Air leakage control: Air leakage can account for as much as 40% of the heat loss in our houses. Sealing cracks and gaps reduces this leakage. Air-sealing is done around windows, doors, vents, electrical and plumbing fixtures that bridge the interior and exterior of your home.
Insulation: High insulation levels in the thermal boundary from the outdoors is the most reliable way to keep the heat in. Insulating the attic, basement, and exterior walls helps stop heat from either leaving your home in winter or entering your home in summer.
Windows: Replacing old inefficient windows with high-efficiency windows, like triple-glazed units with dense gas insulation and Low-E coatings, greatly improves efficiency and comfort.
Doors: Replacing old drafty doors with high-efficiency models is another way to boost energy efficiency and comfort.
Ducts: Though not technically part of a home’s building envelope, in homes with centrally ducted HVAC-systems, air-sealing and insulating ducts can improve the efficiency of heating, cooling, and ventilation systems.
Learn More about Building Envelope upgrades, benefits, costs etc.
Your home’s space heating and cooling, water heating equipment, lighting and other appliances are checked and upgraded as needed to improve efficiency. This includes ensuring your HVAC system is the proper size for your home after adding insulation, and installing a heat-recovery ventilator.
Upgrading your furnace and air-conditioner to a heat pump system will cost less once your building envelope is upgraded since a smaller system can be installed.
Water heating is the second largest area of household energy use and cost. Replacing your water heater with a heat pump water heater can increase efficiency and reduce costs.
Upgrading ventilation with a heat-recovery ventilator (HRV) will ensure good air quality by introducing fresh air into the home and will pre-heat or pre-cool it with the stale air exhausted from the home.
Adding a drain-water heat-recovery (DWHR) pipe will increase the energy efficiency of heating water by recycling residual heat from draining shower water to preheat water entering your water heater.
Upgrading to a smart thermostat allows you to set a schedule for your mechanical systems or use artificial intelligence (AI) to find the most energy efficient settings for your household. Lower cost programmable thermostats can be a good option too.
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When we have minimized the amount of energy needed by the house through envelope and mechanical improvements, renewable energy supply can be added to provide the much smaller remaining energy requirement. This step includes installing roof or ground-mounted solar PV systems (home battery systems to store excess solar energy or cheaper off-peak grid electricity) and solar hot water systems.
Adding solar photovoltaic systems to your roof or yard, given that you have the room or sun-exposure for it, can help take your energy efficient home to net zero. Solar panels are largely modular and you can add more as you need or are able to.
Adding a solar water heater can supply up to 60 per cent of a home’s domestic hot water needs. Like a drain-water heat-recovery (DWHR) pipe, a solar water heater pre-heats water from the municipal system before it reaches your water tank.
Adding a home battery system and electric vehicle charging station allows you to store excess solar energy or cheap off-peak grid energy for later use. These batteries can also supply power during electrical outages.
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