DruidClark-
I agree that an energy audit from a knowledgeable auditor is usually a good investment, especially since different houses are inefficient in different ways based on what may or may not have already been done to them. I also agree that sealing cracks is generally the best, cheap thing you can do to improve energy efficiency, followed by insulating, followed by getting energy efficient windows. But I don't agree with you on the inferiority of fiberglass or its characteristics, and I have nothing to do with that industry...just a number of years working in energy conservation for DOE. (See my response at the end of this link, if you're interested: Insulation.)

Hmm. I'll do more research on this. I still think that non-fiberglass is more ecologically sound

Any opinions on cotton-based insulation - seems to be eco-friendly but how well does it work?

Here is a link that might be useful: UltraTouch formaldehyde-free insulation

How could it *not* work as well? I think it could only work better, but as I said, I'm going to do more digging. Might take awhile, though. Thanks for this great link. Looks like there's lots of useful stuff there.

This is a great discussion and will help many people. How do I insulate a three brick thick exterior wall?

Druidclark, I think it's great that you got an audit. I've been preaching these for a long time. Kudzu is correct on the insulation. It's not what the insulation is made of as much as it's the vapor barrier between the ceiling and the insulation. THe older house have all sorts of cracks and holes into the attic. Heat and cold air return vents, plumbing pipes like water and drainage are some other things. We usually remove all the insulation and caulk along all joists and ceiling material. If we can put Tyvek or some house wrap up there we will do that. Then we re-insulate the attic. Makes a world of difference!!

I also disagree with the percentage of loss through the old windows. ALl the audits I've seen and the window industry put it at 30%. None the less it's great to know where your issues are!! Good Luck!!!

I agree that blower door testing is the
way to find leakage sites.
Sealing is not difficult when you
know where to seal.

I do this testing myself.
So I am a bit biased.

But its hard to argue that ___________
(fill in the blank) does't leak
when you can feel the air when the
blower door is running..

Glad you are a believer.
Keep us informed as to your progress in
sealing!

I once read a colorful way to explain the need for sealing from the top down in an older house ......

Think of going out to fetch in the paper off the porch on a very cold morning clad only in your bathrobe tied tightly at the waist........ (hold that thought)

Now consider how, er, chilled your parts might be if you didn't have the bathrobe closed tightly at the waist...

It's the same with a house: Button up the top to stop the inflow lower down of colder air when the warmer upper air rises up and out into the great beyond.

Ok, you can go inside now, get dressed and head on down to Big Orange and pick up a couple dozen tubes of caulking!

Molly~

Good one Molly! Where I live, in Ontario, they have a government rebate when one of these house audits is done. You pay the $250 for the audit, they come in and do the blower test and look at some inefficient power consumers in your home - like your furnace - and they make some recommendations. You make whatever changes you want - could be all of them if you can afford it, then you invite the energy auditors back in. They do another test and check the appliances you replaced and give you a rebate. It can be as much as $1500, I believe. Socialist Canadians.

I've got one of those triple brick homes with no insulation on the walls. Our biggest culprit - well, outside of this big hole we found in the foundation in the crawl space - was the sill plate in the attic. The hand hewn timbers resting on these triple-brick walls were sealed by mortar. The mortar was 50% in tact. The other had moved or broken over the 160 years. I'm not sure I would worry so much about insulating the triple brick as sealing the leaks and insulating the attic. Sill plate in the basement needs attention, too.

I also got a free energy audit from my Energy company. After the audit, I received a a form that I could submit with all receipts for my improvements back to the company, and received almost 50% off of my added attic insulation and weatherstripping. Had I wished to insulate the basement walls too, that cost would have been reimbursed at 50% too. In the end, I added insulation to the attic of my 1868 brick house to R-48 (I live in Iowa); bought a new 96% high efficiency furnace (received rebates from the manufacturer and again, the energy company) and saved almost 50% on my winter heating bills last winter. I recommend that everyone call their energy provider and check out free audits and rebates!

Corgi, I am not sure how you would insulate the triple brick! That sounds like a tough one, though at the sill plate would be logical, as beds from Ontario suggested (oftentimes I wished I lived in that civilized country..Yeah, I know, move.)

WindowGuy, I doublechecked the figure on the windows (10% Vs 30%). It's from a DOE brochure and it definitely says windows = 10%. Doors and windows are about 21% heat loss. Given that the window industry is in the business to replace windows, it makes sense to me that they'd look for a test where the results were higher.

Molly, made me laugh, your image of the housecoat etc. aflappin' in the breeze.

I am still not been able to confirm/deny (to my own satisfaction) that filterglass is equal in insulative value to dense packed material. I am a skeptic when it comes to conventional wisdom....

For some unknown reason, our local energy companies don't offer any rebates at all for using energy star appliances, etc. I don't know how this can be, I thought it was a PUC requirement. I need to dig into this one further. Not sure they offer the audit for free, either. Perhaps someone out there knows the rule and how it works.

Why is this information so hard to come by, I wonder. Is there a non-incentive involved?

Let's keep the discussion going; so much more to learn here.

OK I will offer to be a experiment on this subject. As posted a while back, I had an energy audit (prvate company) and as suspected my 102 year old house was bascally "fetching the paper" stark raving naked. I paid $500 because of the size of my house and they were there, oh maybe 5-6 hours because of the complexity ..3 sunrooms jutting out,4-5 roof extensions,etc. Energy Rater you know , you can tell me if that was par. They used a blower door and infrared camera, and these little smoke thngs. OK...so I went with their recomendations, and had closed cell foam and cellulose blown in everywhere, had the stucco redone (needed it anyway),and now have walls in need of patching in 12/14 rooms. I am using foam board and foam spray on all the sill spaces n the basement, am walling off the part of the basement that is open to the space below the front porch, and have 2 storm windows to replace. Then I am done. The GOOD news is that so far it is much quieter than before, the air conditioning bills were much cheaper this summer, and I will find out how much less energy I consume this first wnter with the full insulation.My house is basically like new..I put in a new roof a few years ago, new boiler 2-3 years ago.So I am very interested in seeng the difference. The insulation man told me that he did a new $1million house that was very leaky..it just wasn't insulated right..so don't feel bad if yours is leaky too.And they both said that at very cold temperatures typical of Chicago that fiber glass does nothing.

For $250 I'd jump on it too. But $600...?

Can someone make sense of this page and tell me which is the best bang for the buck for me (one zone)?

Thanks
http://www.accuspec.biz/Energy%20Services%20&%20Fees.htm

It's hard to tell, but I'd say get something with the blower door and infrared..seems like they charge extra for stuff like a written report, and rechecks.I was there when they did mine and the auditors knew the guy I eventually went with to do the insullation and were in communication with him over exactly what needs to be done. If you are DIYing just pay attention and write stuff down and ask if you can call them later with questions. I didn't get a recheck because I can tell without it that they did a good job and I don't feel like paying again. So if it helps just go with a one time but thorough evaluation.

Some local utility co's give rebates for inspections and/or the insulation/weatherization. I'm now a believer myself-- saved about 30%-50% on heat last yr.

Sealing gaps into attic is very important, it stops "chimney effect" from happening, i.e. as hot air rises into attic and then out the attic vents, it DRAWS IN cold air from outside-- thru cracks and air leaks, in basement and around windows. This year I had polyurethane caulking done around windows and gaps in the sides of house and its even better- even on north side of house where wind always got in-- no drafts at all! People are really wasting their money if they think new windows will solve draft problems-- heat loss thru windows is probably the least of an old house's problems.

Kashka_Kat

We bought the house in March and replaced the windows right away. I hear what you are saying but the old aluminum windows were so bad the curtains were move (a lot!) when the wind blew even a little. You could stand next to them and feel the air movement.

We know we have a huge gap in the attic door not sealing, so that's next before we pay for an audit. Seems we should take care of the obvious and then see what an audit tells us. But we're not exactly sure how to seal the attic door.

Robin

Hi Robin, the auditor should tell you exactly what to do or perhaps give you a quote to do it themselves.

re windows, what I meant was heat loss thru the windows THEMSELVES are a very minimal part of the whole picture--because if you stop the updraft effect, you'll stop the cold air from being PULLED IN around the windows. Yeah theres also sideways wind that BLOWS IN thru channels around windows (between sashes and/or around the framing) but those too can be sealed or dealt with in other ways besides spending huge $$$ for new windows.

Of course if you have junky windows you want to replace anyway, for other reasons, then it makes sense to do that. Esp. if aluminum and/or not original to the house-- yuck, get rid of it! Aluminum is not insulating and does not hold heat like wood does. Its the classic wood double hung windows original to early 1900s houses which are generally worth restoring/weatherizing .

I'm planning to have an energy audit done soon. There are some leaks I'm aware of that I haven't had a chance to seal yet - mostly because it's ladder work. I have a handyman coming out to recaulk my windows and seal up anything else we know of in two weeks.. should I have the audit done beforehand if possible, or would it make more sense to seal up what we know of already and THEN have the audit to discover what's left?

Basically, if I already know that the windows need new caulk and some minor repair to the storms, the front door needs to be replaced, and a few other things along those lines - should I hold off on the audit until that's all fixed? Or will the audit likely reveal enough better and/or more efficient ways to use our time that it would be worth it beforehand?

My personal opinion is to seal up everything you can and then get an audit so you discover what you didn't know. In my case, getting a written report will be far more expensive, so I want the oral to-do list as short as possible so I don't get writer's cramp!

DruidClark,

While the advertised R-values for FG and cellulose may be fairly close, in application they are not.

As people reading this thread are discovering, air infiltration is an absolute killer when it comes to the thermal efficiencies of the envelope of a house.

The big "pro" for cells is that when blown in to a stud/joist/rafter bay and dense-packed, they knit together and do a fabulous job at eliminating air infiltration.

The net effect is far superior to that achieved when using FG batts, even with a vabor barrier. The reason is that FG batts are never installed quite right. "Quite right" means NO GAPS between the batt face and the framing. Gaps in the corners of the framing bays allow convective loops to occur. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's a big negative.

Any type of air washing over the surface of FG batts also decreases the efective R-value of the insulation. That's why Tyvek was first brought to market...trivia tidbit moment...Tyvek was designed to be laid over FG batts installed on attic floors to prevent winter air washes in the attic from penetrating into the batts and lowering the effective insulative value of the insulation.

With vapor barriers on the interior side of the FG (heating climates) and housewraps on the exterior, we're seeing better building practices when it comes to thermal envelopes...but the true value lays in the fine detailing f the barriers. And that detailing still has a way to go. Things are better than they were, but they can get better yet again.

Overall? Dense-packed cellulose far outperforms FG batts. Even blown in FG. It outperforms it in terms if air infiltration, sound deadening, absorbing radiant energy, and handling water vapor that may happen to get past whatever barrier there is and get into the framing bay. It's better at resisting/slowing the spread of fire.

My only negative with cellulose is when remodeling. I'd much prefer to crack open a wall of FG during a remodel than open up a wall filled with cellulose. I guess I can't have it all.(g)

Minimizing air infiltration is the most effective way for a homeowner to lower their energy use year-round.

Rigid foam board is the homeowner's friend.

However, tightening up a house must be done using the whole-house approach. Moisture sources (basement/cooking/bathing/HVAC) need to be addressed in conjunction with the air sealing.

My company performs Home Energy Audits and I have done over 800 Home Energy Audits. So FYI, cellulose has great air sealing capabilities, so it serves a dual purpose. The down side is that cellulose absorbs 100% of it's weight in water. Acts like a sponge. Therefore if your roof is old or compromised and you don't want to repair or replace it for now, do not use cellulose. Fiberglass will not absorb water, although it certainly gets nasty when wet, but it's easier to remove when wet, than moldy wet cellulose - yes cellulose will grow mold when wet.

I go into many homes where the homeowner never ventures into the attic space and are totally unaware they have a roof leak, because the cellulose was absorbing the water. I have even gone into homes where the ceilings are caving and the homeowner has no idea why. Go figure!

So the moral of this story is if you go with cellulose you must be vigilant about your roof maintenance. If that isn't you go with fiberglass. Even though the fiberglass will not mold you will still get mold on the sheathing, so it's vital people become more aware of just what is going on in their own homes.

We too had an audit done recently.... our findings were not surprising! 5.75 square FEET of holes in the house, net insulation value of 2.....

However I am in Ontario too... and beds ... did you find the clarifications on what actually needs to be done a little hard to understand?? (increase efficiency to 40 but it doesn't tell what will help us with that... and there are some suggestions we can't actually implement in our house like insulating the basement.... the auditor suggested icynine(?) down the stone walls, but the ministry of natural resources recommends AGAINST insulating stone foundations on the inside at any cost ).

Overall we have been happy and have used the audit to prioritize our projects... and put WAY MORE on our plate then we had hoped!

Some energy companies will do an energy audit for free. look into it.