No Cats Sucked Out Today

When the man from Clean Nova Scotia stuck that giant fan in my doorway, I was a little concerned that the cat might get sucked through it and end up as a million little fur bits in the front yard, but Charles Banting calmly assured me that no cats had been sucked out yet. At least, not on his watch.

Freaked out by the huge jump in my estimated heating costs for this winter, I had decided to have an audit done to find out what I could do to improve the energy-efficiency of my sixty-year-old house. It just seemed like a good idea, because the building method employed in the construction of my house is commonly referred to by the technical term: “slapdash.”

So it was a little unnerving to watch as my flimsy little house was in the process of being depressurized by a turbine that looked – and sounded – frighteningly like a jet engine. Disturbing, but fascinating. After all, I was paying this man to help me determine just how leaky, inefficient, and poorly-insulated my house was. As if I didn’t know.

In fact, I didn’t know. Oh, I knew the windows were drafty and the walls were poorly insulated. I had seen the workers laugh as they pulled seaweed from between the walls when they replaced a window in my kitchen a few years ago. But my man Charles, expert energy-efficiency auditor from Clean NS, gave me a whole new perspective on my holey house as we explored its every little nook and cranny.

The nice thing about Charles was that he was completely non-judgmental. Did he roll his eyes at the little flap of weather-stripping hanging half-off the outside door frame? No. Did he for a moment suggest that I had been lax in not caulking the obvious gaps around my basement windows? No.

If anything, Charles was more than willing to simply share his abundant knowledge. And I, apparently, had a lot to learn. The first thing Charles taught me was that I need to separate the unheated spaces from the heated spaces in my house. My attic, for instance, is apparently sucking massive amounts of energy as I allow my precious heat to seep into it and the unwanted cold air out of it. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a HUGE job to insulate it properly. So that one is going on the “long term solutions” side of the equation. Also on that side, the biggest heat-sucking space in my house – the basement. Apparently the whole darn thing needs to be insulated. That massive job won’t be happening on my freelancer’s salary any time soon (gentle hint to Editor).

I did, however, learn that I can alleviate the basement leakage situation somewhat by simply insulating the rather odd gap between the top of my foundation and the bottom of my house. Don’t ask. But, that one, I’m pretty sure, is do-able.

Also do-able: all those little air-sealing things, like putting foam fillers in electrical outlets, calking around windows and weather-stripping around doors. Unfortunately, those things aren’t going to earn me much in the way of government financial incentives. But they can improve my home’s rather dismal energy efficiency rating of 46 points by 1.9 points! (The average rating of a house the same age in Nova Scotia is 51, and the highest is 80.)

Oh well. I’ll do what I can, and there’s always next year. For now I’ll just continue to keep the thermostat low and cuddle up to the kitty – who’s happily still in one piece – for warmth.