Earth Day Invite: Visit Open Houses for Energy Ideas for Your Own Home

Editor's Note: This is the ninth in a series of articles contributed by Transition Wayland and the Wayland Green Team inviting residents to an Earth Day weekend with Open Houses all over town. Each week until then, you'll learn about another event at a different location.This week we discuss how you can get ideas for your own house energy improvements from the many strategies used in the open houses. The following article was written by Anne Harris.

It’s another frigid winter morning. As you come downstairs you see through the windows the grey skies, snow piled on the back yard, leafless trees like bony stalks. But the room is toasty, snugly sealed and insulated with extra thick walls, warmed by an air source heat pump busy extracting heat from the outside air. Wait — extracting heat on a February day? You heard right, and the beauty of it all is it’s powered by solar energy produced on the roof, making the sum total of the energy bills for heating and cooling the house for a year — zero. Sound like a dream? It’s not.

This Earth Day you’ll have a chance to visit a number of homes that use a variety of strategies to either reduce energy use, generate energy or both. If you are considering a remodel, or even modest upgrades to your home, come and get ideas. We often spend more time thinking about tile colors and door hardware than how our home uses energy, but efficient energy performance will have much longer term effects on your comfort, utility bills and carbon footprint than your door hardware ever will.

My urging to consider the important issues of home energy performance comes from personal experience. In 2005 we undertook a major renovation in which the floor plan and flow of spaces was carefully considered, but the heating, cooling and energy performance of the house was designed simply to meet current building codes. After the renovation was completed we were surprised and disappointed to find our new, slightly larger home was a bigger energy user than the pre-renovated house. I had assumed our use would go down; after all, we replaced the roof, siding, windows and heat distribution system in our 1950s Cape, and some walls were gutted to the studs with new insulation added. I had also assumed the current building codes would guarantee we would get the most energy efficient house available. It was a hard lesson to learn that neither of those things were true. 

Why not? In 2005, the Massachusetts state building energy code had not been updated in almost 10 years. Think about your smart phone not being updated in 10 years! Things improved with the passage of the Green Communities Act in 2008, which linked the building base energy code to international standards and required it to be updated every three years. Wayland, as part of becoming a Green Community, went even farther by adopting the Stretch Energy Code, which ensures the energy performance of most new and renovated buildings will be 20 percent better than the base energy code.

But why stop there? Housing technology has advanced to the point that it is now possible to build houses that use very little energy, some approaching a net zero energy use over the course of a year, through a combination of a lot of insulation, air sealing (with mechanical ventilation included for fresh air), efficient appliances and heating and cooling systems and renewable energy generation like solar panels. The critical point here is that it costs a small percentage more to make these improvements at the time of the new construction. It costs a lot more, and is a lot more difficult, to do after the fact.  If you were about to renovate or build a new home and knew you could spend a little more up front to have negligible utility bills later, wouldn’t you want to?

Just remember not every builder or architect will automatically be thinking about building ultra- efficient homes. It takes a bit more care and money, so unless you as the homeowner indicate it is an important issue to you, you will get a code-built house and probably not much more. So be sure to discuss options like Energy Star, LEED, deep energy retrofits, Passive houses, or net zero energy homes.

Even if you are not planning a home renovation or new home, there are opportunities for energy improvements in every house.  Start with a free home energy audit by going to the MassSave website or call 866-527-SAVE (7283).  NSTAR and National Grid are required by law to spend substantial funds on residential energy efficiency, so if your house is underinsulated or leaky, you may qualify for up to $2,000 of improvements. You could also be eligible for a 0 percent interest loan called the HEAT loan that can be used for a variety of heating and cooling improvements. 

Visit the Open Houses for some wonderful ideas on how you might make your home a model for sustainable energy use. Get a home energy assessment for additional help with low cost energy improvements and loans. And most of all, be sure to consider energy performance with any upgrade to your home.

Earth Day 2013 is organized by Transition Wayland and the Wayland Schools PTO Green Team (www.waylandgreenteam.org). You can find more information about Earth Day 2013, as well as a map and schedule of the Open Houses, by visiting www.transitionwayland.org. 

Anne Harris is a member of the Wayland Energy Initiatives Advisory Committee.  For information on energy issues in town, visit the website.