Energy efficiency around the house

Over the last couple of years, we've been gradually taking measures to improve our energy efficiency around the homestead. We've replaced most of our lights with compact fluorescents, we turn stuff off when we're not in the room, etc.

Hydro Ottawa has a nice graphical web site where you can get a plot of your energy consumption over time, which has been quite nice because it has shown the results of our efforts.

Here's what our daily usage graph looks like:



As you can see, we've cut down our usage, but leveled off the improvements. Also, we're still using WAY more energy than we'd have available on a daily basis if we lived off-grid. I'd really like to get the usage down to an off-grid consumption, so we'll be in practice for our eventual move Back To The Drawlyn.

Here's a brief run-down of the home improvements we plan on doing in order to cut down on our energy consumption.

First off, we realize that our air conditioner is the largest chunk of our energy usage. Here's what we want to do to extend the season in which the AC doesn't need to turn on:

• More attic insulation. We need to re-do the roof on the south-east side of our house this spring. While we've got the top off, we're going to blow in a few more inches of insulation. This should help cut down on heat infiltration.
• More attic venting. A couple of additional vents installed in the new area should help get the cross-breezes going and let the roof expel excess heat.
• Install a house fan. We want to cut a hole in our ceiling in the sun room (the hottest room in the house, by far) and install a fan. Our neighbor Terry has suggested putting in a duct and an inline duct fan, and venting it out the soffit. This has the advantage of putting the noise of the fan as far away from the living space as possible. By running this fan, we should be able to extract quite a bit of heat from the house, thus alleviating the need for the air conditioning.
• Installing custom awnings over the sun room windows. Our sun room, not surprisingly, gets a lot of sun. It gets strong direct sunlight that is very nice in the winter but problematic in the summer. To help cut down on the thermal gain, we're going to install some aesthetically-pleasing custom-made awnings over each of the 5 south-facing windows. A friend of ours is very good with metal fabrication and has agreed to make the custom brackets. And we plan to make custom cedar slats, stained to match our deck for the sun-shade part. It'll be quite a bit of work, but it'll really add value to the house (looks nice and cuts down on cooling costs).
• We'll install a screen door on the front of the house, so we can open the front and back doors for a nice cross-breeze without letting in a ton of bugs.
  

Other things we plan on doing include more compact fluorescent bulbs, maybe getting a more-efficient fridge, and putting our "phantom loads" on a power bar.

Lots to do, lots to do...

Cheers,
Grant