Warmth

           Winter is coming , or it's already here, depending on various views. With that comes the bitter New England cold. Planning for keeping warm in the winter is a new thing for me. I've only been a homeowner two years now. Before that I was lucky to always have an apartment with heat and hot water included. Rarely did I have any issues with a cold apartment. Overall I was pretty lucky with my landlords.

          The first winter with an oil furnace was an eye opener. I couldn't believe how quickly the tank could get used up. And the price for heating oil was phenomenal when all added up. Now, my house is only 1080 square feet, so when I bought the place I figured it really wouldn't be all that expensive to heat. Still amazed at how often I had to fill the tank in the winter. When I bought the place, the oil furnace was brand new, and used forced hot water to old 1950's styled baseboard in the rooms. No heat in the basement itself.

          Recently our town was given a federal grant/office to improve overall home heating efficiency. The Better Buildings program provides 1% loans on projects to increase/improve the insulation, efficiency, and heating sources of homes. Also a part of this is PSNH, the utility company providing up to half the costs for estimated projects up to $4000 on their end.

          To get started, I met with Cimbria, the person running the office of the program, which gave me a questionnaire to figure out how much fuel/electricity I was using. Calculations put in, and my home was deemed on the high end of being inefficient.
         
          The next step was to pay $100 to have an efficiency expert come in and find all the "leaks" in my house. This was part of the PSNH step. The expert, Melissa, came in and applied this big door fan to my kitchen door. This door would signal in spots where there could be leaks with noticing the air passing through.

           I received my assessment in the mail, and a couple weeks later an assessment from a contracting company that's approved by the program sent me their assessment with what each aspect would cost, with particulars to how much PSNH would cover. I got some free stuff coming to me. As my cost was about $3400, and PSN would cover the remainder at about $3700. Not bad at all.

           My good friends Leane and Tracy Rexford had recently had these same contractors in due similar type of work through the Better Buildings program. The results for them were good, as they're already noticing a significant difference in how well their home is staying heated while using less fuel. However, the contracting crews were quite messy when they were done, and actually caused some damage to some of their first floor ceilings. Last I heard, the contracting company is either going to reimburse my friends of simply fix their mistakes.

          The same contractors are coming this month on the 21st. I've exchanged a few emails with the owner of the company, and I've been informed the stuff for my house will take two days, three at most. I'm looking forward to this getting done, especially since recently filling the oil tank and using the heat daily again.

          With all that insulating/tightening of the house going on, I'm also using the Better Buildings loan to add on an alternative heating source, a wood pellet stove. As I mentioned before, there's no actual heat source in my basement. So I decided on the right spot for a wood pellet stove to go. That's set to be installed on December 14th. The one I've picked out is a Harmon P43, which can heat up to 1500 square feet. With installation that will cost about $3200. A friend of my father's came by to give me some advice and tell me what it'd be like once I got the stove started. which gave me some ideas and only strengthened by resolve to get one in soon.

           Now I'm excited. So by mid December I should have a much more efficient home with a better radiant heat source. And when all is said and done will be paid for with a 1% loan of about $6700. This will be like a small car loan, which I can handle a lot better than the ridiculous amounts I was paying for just heating with oil in a badly insulated home. Looking forward to using a lot less oil. Especially with these companies that jack up their prices and show record profits.