Our electric coop does an awesome thing, for $100 you can have an energy audit done on your home to see where you can make improvements in energy usage. Earlier in the fall, we decided we should complete an audit. We knew that our home had very little insulation and that there were lots of places we could improve but we wanted to know where to spend our money first. You know, where could we get the most bang for our buck.
So the energy audit team came out to the house armed with a special fan called a blower door, that they put in our front door. The goal was to pull the air out through the fan and determine where the home leaked air. This would give them a good idea of the places we needed the most improvement.
Well it turns out that our house had so many areas that were poorly (or not at all) insulated and that so much air comes right on in that they couldn’t even get a reading. You read that right, they couldn’t even give us a baseline reading because our home was that inefficient.
All was not lost though, the team was very helpful in walking through the house with me and telling me the areas they would focus on and start with. Of course, more insulation throughout the home is somewhat obvious but when you have a limited amount of money available for remodeling you really want to narrow it down some. So they suggested starting in my kitchen. Afterall, it’s no fun to cook if you’re freezing half to death.
So that’s exactly what we did. We stripped the existing walls so that we could add insulation and new wiring. We brought the insulation from the cabin and put it in the very small attic above the kitchen and insulted the walls. Now instead of 1″ foam board with an R Value of 5 we have R-39 in the ceiling and R-19 in the walls. Talk about making a huge difference, we are talking night and day.
We plan to continue adding insulation to the home, but the kitchen was a great place to start. Since we are working on the kitchen anyway, it seemed like a good time to remodel the entire kitchen and also a good time to Say Goodbye to the Kitchen Hydrant.
Blessings,
Jennifer