Thinking of a Home Improvement Project?

Thinking of replacing your windows, roofing or doing some other major home improvement project? Then consider a “deep energy retrofit” (DER) of your home. A deep energy retrofit is a “makeover” of the parts of your house that affect energy use. It usually includes windows, but also the parts that you never see, such as wall and roof insulation and all those little air leakage cracks.

National Grid, Sudbury’s natural gas provider, is offering a deep energy retrofit pilot program with substantial cost incentives. The goal of the program is to understand how much energy can be saved and at what cost by a DER, while maintaining or improving the home’s air quality and comfort. National Grid defines the minimum levels of insulation required for the windows, basement floor, subgrade basement walls, above grade walls and the roof. And, there’s an air leakage requirement: the house must be very tight. Here’s the detailed information: NGrid's DER website.

OK, still interested? I was intrigued when I discovered the NGrid DER pilot. I stumbled across it while researching window replacements for a house that my wife and I purchased last year. The house was typical, ‘60’s era residential construction: leaky and minimally insulated. The previous owners had added attic insulation and replaced some windows, but the energy bills were high. After reading the NGrid website, and visiting an DER Open House, we decided to go for it. At the same time, we thought it would make sense to add a second floor to the house along with the DER construction work.

So, right now, the construction is in full gear, and it's time for us to host an Open House with National Grid and the principal DER subcontractor, Synergy Construction LLC of Lancaster, MA.

You're invited: come to 61 Oakwood Avenue in Sudbury between noon and 3:00 P.M. this coming Sunday, March 4^th. Here’s the official announcement (which includes photos): http://www.powerofaction.com/media/pdf/Sudbury_Open_House.pdf

As part of the goings-on, an air leakage test will be done on the house at its current stage of completion by Flemming Lund, Sudbury's own energy performance evaluator.