Next steps

You would think that it is easy to finish off a project like this. Yet when you are doing lots of the work yourself and you don't mind a bit of a mess it can drag on!

We are now having the drywall installed in the basement. Has to be done in two parts due to the fact that we are living in the house during the renovation and are using these spaces. One space needs to be made empty to allow for work, filling the other with stuff. The empty space gets sub floor, sheetrock, paint, floor, trim, installed cabinets/etc. and then move all of the stuff from the other room into the finished space to allow for the unfinished space to get finished.

This while doing all of the regular work of life.

I am working on an analysis of the energy use of the house this past winter. It was quite the winter. It looks like we spent around $800 to heat the house for the heating season. We would have spent more than $4000 to heat the house before the retrofit. I'll have hard numbers on what we used soon and projecting it to what it would have cost before the retrofit will be difficult.

This heating season so far had 8200 Heating Degrees Days. The usual Vermont winter is 7200 HDD. That is a 13.8% increase! It's not over yet either. Yesterday's nighttime low was 25 F. Last night it was in the upper 30's.

Fortunately the house doesn't really need heat if it is above 40F and it is sunny out. The solar heat gains are enough to heat the house to 70F+ and the super insulation will keep it warm through the night.

If it is not sunny then we do have to put the heat pump on.

I will be submitting the house to the Thousand House Challenge, but need to get a year's worth of data first (November to November).

Still not certain if we are going to go forward with one heat pump or if we might add one smaller one in one of the upstairs bedrooms to make sure we have enough heat.