Wind in My Closet
Posted on August 19, 2011 by Bob Jenks
Tags, Climate and Conservation, Consumers and Utility Customers
I could feel the wind in my closet.
That was the result of the blower door test I had done. A Clean Energy Works Oregon specialist put a large fan in my front door to suck the air out of my house. Using an infrared scope, I could see where air was leaking into the house. Upstairs, in my closet, the air was coming in so fast you could feel the breeze.
This isn’t unusual for a house that was built in 1926. For much of the history of my house, the Northwest had an abundance of cheap, affordable energy, and even something as simple as putting insulation in the walls was not considered to be a cost-effective investment. Those days of cheap energy ran out in the 1970s as oil and gas prices rose and the cost of electricity increased as the region began exhausting its supply of hydro power and building expensive, new coal and nuclear power plants. But my house did not change. Its furnace continued to crank out heat, with a fair amount of the heat leaking out through drafts and un-insulated areas. Eventually some new windows were added, but my house, like many others in the Portland area, remains a testament to the days of cheap energy.
The end result of my energy audit was clear: a handful of small steps —sealing up the leaks and adding insulation in the walls, attic, rim joist, and knee walls—could save quite a bit of energy. In addition, I could reduce my energy use even more by investing in a new efficient furnace and new efficient water heater.
Some of these actions, such as the air sealing and the additional insulation, will pay off almost immediately in reduced gas usage. The bigger capital investments in a new furnace and water heater will take longer to pay off. Because the Clean Energy Works Oregon program includes financing, my family can make these changes immediately and with no upfront expense. The cost of the energy efficiency investment will be added to my natural gas bill and I can pay it off over the next 20 years.
This is the basic premise of Clean Energy Works Oregon. It offers a way to easily identify energy efficiency upgrades to your home and supplies the financing to make it happen. The program also simplifies the process by providing a single contact person for me to work with throughout the process. This means that I don’t have to work with multiple banks to secure a loan and then find individual contractors for each efficiency upgrade, which could be tiresome and confusing if I had to use one contractor for insulation, another for my gas furnace, and a third for my water heater. By lowering the barriers to making these improvements, Clean Energy Works Oregon makes the process simple for a homeowner.
After my CEWO application was accepted, the initial energy audit demonstrated that I can reduce my household energy use by more than 30%. Clean Energy Works offers incentives to help reduce the cost by up to $3,200. The financing allows me to pay off this expense over a 20 year period at a 5.9% interest rate—though I can pay it off more quickly or refinance it through my credit union if I want. Just as important, I can make my house much more comfortable. In the winter my house is drafty and the temperature varies significantly from room to room.
In my case, I expect that the energy savings will cover at least 65% to 75% of the cost of financing the loan in the first year. As the price of utility service increases over the next few years, the energy savings reduction in my bill will become greater than the cost of the loan that is financing the investment. It should be noted, that I could have chosen to do less energy efficiency so that the bill savings cover all or most of the cost of financing the new measures. But knowing that energy prices will continue to rise, that we will eventually need to replace our furnace and water heater, and that this is a program that makes an energy efficiency upgrade easy, my family decided to use this opportunity to make a significant investment in our house.
My wife and I will sign the loan papers next week and contractors will soon start showing up at my house. By winter, my 1926 house will be brought into the 21st century.
Bob Jenks is the Executive Director of the Citizens’ Utility Board of Oregon, and is as much a fan of the outside of his house as the inside.
If you own and occupy a single-family detached home built before 1993, your home may be eligible for the Clean Energy Works Oregon program. The service territory includes the following locations:
Cities:
Portland, Hillsboro, Gresham, Lake Oswego, Medford, Ashland, Grants Pass, Klamath Falls, Lakeview
All areas in the following counties:
Clackamas, Multnomah, Washington, Jackson, Josephine, Klamath and Lake Counties
Other locations to be announced soon.
Visit the Clean Energy Works Oregon website for more information and to apply for the program. The application only takes a few minutes and is easy to do..
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03/27/17 | 0 Comments | Wind in My Closet