East Granby's Dr. Energy Saver Lowering Home Energy Costs, Creating Local Jobs

Dr. Energy Saver, the East Granby business that assesses and improves the energy efficiency of homes in the area, has been full of activity lately.

Dr. Energy Saver’s goal is simple but speaks to homeowners in the current economic climate. The business develops and repairs homes to increase their energy efficiency. That work lowers power, water and heating bills and saves homeowners money.

Father-and-son team Kirk and Reed MacNaughton are the main force behind the venture. They have experience through their other family business, MacNaughton Builders, in the home construction field. The MacNaughtons and the other employees at Dr. Energy Saver, which began operations in February of this year, are performing assessments and making repairs and improvements to homes every day, with a schedule booked out weeks ahead of time.

“We’re busy every day, and that’s a good thing,” Reed MacNaughton said. “We purposely didn’t expand too quickly.”

Reed MacNaughton said that Cape Cod style homes are one of the least energy efficient styles in the area. The second floors of those homes are extremely temperature sensitive — cold in the winter and hot in the summer —causing discomfort and forcing homeowners to spend more money on heating and cooling.

“We can fix that,” MacNaughton said, “We have a lot of happy Cape customers.”

Another regular fix for the company is to raised ranches, which often have humidity problems in their lower levels. No matter the style of a home, they can all be more efficient, with air loss a common problem that adds to energy bills.

MacNaughton said the employees at Dr. Energy Saver aren’t afraid to get dirty to improve energy savings, encapsulating dirt crawlspaces and working in attics and other less pleasant areas of homes where air leaks are often present.

“I’m insulted if I don’t get dirty on a job,” he said.

The average return on investment for customers is between 10 and 20 percent of the total cost of the repairs and improvements, with the work paying for itself after a period of between five and 10 years.

“We fix the comfort problems in houses and through that process we lower energy bills,” MacNaughton said.

The business is also creating local jobs as it grows, offering positions for both salespeople and product installers. MacNaughton said that, in the energy efficiency field, “a salesman is an educator” that has to stay educated about efficiency improvements. The installers need building backgrounds, as roofers, carpenters or construction workers, for example.

One new employee, Jason Chamberlain, is a Granby native who graduated from Granby Memorial High School in 2007 and received a degree in geology from Keene State in New Hampshire this spring.

He said he’s happy to be applying his interest in environmental conservation to a motivated work environment where employees are happy to come into each day. Besides improving comfort and lowering costs for homeowners, the result of many of the repairs is a huge motivator for Chamberlain.

“We’re lowering greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

Dr. Energy Saver performs work on-site from the Massachusetts border south to Berlin, as far east as Somers and as far west as Barkhamsted and Winsted. The company offers free estimates. To learn more, visit the Dr. Energy Saver website. You can also visit the company's new location at the East Granby Center Shops at the intersection of Route 20 and Route 187.

Look for a video with a simple, do-it-yourself energy saving tip from Dr. Energy Saver coming up soon on The Granbys Patch.