“No, we don’t do framing, nor batten-type insulation. No, we don’t knock through your knee walls, but we will create an attic hatch for you….”

That is just a sample of the different, sometimes conflicting information I’ve gleaned after visits from 3 insulation contractors in a 24-hour period. I took notes, and was guided by my husband’s (written) directions.

One insulator, from EnerLiv, went to his car for 20 minutes after his review of our insulation needs on all 3 levels of our home, and came back with an itemized quote on the spot. The other 2 contractors said they will phone in their quotes.

Our home energy audit report is already getting dog-eared after the number of times we flip through it to get “government-sanctioned” advice. And we are just starting to dip into the 130-page Keeping the Heat In book we got for free from our auditor, that’s published by Natural Resources Canada.

(Interesting, an energy consultant we meet last week at a Burlington mall giving demos to the public said she was shocked to discover how many local residents did NOT receive this apparently valuable book from their auditor… So we were lucky. If you weren’t so lucky, you can order the Keeping the Heat In book at 1-800-387-2000.)

Meanwhile, I just read a blog post warning of Typar vapour barrier woes when used for inside basement walls (an area we need to get insulated).  Yikes! We’re really going to need to be consumer-researchers extraordinaire!

Stay tuned for more on the insulators’ quotes.

The report cost us $350, not including tax. I thought we would get half of that back from the government, but we got back $150.

I also thought we wouldn’t see this rebate money until our second home audit was recovered, as I blogged on July 14th.

Was surprised so I went back to check my research…

Turns out I was wrong on the second count – the government doesn’t require you to have the second, post-energy retrofitting audit, in order to help pay for the first audit.

And I also misread the instructions of how much the Ontario government would us for the first home audit – they pay up to $150, not half the cost.

OK, so maybe accounting was not a career ever suited for me, and fortunately I became a writer, with no need to ever deal with money. (Praise be to my bookkeeper!)

Anyway, we are happy to cash the $150 government cheque, and maybe NOW we’ll actually make a call to a renovator, insulator or some such expert to get in and start the energy retrofits?!

Now only 16 months remaining to get it all done!

I sit down with a big cup of joe to open it, feeling disconcertedly like a kid on Report Card day. And there it is… our grade. It’s not a fail, whew; it’s a…. 61.

Our home received a C- as our Energuide rating, or, as they like to call it: in the range of “upgraded old house.”

The desired rating – what the government will need to see in order for us to get our ecoENERGY rebates?

We need to reach 81.

OK, so we have a ways to go… how hard can it be to move up 20 points in energy-efficiency?

The 17-page home audit report from GreenTech Services told me just how hard it’s going to be!! Over the next few blog posts, I will spell out the findings and recommendations of this tome of information.

For now, let me share my favourite bit of the Energy Efficiency Evaluation Report – which I see has been officially filed with the Ontario Government; our humble abode is now a 10-digit file number.

The last paragraph of the report reads, in part:

“You have up to 18 months from the date of this report [Aug 18th] or until March 31, 2011, whichever comes first, to complete your renovations and qualify for an ecoENERGY Retrofit Homes grant. The sooner you start your renovations, the sooner you will benefit from the energy savings. And let’s not forget how reduced energy consumption helps protect the environment.“

Hahaha, I just love the condescending schoolteacher tone of that last sentence! I feel like my knuckles have been rapped for my lazy attitude about the planet to date!

Next up: Wading our way through 17 pages of single-spaced “Home Energy Action Checklist” and related reading materials which reads like a textbook. Don’t worry we’ll summarize just the highlights, the “sexy bits”!

About 3 weeks after I scheduled the home energy audit visit, the auditor arrived on a very hot and humid midsummer day, the auditor arrived. I had to book a couple of hours off work to accommodate his lengthy visit.

I went out on the driveway to greet Cliff, a certified energy advisor with Green Tech Services Non-Profit (How did we choose them? Read here).

He made sure all windows and doors were closed throughout the house; then he hooked up a machine through the (open) front door; expandable square that fills up the doorframe with tent material, and he attached a big air pump there.

It started sucking air out of our home, its dials indicating how much air is getting into the house from outside.

While it ran (about 20 minutes), Cliff and I walked around the inside of the house again and he checked, by hand, to see where drafts were – around baseboards and outlets and around windows.

I felt some of the spots, too, and I could feel sight breezes – nothing too dramatic, especially spots like outlets in upstairs bedrooms.

Exterior

Cliff walked around our house for about 15 minutes. I waited inside, and when he came in, he told me he was checking out the types of wndows, our A/C unit, roof ventilation holes in the soffets.

As well, Cliff told me some surprising news about our home’s exterior material. Heather and I have always been proud of the fact that our ’50s house is double-brick (”you don’t see that in construction these days!”) but Cliff said this feature is not in our favour when it comes to insulation. If insulation is insufficient, it is harder to get it between the walls with double brick.

Main Floor

Inside our house, Cliff started his walkthrough on our main floor, writing stuff on his clipboard as he went. All our windows are original and Heather really wants them replaced. Cliff told me you don’t get much money back from the government for replacing windows (something like a lousy $80 each, same for doors) and that they do not improve the insulation factor nearly as much as other things we can do. (Heather is not going to like that!) Cliff even said that he has the same age of windows in his home and he chose not to replace them, but to re-seal them instead.

Upper Floor

He then journeyed upstairs to our 1/2 storey – where two bedrooms are – checked windows there, and the sloping walls that hide the attic. You cannot get inside our attic, so he could only make deductions on what the insulation and ventilation is like inside the attic, based on the age of our house. Cliff said that from the outside, it looks like we have air coming into the attic, but not going out.

Basement Level

Downstairs in the basement – home to a large rec room, bathroom, bedroom (Hayden’s), and laundry room – Cliff checked out our water heater, furnace, and electrical panel. We talked a lot more about the value of insulation, this time for basements. He concluded that at least half of our basement is not insulated – the front half, Hayden’s bedroom and the laundry room. Cliff also recommended that we completely seal off the (unused) cold cellar at back of the laundry room.

The guy was nothing if he wasn’t thorough, and he promised that our Home Audit Report would be mailed to us within a couple of weeks. We’re cranked!

Then, we are told, another audit of our home will be required to see how it all looks after our eco renovations.

But not just anyone can conduct this audit – not if we want the government to rebate us half the $350 cost of the audit and report. (We won’t see that money til the second “after” audit is completed.)

The Research Team

My interpid husband, Doug, loves researching products and services, so he took on the auditor research.

The ole apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so naturally he turned to his dad. Bob, 71, lives for the joy of discovering the ‘best value;’ he and Doug bond regularly over Consumer Report magazines and flyers.

Bob emailed Doug the link to this Home Energy Ontario government page.

Doug entered our postal code, and that took him to a Natural Resources Canada web page showing a list of 18 home auditors in our postal region. It wasn’t clear if these were simply the ones in our geographic area, or ones that the government endorsed. (I tried to link to this page showing the home auditors in the GTA, but couldn’t do it; you have to go enter your own postal code.)

We Choose…

So, my husband phoned several of the listed auditors to see about cost and availability, but also to see if they sell any eco products (insulation, windows and the like) or provide any eco reno services (reno). Doug wanted to be sure that we didn’t get a home auditor with a vested interest in selling us a new furnace or recommending a certain contractor. (My huband is so cynical.. I mean, wise!)

The only auditor who wasn’t dabbling in other products/services Toronto-based GreenTech Services – also the only listed auditor that calls itself “non-profit.”

…And We Wait

Selecting the auditor turned out to be the easy part. Getting someone from GreenTech to come to our home was quite a bit trickier.

First, the rep from GreenTech and my husband played phone tag for more than a month (apparently neither of them thought of email!) and then Doug was told of the huge waiting list of homeowners seeking a home audit.

So then we waited another month. My husband booked 2 hours off work to meet the auditor from GreenTech at our home.

Stayed tune for Doug’s report on how that went.

We are Heather and Doug, an Ontario couple who own a drafty 1950s home and dream of renovation. Alas, we have been too lazy and tight with money to have done anything about it in seven years of ownership…. until now.

This is our “EcoRenovate” journey; our goals are to:

1. Recoup upwards of $3,000 from the government for renovations we desperately need.
2. Save hundreds of dollars each year in energy costs.
3. Move our EnerGuide rating from 61% to 82% and get their stamp of approval – meaning a better selling price for our home.
4. Do all this no later than March 31, 2011 to get the rebates back (including the cost of our “before” and “after” home audits).

‘Green Real Estate’ Research

I just lucked into this kind of information. As a self-employed social media and search marketing consultant, one of my clients is a major real estate company in Canada for whom I blog. Every day I monitor dozens of RSS feeds for news sites and blogs about real estate, mortgages, home design, renovation, and the like.

So I was trolling the news feeds and I came across some articles talking about Natural Resources Canada’s ecoENERGY Retrofit program. What? The government wants to give me thousands of dollars for renovations that make my home more energy effiicient?! Could this be finally be the way to convince my frugal spouse to replace our ancient front door or drafty windows?

More than the HRTC

I already knew about the Home Renovation Tax Credit (HRTC), which doesn’t require renos to be eco-friendly, but is the feds’ effort to stimulate the economy by boosting renovation.

Telling my husband about the HRTC did make him perk up his ears and at least consider renovating something in our shabby 60-year-old home. The pilot light of my dream home project was lit!

That was months ago. We haven’t yet sourced a single product or material, or contacted any contractors. We did look at a couple of home design websites briefly, and walked through a local home show to see some doors. (Naturally, our front door turns out to be a non-standard opening requiring a custom order costing thousands more… sigh.)

A Little More Action, a Little Less Conversation

We recently admitted to ourselves that the prospect of a $1,300 tax credit at the end of the year isn’t getting us any closer to a renovation. On top of being tight with money, my husband is lazy and, I confess, I’m not a whole lot different.

That’s when I learned about the ecoENERGY money pool for renovations/retrofits. I couldn’t get on the phone fast enough to tell Doug. Now we feel like we have enough reasons to get off the couch and start seriously renewing our neglected home.

Here we go! Wish us luck! Keep coming back to check on our progress: We will be posting photos from our home projects, short videos, Tweeting about it, and more!

(Auspiciously, we start this blog on July 1st – the birthday of Canada, the greatest nation in the world!)