Thursday, July 1, 2010

Two Year Update on Gordon's Deep Energy Retrofit of Schoolhouse to Home

Gordon sent in the results for his 2nd full winter of operation on his schoolhouse retrofitted to a VERY energy efficient home.
The results continue to be just amazing -- these are the total wintertime space heating energy used:
  • $199 of firewood
  • $13 LPG
  • $7 for electricity
Pretty impressive for a home in a tough Canada climate.

Gordon and Sue's house is a retrofit of an old schoolhouse that had no insulation, poor windows, ....
They did a very carefully designed retrofit that includes adding an R40 Larsen Truss for wall insulation, very efficient passive gain windows, a masonry heater, and a new solarium (shown in the picture) that provides solar space heating for the house.  The house is beautiful inside and out.

The home comes close to meeting Passive House Institute standards , and uses about 6% of of the energy of a similar size typical home in their area -- all in a retrofit!


Details on Gordon's deep energy retrofit of a schoolhouse into a home....

Performance update after two full winters ...

Gary