The Rationale behind proper Air-sealing and Insulation
Our biggest effort has gone into finding the weak spots of the house in terms of air-sealing & insulation and beefing them up.
Before we did this work, the house was so inefficient that when the wind blew, the interior doors swayed with the wind. Well, it was either the wind or the ghosts! But since it stopped after we did the work, we think more likely the wind! 😉
It’s quite a task to find and plug all the air leaks and its definitely more disruptive to add 4 inches of insulation to the exterior of your walls. Here’s an easy analogy…imagine a bathtub you are trying to fill, the water represents the energy you need, the faucet that supplies the water represents your solar panels. Just like you need to put a plug in the drain and not just turn on the faucet, you need to plug the gaps and cracks that have not been air-sealed and upgrade the poor insulation. BOTH are important. Otherwise you can keep pouring water into your bathtub and you still won’t get a comfy bath.
In this “Building Envelope” section, you can read all about our efforts to “plug the drain” and bulk up insulation.
We also keep a careful eye on our “phantom load”; energy that is sucked away be devices during standby mode. We are great fans of a small gadget called a Kill-A-Watt which helps us find and “kill” or unplug such devices.
We also monitor our power consumption using a device called “Sense” (think common-sense!) so we can quickly spot sudden changes in our consumption and re-calibrate.