Your home… with living:room

With Summer fast becoming a dim and distant memory, now is the time to prepare your home for keeping warm this Winter. We all know that saving energy is a good thing – an energy efficient home means lower bills, as well as reducing pressure on non-sustainable fuel sources like gas and oil – it can even add value to your home. But where do you start? Which changes will make a real difference and which just burn a hole in your pocket?

This time last year I attended ‘Basic Domestic Energy Auditing’  – a day long workshop by Andy Wilson of The Sustainability Institute, organised by Cultivate in Dublin. At that time, there was a lot of  emphasis on the new Building Energy Rating certificates, which were introduced at the beginning of this year, and the necessity to upgrade existing houses to improve energy efficiency. Now, Cultivate, in their new premises on St Andrew’s Lane are running the workshop again on Sunday 18th October.

The aim of the workshop is to help homeowners:

• Understand energy use in buildings
• Learn methods and techniques for reducing energy use in the home & workplace;
• Examine renewable energy options
• Develop energy literacy and numeracy.

The Energy Efficient Home

In principle, it seems straightforward enough – the more energy efficient the construction of a house, the less money we need to spend heating it. But what makes a house energy efficient?

Orientation

The position of a house in relation to the sun, how sheltered it is and how much sunlight, rain or wind it is exposed to can impact on its energy use. For example, a house where the main living spaces are orientated toward the South will benefit from the heat of the sun during the day, reducing the need for heating. Obviously, this is more useful as a design tool when planning a new house and, though it is possible to improve orientation when extending, for example, you may have to resign yourself to the direction your house is facing!

Insulation

Building insulation into the external walls, roofs and ground floor of a home keeps cold air out and warm air in, reducing need for additional heating, or eliminating it entirely, as in the principles of PassivHaus design. Although most older houses were not built with insulation, this can usually be retro-fitted and there are many options and products available.

Air Tightness

Thoughtful design, attention to detail and good workmanship can eliminate the typical gaps that occur in the construction of a building and prevent heat from escaping. Many of these will be hidden within walls or behind finishes so you may not even know about them or the amount of heat they siphon from your home. Smoke tests can help identify these gaps but contractors and builders need to be more aware of the problems created by lack of air tightness, as this can be difficult to resolve in an existing house.

Appliance & Energy Source

Are you relying on a fuel that is under threat from diminishing resources and potential price hikes – eg. oil and gas – or one that is renewable and sustainable – eg. solar power or wood pellets? Are your appliances and heating system designed use these fuels efficiently? Heating systems and appliances can usually be updated, but can be costly.

The Workshop

I was interested in attending ‘Basic Domestic Energy Auditing’ as much as a period home owner trying to get to grips with improving energy efficiency, without eliminating all those period features that I fell in love with in the first place, as from an architectural point of view. I understand how to build a new home in an energy efficient way but refurbishing older buildings is a trickier process.

The workshop isn’t a BER assessor course but rather a practical hands on approach to help individual homeowners get to grips with Building Regulation standards, how their homes use and lose energy and how much that could be costing them. And it all counts – even the smallest changes can reap rewards.

10 Energy Efficient Fixes for Your Home

As a starting point, I found Andy’s recommendations for DIY jobs to improve the energy performance of an existing house very useful. They boil down to 2 very simple rules – keep heat in, keep draughts out – and here they are in ascending order of ease and cost:

1. Add lagging around the hot water cylinder and all hot water pipes;
2. Draught proof doors and windows – you can buy proprietary metal strips with a brush edge at most DIY stores;
3. Hang heavy curtains to keep cold air out and warm air in (think about using these at external doors as well as windows);
4. Seal any gaps in the external walls of the house – these can occur round doors, windows, pipework, vents etc. – again proprietary sealants are available at DIY stores, just ask for advice on the best type for the location you have in mind;
5. Install an insulated door to your attic or to crawl spaces in the eaves, if you have a converted roof space;
6. Insulate (or re-insulate) the loft and put a floor down over it to protect the insulation. Note: insulation should be laid in two layers – the first between the timber joists and the second laid cross-ways over the first layer to avoid gaps that cold air could pass through;
7. Replace open fires with a solid fuel burning stove to reduce draughts and prevent valuable heat escaping up the chimney, rather than into the room;
8. Upgrade windows;
9. Dry-line and insulate the internal walls;
10. Replace the boiler / central heating sytem.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg – Andy discusses how to analyse your own home to identify problems and then advises how best to solve them. Throughout the day we were encouraged to ask questions about how each topic related to our own homes, so the information provided is very much tailored to suit individual needs – I found it a very useful and informative day and would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to improve both their understanding of energy efficiency and their homes.

The workshop runs from 10am – 5pm on Sunday 18th October, and costs €120 with a discount for Cultivate & EASCA members. For more info, take a look at the Cultivate web-site or call 01 674 5773.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in:

Is Your Home BER Ready?

BER Update – Grant Assistance

Did you find this article useful? Do you have any any pet peeves about housing or home design? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to know more about.