To kick off the New Year, this article is going to try to explain some of the most common ways of calculating the paybacks for energy upgrades to your home. What we are going to find out is that there are a lot of variables and that you can pretty much sway the data any which way you want… so be careful about what people are selling you and try to be honest with yourself in your own calculations so that you will be happy with your decisions 5 years from now…

The major ways of doing a payback calculation are: simple payback, cash flow analysis, net present value, internal rate of return and return on investment.

A point here that should be mentioned is that you don’t always do things for economic payback only and that these reasons are equally valid and important. However, for the sake of this article series, let’s ignore anything except for the economics.

Simple Payback

This is an easy one – simply take the money it cost you and divide it by the money it will save you each year (note that the amount of money you save each year is not fixed, so pick a safe value). For example, cost was $5000 and savings were $350/year. Simple payback is 5000/350 or 14.3 years.

Cash Flow Analysis

If you have to borrow money to do the energy upgrade/renovation, you will want to complete a cash flow analysis since it is going to cost you money to borrow that money each year. A simple way to do this is to use an online mortgage calculator. Let’s say you re-finance your home so that your costs for the reno are paid in your mortgage. If it is a 20 year mortgage at 6%, the cost to borrow the $5000 is $430 a year. If you are only saving $350 a year, then this wouldn’t necessarily be a good investment.

You can add in energy cost inflation into your calculation to make it a little more realistic, but also more variable. As we don’t know exactly how much energy costs are going to go up, it is hard to pick a safe but reasonable number. If we pick too safe a number, we are not going to do the energy upgrade as it won’t show that it is worthwhile financially. If we pick too high a number, we are going to be disappointed and may end up losing money over the borrowing period. Over the past few decades, energy costs have gone up by around 8% per year, though you may want to use a number around 5-6% for your calculations.

You should make sure to add in maintenance costs to any cash flow analysis and inflate the cost of the maintenance over time as well.

Take a look at the following two tables – one assuming 7% energy cost inflation and one assuming only 3%. The results are incredibly different. In the first scenario, the homeowner saved $4,405. In the second one, the homeowner lost $539.

Table 1 – Cash flow analysis assuming 7% energy cost inflation

Table 2 – Cash flow analysis assuming 3% energy cost inflation

As some of you will notice, these first two calculations ignore the fact that the value of money changes over time. A proper calculation should account for the fact that we could be investing our money in something else that would give us a rate of return. Next month, we will look at this more accurate method of payback as well as look at internal rate of return and return on investment.

 Jane Schmidt is a special guest author for our Green Savings column for the month of December. Many thanks to Jane for this interesting and informative article!

 Although it may seem a strange time of year to consider green roofs as winter sets in, much like gardeners, the down-time is an excellent opportunity to plan for the growing season. Green roofs, defined as a building with a roof that is partially or completely covered in plants, have a great advantage for both the building, the owner and the environment in all seasons.

The green roof benefits the building, whether industrial, commercial or residential, by improving energy efficiency through increasing insulation*, providing shade and reducing the wind chill effect. The result is lower heating and cooling costs for the owner. The same factors that improve energy efficiency also contribute to the longevity of the roof by decreasing harmful expansion and contraction from extreme temperature fluctuations. Plants absorb the heat in the increasingly warmer summers and, in harsh winters, the green roof protects against frost and ice formation. Additionally, green roofs provide a shield against UV ray deterioration and physical damages. Green roofs can last twice as long as a conventional roof, saving high replacements costs for the owner. In general, property values go up with the addition of a green roof.

Beyond financial benefits which may offset the initial installation costs of green roofs over the long term, there are many other advantages: noise reduction from outside traffic and the all-important therapeutic and aesthetic value of plants that can provide habitat for butterflies, bees, insects and other species. There is also the satisfaction of lessening the footprint of the inevitable human structures. Although the original land can never be reproduced on a rooftop, a vegetative roof is an excellent substitute for a hard surface. When space is at a premium, the use of a roof garden is a brilliant multitasking concept.

One green roof is great on a microclimate level but has little or no effect on the totality of the environment. But add in even a small percentage of buildings with eco roofs in a community and the effect on the environment is significant. Green roofs not only regulate temperature in a building but also the surrounding area. They reduce global warming by increasing biomass which, through photosynthesis, lessens CO2 emissions, one of the greatest contributors to the greenhouse effect. Since green roofs decrease the need for air-conditioning, the emissions of another greenhouse gas villain, hydrofluorocompounds, diminish.

Green roofs also affect air and water quality in a positive way. Plants filter out air pollutant particulates at a rate of 2 kg for every square meter of grass, for example. They also contribute oxygen to the atmosphere via photosynthesis. By providing an absorbent, somewhat permeable surface, green roofs greatly cut down on stormwater runoff due to excessive hard surfaces. Germany, one of the leaders in sustainable living, and other parts of Europe which are far ahead of North America in use of eco roofs, legislate the installation of green roofs for all the environmental reason stated: reduced energy consumption, temperature regulation, improved air quality and reduction of stormwater flow. Plus the landfill waste from old roofing materials is greatly cut down because of the longer lifespan of green roofs.

A green roof can be installed on new or old buildings, depending on the structural capability. A feasibility study would have to be conducted on existing building to determine weight bearing capacity. New construction could take the green roof into effect at the planning stages. Green roofs are usually installed on flat roofs but can tolerate a slope such as at the Toronto Botanical Gardens.

There are various types of green roofs ranging from “complete systems” with 15 cm of soil and several layers of support, absorbent and vapour barriers to ”precultivated vegetative blankets” with a growing substrate and a few water retention and drainage layers. The complete system is heavier, more expensive, more complicated to install and requires more maintenance – planting, watering, weeding – but is most like terra firma and can handle the most variety of plants and native species. It can even act in an agricultural fashion by growing food like fruit, vegetables and herbs and supporting bee hives. The precultivated vegetative blankets are less expensive, much lighter due to use of a growing medium instead of soil and require only biannual maintenance because they are pre-planted with a few hardy succulents. This is less aesthetic than the complete system but is very easy to install. In between is the “modular system”, similar to container gardening which is moderate in cost, installation and weight.

Greater Sudbury business and municipalities could increase their profile and favour in the public’s eyes by showing concern for their imprint on the earth by installing green roofs. Incentives could be offered to home and apartment building owners. Although many residential homes have peaked roofs, any extension planned could be built with a flat roof with potential to act as a green roof and living patio for the second story.

This cutting edge idea of green roofs is nothing new – from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to sod homes of ancient Iceland and Scandinavia and the pioneers of the Canadian prairies – we can learn from the past and glean from new technologies to live comfortably but sustainably and always with respect to a healthy environment.

*Additional insulation is often added when green roofs are installed. The green roof itself does not increase insulation.

As this months’ newsletter theme is waste, we are going to look at the waste that gets created during a residential remodel. While not as many opportunities to divert materials away from landfill compared to new construction projects, we can still salvage about 25% of our remodel projects. The key materials that usually have an alternate home are – cardboard, wood, metals and drywall.

There are three main steps towards ensuring that you divert as much waste as possible away from the general landfill site.

1)    Complete a waste audit:

This sounds complicated and formal, but it is really just looking at what type of waste you will have in the project as well as an estimate of how much waste you will have, either by volume or weight.

2)    Figure out where to divert it to:

This is where you figure out what recycling/reusing options are available in the community. Here in Sudbury, we have a relatively good sorting system at our landfill sites, but you have to be careful to pre-sort the waste in order to actually save the tipping fees. At $63/tonne of waste, a little bit of sorting can save you lots of money on a large remodel project.

Sudbury currently does not recycle drywall, but this may change sometime in the future. There are other uses for used drywall, but most involve grinding up the panels into small pieces that can then be used as a garden amendment – after all, drywall is essentially gypsum or lime which is good for the garden.

We also have a Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Sudbury – they will take building materials that can be re-used. Check them out on Frood Road to see if they have anything you need before you start your next remodel.

3)    Develop of Plan

As always, plan ahead. If you don’t figure out how to effectively and easily sort your waste into the various streams, you will inevitably end up just dumping it all at the landfill.

Below is a link to a useful guide on residential waste diversion – check it out and encourage your next Contractor to develop and follow through with a waste diversion plan.

www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/rrr/imr/cdm/pubs/remguide.pdf

A final thought is that it looks like the price of waste disposal in Sudbury may be at the point now where there is a business case for a deconstruction/sorting company that helps Contractors save money by decreasing their costs of sending waste to landfill. At $63/tonne, Sudbury is higher than the $50/tonne value that is often used as the break-even number for one of these companies to startup.

As always, send in any questions about your own home that you want answered and we will try to answer them in next month’s newsletter.

Let’s define geothermal first and then see if that is what is being installed in many people’s homes across Ontario.

Geothermal energy, in its simplest terms (and related to home energy) means taking the heat of the earth to heat your home. In Canada, you would need to drill down a long way into the earth to find a temperature of over 20 degrees Celsius – likely close to 700 metres (yes that is 700 metres). In some parts of the world, these higher temperatures in the earth are available much closer to the earth’s surface, but not in Canada.

So, if we aren’t using geothermal energy in Canada, what is it that they are installing in our homes? We are installing heat pumps (or refrigerators working in reverse). A heat pump is a device that uses electricity and a refrigerant to create heat at an efficiency of greater than 100%. Unlike a gas burning furnace which cannot achieve more than about 98% efficiency, a heat pump can create efficiencies over 300%. However, the efficiency drops the harder the heat pump has to work.

What this means is that if the heat pump only has to heat the air from 10 degrees Celsius to 21 degrees Celsius, it does this much more efficiently than if it has to heat the air from -10 degrees Celsius to 21 degrees Celsius. The larger the difference in temperatures, the lower the efficiency, eventually dropping to a standard electric baseboard efficiency of 100%.
So, to take advantage of the higher efficiencies, it makes theoretical sense to either drill down into the earth or create a horizontal loop buried just below the frost depth to keep the incoming temperature constant at just over 0 degrees Celsius. At this temperature differential, the efficiency of the heat pumps is up at the 300% level.

You may have seen sales people claim that a ground source heat pump will get you a Coefficient of Performance (COP) of 4 to 5 (this equates to an efficiency of 400-500%), but this number doesn’t count for the electricity required to run the pumps and blowers required to actually operate the heat pump.

You may have noticed that I threw in the word “theoretical” up above. Adding all of these pipes into the earth to increase the efficiency of a heat pump adds a lot of cost to a heat pump system. An air source heat pump can still work at close to 150-200% efficiency over the course of a year in our climate at only 1/5^th to 1/3^rd the cost of a ground source system.

Most residential energy consultants agree that you are far better off putting the money associated with a ground source heat pump system into improving the thermal envelope of your house rather than paying for the pipes.

As for the “greenness” of a heat pump system, this depends on where you get your electricity from. If you are buying electricity from the grid, then a heat pump system is only as green as the grid in Ontario. If you are buying bullfrog power, then a heat pump system is very green compared to other ways of heating your home.

To end with a couple of tips:

1. If you have natural gas available to you, you should likely not switch to a heat pump system (either air or ground source) as currently the price point of natural gas is around 20% of the cost of electricity. Switch to green Bullfrog natural gas if you want to support greener, lower carbon energy.
2. If you are building a new home or considering a major energy retrofit of your home, spend the extra money on a really good thermal envelope rather than buying an expensive heating system.
3. If you live where there is no natural gas, a heat pump system can be a good idea, but will likely involve a ground source heat pump rather than an air source heat pump unless you have a reasonably small and quite efficient home – any heat pump can be quite noisy and if you have an average performing home your air source heat pump could be running quite a lot in the dead of winter. However, a combination of wood heating and an air source heat pump would also be a great option. Upgrading your homes insulation before changing your heating system is always preferable.

This article is by no means a complete look into ground source heat pumps. If you want more info about how you should heat your own home, you can always book a reThink Homes visit for a detailed evaluation of your best options.

Well, insulation materials create greenhouse gas emissions in two ways – through the energy taken to produce them (called embodied energy) and through the blowing agents that are used to produce rigid insulation and spray foam.

Currently, the industry is using blowing agents to produce rigid foams that are extremely harmful from a global climate change perspective – they use blowing agents that are over 1000 times as potent as CO2. These blowing agents get released to the atmosphere slowly over the lifetime of the insulation product, leading to increased greenhouse gases. While the industry is working on this problem, it is unlikely that the information presented in this article will change much in the next 5 years.

We all know the purpose of insulation is to save energy by slowing the rate of heat transfer from the inside of your house to the outside. The rigid insulation and spray foam products that use these blowing agents were created to be more effective than traditional insulation material, coming with higher R-values per inch and often easier installation – especially in difficult areas. However, even with these benefits, it turns out the blowing agent more than negates these benefits from an overall climate change perspective – the products will still save you money and still should be used in some specific areas where they are appropriate, but they should not be used where an alternative exists.

To be able to compare various insulation types, the Building Science Corporation calculated the climate change paybacks for each type of insulation applied in various thicknesses throughout your home. A climate change payback means the length of time it takes for the insulation you add to your house to actually reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions. Below is a summary of the various types of insulation installed at R-20.

As you can see, the two top choices, pink or blue rigid insulation and spray foam have paybacks over 30 years. Yet these two insulation types are probably the most common used in both the residential and commercial construction industry right now. In fact, most of the “greenest” buildings in Canada today are covered with this insulation that means the building won’t have any net benefit to the climate until at least 2040 – certainly not what I would call a green building.

Please don’t let this stop you from upgrading the insulation in your home – just use the right insulation, both for the application in your home and for the climate. If you need any help, please contact us for help.

According to a study by Jonathan Rose Companies, the average home located in suburbia uses 108 million BTU/year for heating, cooling, and electricity. This same house uses an additional 132 million BTU/year by driving their car. Yes, you are reading this correctly – the average suburban home uses more energy by driving their car than running their home. This is an important consideration when deciding to improve the energy efficiency of your home – at some point it may make more sense (from a climate change perspective) to get a more efficient car or move to a more walkable community than to continue to lower your energy bills at your house. See the included chart to see the benefits of living in a more walkable community.

If you are interested in how to calculate your own home and driving energy, you will need to figure out how much natural gas (or oil) you use, how much wood you burn, how many kWh you use and how efficient your current vehicle is as well as how many kilometres you drive each year.

Let’s start with your car. Say you have an average vehicle that gets around 10.6 km/l (25 mpg) that you drive an average of 20,000 km/year. That adds up to about 1900 litres of gasoline. At a conversion of 33,000 BTU/litre, this gives you a total of 62.7 million BTU/year. Add your second car if you have one to get your total transportation energy per year.

Now for your house. For natural gas, multiply your total m³ of gas use by 37,947 BTU/m³. Next, multiply your total kWh of electricity by 3412 BTU/kWh. If you have oil, multiply your total litres of oil by 39,700 BTU/litre and if you have wood, multiply the number of face cords you use by 21,000,000 BTU/cord. Remember to discount any electricity or natural gas that you are buying from Bullfrog. While you are still using that energy, if it comes from green sources it should be taken out of the equation if we are looking at making a difference to the climate. Same thing with wood – most experts consider wood to be carbon neutral, though it depends on how it is harvested as well as some other factors.

Ok, now that we’ve got the numbers figured out, what do we do with them? The answer is – it depends. What are your motivations – to save money, save the planet, or some combination of the two? If you are like me, it is definitely some combination of the two…we want to do the right thing, but it helps if the right thing also saves you money as well.

For example, say you are shopping for a new car. Do you buy a hybrid SUV or mid-size car, or do you buy a small compact car? Or, if you have decided that you really need the SUV, do you spend the extra money on the bybrid option or do you take that savings and buy a new furnace with it? What about the new all electric vehicles? The simplified way to help make this decision is to look at how it will affect your total energy use per year. Look at the vehicle’s fuel consumption and figure out how it will affect your transportation energy using the equation above. Then look at the upcharge to a hybrid vehicle – how much transportation energy will that save? Compare that to replacing your old furnace or adding insulation to your home… if you spend the $10,000 upcharge for the hybrid on your new furnace will you be further ahead from a total energy perspective? Don’t forget to look at cost as well. Is there any payback associated with buying a hybrid? Comparing a non-hybrid SUV with a hybrid SUV, you will save roughly 40% on gas. Again taking that 20,000 km/year and a price of $1.60/litre (to account for increased prices over 10 years), you would save just over $10,000 – the same as the upcharge. If you drive more than this or if the price of gas goes up, your payback would be faster than the 10 years.

While this is a simplified approach to looking at decisions, it gives a quick and dirty way to see if you are focusing in the right areas depending on what you are trying to achieve. In the next article we will add another option to the equation – the price of solar panels. At what point does it make sense to buy solar panels for your house rather than adding more insulation to it?

As always, send in any questions about your own home that you want answered and we will try to answer them in next month’s newsletter.

So how do we do this?

Blinds, that’s how…

But I’m not talking about normal blinds – these are called honeycomb blinds because they have lines of diamond shaped air pockets when you open them up. These air spaces are good insulators and do a good job of keeping out the heat. These blinds are also light colours generally, helping to allow in lots of natural light into your house while keeping the heat out.

The way to use these blinds is simple. As soon as you get up in the morning, you close all of your operable windows and put the blinds down. Don’t wait until it warms up outside to do this – this will cause your home to overheat. Ideally you would have the windows closed by 6:30 or 7:00 am, but even as late as 8:00 am will help considerably. Then, keep the windows and blinds closed all day and into the night. After the outside temperature has dropped below the inside temperature, open up all the windows and blinds. Repeat each day.

This simple strategy works great. I have been using it at my house for 3 summers now, and my house has never gotten above 23.5 degrees Celsius. Usually it stays below 21 degrees C and only goes higher if we have multiple days of 30 degrees outside combined with humid nights where the temperature only dips to 18-19 degrees. I have checked the air temperature directly in front of the blind on a very hot day and it reads 23-24 degrees, while behind the blind it measures 40-45 degrees, a difference of 20 degrees.

Watch out for those humid days – if the outside humidity stays high overnight, don’t open your windows as the more humid the air, the hotter you feel, even at lower temperatures. Getting a simple indoor/outdoor temperature and relative humidity sensor will help you figure out when to keep your windows closed at night.

For those really hot days when it is starting to get a bit uncomfortable in the home, use those fans. Higher air speed helps us feel cooler, even at higher temperatures. Don’t be wasteful though – the higher air speed is only useful if we are in that room. Do not keep fans running in rooms where you aren’t there – they aren’t doing anything except wasting electricity.

You can purchase these blinds at most home renovation stores for under $100 a blind – they will certainly pay for themselves many times over if you use them to eliminate your need for air conditioning.

As always, send in any questions about your own home that you want answered and we will try to answer them in next month’s reThink news.

Didn’t get a chance to book a consultation with us? Not to worry! The project has moved into its next phase, and consultations are still available! A consultation with reThink Homes consists of:

• A 2 hour residential consultation with a reThink Homes Energy Efficiency consultant
• A summary report of the consultation, which includes an energy model of the home as well as a priority list of suggested renovations
• A 1 hour follow-up (if necessary) with a reThink Homes Energy Efficiency consultant to answer any further questions regarding your renovations

To book your appointment or get more information, call reThink Green at 705-674-1685.

Rule # 1: – make sure your basement is dry enough to finish

If you ever get any standing water in your basement, you MUST fix this problem before you finish your basement. If you ever get a damp basement without standing water, you SHOULD fix this first. There is a really easy way to see if you get too much water in your basement – take a 4” x 4” piece of poly vapour barrier and tape it to your concrete block wall and concrete floor. Make sure you completely tape it down so that no air can get out. Leave it alone for 1-2 weeks. When you come back, if there is any water under the vapour barrier, you have too much water in your basement and should fix this problem first.

Luckily, fixing your water problem can be paired with insulating your basement – from the outside of your house. You must dig down to the footing level around your entire house, add a proper waterproofing membrane and weeping tile system (NOT damproofing please), add 2” rigid insulation or mineral wood drainage board and then backfill with granular material. You should likely hire a Contractor to do this work as a lot can go wrong and you want the warranty on the expensive waterproofing membrane.

If you don’t have to (or want to) insulate from the outside of your house because you don’t have any water problems, there are some good and some bad strategies for insulating your basement walls from the inside.

Rule #2: – carefully insulate your rim joist

Ok, your basement likely has concrete block walls around the perimeter and a wood joist floor above your head. The most important place to focus on insulating is where the wood joists sit on top of the concrete block walls. To properly insulate this space, add 2” rigid insulation and install it between joists with spray foam around the perimeter.

Rule #3 – don’t bring fibreglass batts of insulation into your basement.

Next step is your walls. 2” of insulation is a good amount of insulation for your basement, though you should still notice a difference in your heating bills at 3”. You are best off installing all of the insulation as rigid insulation, with no batt insulation at all. This will make wiring much easier as you will have completely empty space between studs. You can even use 2×3 studs instead of 2×4 studs to save a bit of extra space. There are a few different types of rigid insulation, each with their own set of benefits. There is EPS (or beadboard), XPS (the rigid pink or blue stuff) and Polyiso (foil-faced). If you were burying the insulation on the outside of your walls you would only be able to use XPS as it is the only one that is moisture resistant. Since we are on the inside of the house though and you don’t have a moisture problem in your basement, the best choice is polyiso foil-faced insulation. The reason for this is the way that it is manufactured. Blowing agents are required to make the other two types of rigid insulation that actually take away most of the greenhouse gas reduction benefit of insulating your wall in the first place. While the industry is working on this, try to avoid using EPS or XPS (or large amounts of spray foam for that matter) until they fix this problem – check back in 3-5 years.

Back to the wall now…

Rule #4: Do not install a vapour barrier in the basement

You should install the polyiso insulation right to the top of the wall and attach it with mechanical fasteners to the block wall. If you want to be extra safe with moisture, leave a 3-4” gap at the bottom of your wall where there is no insulation. Since this is buried in the ground by a few feet, you won’t lose much heat through this gap, though you will lose some. Then, install your stud wall built tightish to the insulation and make sure to install non-paper-faced drywall. Finally, DO NOT install a vapour barrier in your basement – this could cause major moisture problems in this application as you are essentially trapping all moisture in the stud space. While an above ground wall can dry to the outside, since you are below grade, you need to dry to the inside!

As always, send in any questions about your own home that you want answered and we will try to answer them in next month’s newsletter.

Since 2005, Sudburians have had the option to buy 100% renewable energy (mix of micro-hydro and wind) to power their homes instead of buying the typical Ontario power mix – 52% nuclear, 21% hydro, 18% coal, 8% natural gas and 1% wind. While this electricity costs you more – $0.03/kWh or $1/day for an average home – this is the simplest and most effective way to vote with your dollar! To switch to green electricity, visit www.bullfrogpower.com for more details – you don’t need to change anything with Hydro One or Greater Sudbury Utilities, Bullfrog does that for you. Join hundreds of businesses and cities across Canada and thousands of Canadian homeowners by making the choice to pay the real cost of green electricity.

And since earlier this year, you can now buy green natural gas for your home as well, essentially converting your home to 100% green energy, all for the average cost of $2/day. Bullfrog power recently opened a plant in Quebec where they capture the gas that naturally decomposes at a landfill site. This plant captures the gas, cleans it, and sends it into the same pipeline where you currently get your regular natural gas, a fossil fuel that contributes a significant portion to Canada’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. To read more about how this natural gas is created and to switch your home heating over to a truly green option, visit the website.

Once you have switched over to 100% green energy for your home, then you can start finding ways to save yourself money by getting rid of the energy waste in your house. Why not give yourself the challenge to save enough energy in your home to eliminate any extra money that Bullfrog will cost you?

As always, send in any questions about your own home that you want answered and we will try to answer them in next month’s newsletter.