Return On Investment from adding insulation.
 

This summer we added insulation to our attic and crawl spaces, the crawl spaces had fiberglass bats that were doing very little (37F temp in the inside of one while it was 30F or so outside) with cold floors and drafts, the attic was almost worse, very little insulation with air gaps in the rafter spaces that caused drafts in the entire ceiling of the up stairs of the house.
We now have R60 worth of cellulose in the attic and R10 to R14 of spray foam in the crawl spaces, the total project cost about $2,200 to add this insulation, hired the spray foam out and did the cellulose our selves, our first heating bill showed a decrease over last year of about $15 while showing an increase in heating degree days, this last bill was exactly the same heating degree days as last year and was a reduction of $40, a savings of about 20%, now we have a manual set thermostat and have been feeling better about keeping the house warmer now that it's better insulated, our friends even comment now that our house feels very evenly warm and cozy, no more cold floors or drafts mixed with bursts of hot air swirling around.
Now I realize I should wait until another month goes by to say for sure but it looks like our investment in insulation is going to have a great pay back, we should see a total return in 5-10 years, a return on investment that you are not going to find currently at a bank and banks aren't good at keeping your toes warm either.

Very nice Ryland.

What insulation was in the attic before? I take it the crawlspace didn't have any insulation?

The attic had 4" of mineral wool or very old fiberglass covered over by a floor with an air space that was open to the eaves then 6" of cellulose, the cellulose was doing next to nothing because of the air space, so we pulled everything out, old insulation, the floor (on top of 2x6's so not strong enough to build a room up there with the spans we have) pulled old wiring, used about 8 cans of expanding foam to seal every single gap, crack and joint that could leak air then blew in 2,000 pounds of cellulose.

The crawl spaces are sand stone foundation walls, one of them had fiberglass bats that were doing next to nothing and the other had nothing to insulate it.
We make little enough money that even tho there are tax credits for insulating we don't qualify, we do however qualify for some cash back from Focus On Energy (public service non profit who collects money from the utilities to improve energy efficentcy) so we will get a small amount back from them because of the energy audit that we had done so that will quicken our return on investment a little but still the biggest return will be the $100's we'll save every year in heating bills.

This is really a very enlightened way to look at it.

I hope everyone here sees this.

Is there any way you could expand or illustrate or otherwise amplify this idea?

Yeah, the banks are really taking us for a ride, and leaving money siting in a bank at zero interest, while they make record profits is a very bad idea.

Putting your money to work for you by reducing heat loss and heating costs actually is one of the very best investments now.

Conservation is not just for tree-huggers anymore.

Brilliant!

-AC_Hacker

Insulation and Weather Sealing are the gifts that keep on giving. :thumbup: Not only do they keep your house more comfortable year-round, but their value increases as energy costs go up.

I think I found a new catch-phrase. ;)

Tim

When we built our house, we had the foam sprayed in professionally on all the outside walls and, after we hung the ceiling sheetrock, they spray foamed the top of the sheetrock {attic floor}. Then, a couple of years ago, just for grins :D, we added 42 bales of blown in cellulose ourselves {about 6"}. Of course we did it the year before the IRS was giving tax credits for this kind of improvement.

If you are planning to live in your home for a long time, making it more energy efficient is a no brainer. The house is more comfortable and cheaper to operate. :thumbup:

Ryland,

I'm interested in hearing what the % reduction in energy use has been after you get the 2nd months bills.

I recently finished a weather sealing project at our house and I'm actually excited about getting our next natural gas bill so I can see if there has been a quantifiable change.

Tim

I tried to get a better idea by looking at the bills from the fall, but due to varying temps it was hard to see any solid numbers other then that our bill was lower, judging just from this single bill so far where the heating degree days were identical to last year we had an 18% reduction in natural gas used but closer to a 22% reduction in out of pocket heating costs because of the increased rates for natural gas and that is where the long term savings gets hard to track because most people just look at the dollar amount.
There are alot of banks that have poor interest rates and are only paying a quarter to a half of a percent and long term, multi year certificates at the bank are in the 2 to 3% range, I figure my insulation is giving me at least a 10% interest rate, but as I said, I'll know more next month, what I do know is that everyone else in my neighborhood is complaining about their high heating bills, some of them were wise enough to take advantage of the $45 energy audits this past year and are having their houses sealed up, everyone else just turning their thermostats down to the mid 50's.

Calculating therms (or kWh) used per heating degree day for the same billing period before and after the insulation / weatherization project (i.e. December '09 and '10) will give you a good basis for comparison. This assumes that your other gas or electricity uses are comparable, but it is much better than nothing.

That said, an 18% reduction in energy use is quite respectable! And with an increase in natural gas prices means you save even more $.

As energy prices continue to climb, more and more people will figure out how important energy efficiency truly is.

It's really hard to say that the insulation is entirely the result in savings like that.

As an example last december/january I used 3171 kwh over 62 days and the HDD was 956.5 giving me a kwh/hdd of 3.315 I added R40 to the attic after that. This year my december/january period I used 2567 over 62 days and the HDD was 1005.5 giving me a kwh/hdd of 2.553 or a 23% decrease in energy use for the given temperature.

Sounds great but it does not take the fact that I'm smarter about the heatpump and use it more efficiently namely I always have the woodstove going on ultra cold days where the heat pump kicks the backup heater on.

I'm sure moving from R12 to R52 in the attic helped a bunch though.

<edit> HDD is calculated at 18.5C in my case since that's the coldest I let the house get with the baby </edit>