The Problem
It’s hard to remember which came first. Was it when the upstairs became unbearably hot one summer day to the point where the family slept in the basement at night? Or was it being woken by the sound of water dripping from the ceiling onto a stack of papers in our bedroom? Regardless, both events kicked off journeys that traveled a winding path that ultimately led to my inadvertent quest to lower my utility bills.
The diagnosis on our air conditioner was not good. Apparently there was a rusted coil that was causing it to leak Freon. More Freon could be added relatively inexpensively to get the system working again, but unless the leak was fixed, it would continue to slowly leak out and need to be refilled again within a year. The longer term fix of replacing the rusted coil was prohibitively expensive. The combined cost of the part and the labor involved to fix it was such that it just seemed to make more sense to buy a new unit outright. Our house had been built in 2001, and considering that the A/C units seemed to be the originals, they were likely nearing the end of their life-span. As a result, we opted for more Freon to be added to get us through the summer while we started saving for (and doing research on) getting a new HVAC system in the Autumn/Winter.
The roof situation was a little less straight-forward. While the life expectancy of an HVAC system is around 15 years, we expected the type of roof that we had to last closer to 20+ years. As a result, we weren’t prepared for replacing our roof and thought some simple patching was all that we needed. So when we had some roofers come out to patch some areas, we thought the issue was fixed. Then, a few months later, it leaked again. We got more patching and this time crossed our fingers. No luck. A few months later, it leaked yet again. Finally, this time, the roofers told us there wasn’t any more patching they could do and we would need to replace the entire roof over that section of the house.
The Solutions
The first step was obvious. Before any other work could be done, the roof had to be fixed so water stopped leaking into our attic. Despite the fact that our roof wasn’t old enough to need a complete replacement yet, we decided to take this opportunity to get an entirely new roof. Unfortunately, this was a few months before Tesla had announced their solar roof, otherwise that would’ve been pretty tempting to look in to. After we got our new roof, we allowed a few weeks (and a few heavy downpours) before we were finally satisfied that our leak was fixed and we could move on.
Facing the prospect of having to get a new HVAC system and possibly dealing with ruined attic insulation due to the constant roof leaks, I decided it might be worthwhile to see if there was any other work that should be done while we were tearing the house apart. One of the first things that I did was talk to fellow discourser Profit Greenly to see what thoughts he had since I knew he was a bit of a fanatic when it comes to energy efficiency. In case anybody has forgotten, here’s a sample of the things he’s written here on the subject:
- Eight Money Saving New Year’s Resolutions That Also Save The Planet
- Explainer: Why Leaving Your Thermostat The Same All Day Wastes Money
- Springtime for LED Bulbs and America
- Your Overused Air Conditioner Burns Money
Some of his suggestions, like getting a geothermal heat pump, I didn’t end up going with. However, I was intrigued by his suggestion to get an energy audit.
Energy Audit
So what is an energy audit? It’s essentially an inspection of a building to identify areas where improvements could be made to reduce energy costs. Oftentimes this involves identifying leaky windows or areas that could use more insulation. Sometimes the solution might involve replacing inefficient (and heat generating) incandescent light bulbs with more efficient fluorescent or LED bulbs. I was personally intrigued by the idea of an energy audit for two reasons:
- Checking the insulation in the attic to see if we needed more in the area of our roof leak
- Getting an updated Manual J calculation after improvements were done to make sure the new HVAC unit that I got was the right size
That second item might require a little bit of an explanation. The basic idea is that when you get a new HVAC system, you want to make sure it’s the right size for what you need. Too small of a system won’t be powerful enough to adequately control the temperature in the house. A system which is too large not only costs more, but also doesn’t run as efficiently, which increases utility costs. A Manual J calculation is supposed to give an idea of what size HVAC system a house needs. It’s partially based on the square footage of the house, but is also based on how well insulated the house is. A leaky house with old windows and less insulation would require a larger HVAC system than a better insulated house. Since I was planning on spending a lot of money on a new HVAC system, I was keenly interested in anything that might save me money.
I got the energy audit done, complete with a blower door test to amplify any leaks around the house and make them easier to identify. The audit identified a few main areas of improvement:
- Replace incandescent flood lights throughout house with LED bulbs
- Add weatherstripping to windows throughout the house
- Blow additional loose fill insulation in the attic
- Adding foam insulation to attic access points
The last two items I ended up paying the energy audit company to do, but the first two I ended up doing myself. We got a decent price on Feit LED bulbs (both normal and floodlight). The transition wasn’t completely painless. The new bulbs didn’t play nice with the dimmer switches we have throughout the house, which led to some annoying flickering at times and some of the bulbs were a harsher “daylight” color than the warmer colors we were used to from the incandescent bulbs.
The weatherstripping was a little more straight-forward, but no less time consuming. I ended up going with a lot of packages of Duck brand weatherstripping from Amazon. Over the course of a few evenings, I slowly worked on weatherstripping all the windows around the house.
HVAC
As part of the energy audit, the leakiness of our house was measured prior to all the work being done as well as afterwards. Unfortunately, the Manual J calculation based on the measurements after all the work had been done showed that we couldn’t go with a smaller HVAC system than we had before, so we ended up getting new systems that were the same size as the old. Even though I was disappointed in not being able to go with a smaller system, I was pleased that we would upgrading to two programmable thermostats.
Our house actually has two separate HVAC systems: one for the upstairs and one for the other two floors. Previously, we had a programmable thermostat for the downstairs system only. That meant in the hot summer months, the upstairs was getting cooled to the same temperature whether we were upstairs or not. I was excited to see what a difference a programmable thermostat would make where we could have more control over running our air conditioner less when we weren’t upstairs or even in the house. As an added bonus, the new programmable thermostats were capable of connecting to wi-fi and being controlled remotely by a phone app. This allowed us to do some cool things like basically completely turning off our air conditioning when we left on vacation because we could turn it back on remotely on our way back to return to a comfortable house.
Results
So, how did all of these changes affect our utility bills? I was surprised by the results. The new HVAC system and insulation work was done in the spring, so the hot summer months were my first opportunity to see how our electricity bill would be affected. I was pleasantly surprised by the improvements. During the months of June, July, August, September, and October, I saw a nearly 50% reduction in electricity usage, which equated to a savings of several hundred dollars in those months alone. I was floored and thrilled. Even my most optimistic predictions didn’t involve us recouping our costs that quickly.
However, the results were markedly different when winter came around and our utility bills swapped from largely electricity (for air conditioning) to gas (for heat). Due to the nature of the improvements that were made (insulation in attic, programmable thermostat upstairs) and the fact that heat rises, I thought for sure that our gas bill would see similar results to our electricity bill, if not better. Strangely, our gas usage was almost entirely unchanged. In fact, if anything, our usage might’ve gone up slightly. I honestly can’t explain the discrepancy between the big savings on electricity and the almost unchanged gas bills. I’ve tried investigating the obvious theories (increasing gas prices, colder winter, etc) and nothing seems to explain it. The only theory that I have is that switching from the inefficient-but-heat-generating incandescent bulbs to more efficient but far less heat generating LED bulbs saved a ton of money on electricity at the cost of slightly increasing the amount of gas needed to replace the heat that those bulbs used to generate.
All things considered, I’m still pretty pleased with my results. I just wish I could better explain the lack of improvement on my gas bill.
Solar Panels?
Since I figured my quest was taking me deep down a rabbit hole already, I decided I would also take the opportunity to look into the possibility of getting solar panels. As I earlier mentioned, the solar roof wasn’t available at the time, but that didn’t stop me from being interested in solar power. I had a dream of a scenario where I would never have to pay utility bills again, or at least for the few decades that the solar panels were good for. I tried to do as much research as possible. I checked how much sun my house got through Google Project Sunroof. I researched the relative cost of electricity and the government incentives available in Virginia on Solar Power Rocks. I got quotes from Solarize Fairfax County and Solar City (now a division of Tesla). All of my research kept on coming to the same conclusion: Solar Panels just weren’t going to save us enough money to make up for their costs. No matter how hard I tried to find a way to make the numbers add up, I couldn’t do it, so we ultimately passed.
Conclusion
All-in-all, I’m fairly pleased with the end result of my inadvertent quest. While our bank account took a temporary hit, I’m far less worried now about our air conditioning failing in the middle of the hottest weeks of the summer and I love paying significantly less on our electricity bill, even if it’s just a few months out of the year. It’s also neat being able to remotely access our thermostat when we go on vacation, so we can essentially shut things down when we’re not in the house. I wish we had been able to save some money on a smaller HVAC system, that our gas bills were lower, and that the numbers on solar power worked out, but in the end it’s a trade-off that I am happy with.
I’ll still be checking in every year or so just in case the cost of solar panels goes down significantly, though.
