Week 8: Energy Audit & References

Remember that learning curve i talked about? Well this week were on it and i suddenly realize it is not going to stop anytime soon. That realization creates a bit of a zen moment and brings a certain amount of peace. We are trying to do everything by the book so that if something does go sideways we won’t be blaming ourselves. I am of two minds about references though, you know that the builder is not going to give you the hell projects so what is the point really? They are all going to say the project was great, the team was great, and it was the best decision they made. I’ll come back to that.

The energy audit was interesting but i am a total nerd for this sort of thing. We went through it 15 years when we first moved in and had to make the house habitable so we knew what to expect and since i am a packrat, i still have the original report. I am looking forward to comparing. When i say that we had to make the house habitable i am not exaggerating much. The furnace was gas, but it was a bajillion years old. The monthly gas bill was over $100 from that and from leaking hot water taps. 15 years later our bills are only $60/month so that gives you some sense of the shape the house was in. When they did the blower door test back in 2005 our house had an air change rate per hour of 0.629 ac/h. A house is considered drafty at 0.5 ac/h. The recommended rate is 0.3 ac/h. With an air change rate that high we basically had to heat more than twice as much air to keep our house at the same temperature. One calculation they did for the Equivalent Air Leakage calculates the sum of all air leakages in the house. Ours was 333.7 square inches. That is the equivalent of a hole 18″ x 18″. Ugh. I think at the time we still had the vented cold cupboard that had vents to the outside top and bottom and we also had a double hung window in the back bedroom that had slipped and been painted in place leaving a gap at the top that in my memory was a couple of inches tall at one side (it slipped on one side and jammed) but was likely only a centimeter or so. Anyway, it all adds up and we did a lot of work to make the house more airtight. While our follow up assessment didn’t give us a full report it did indicate that we reduced our GHG’s by an estimated 5 tonnes per year. I’ll take that. We should have the new report this week so we will see how it compares.

But the references! That has been fun and really helps to build our excitement! It is fun to talk to other people who have done significant renos.

Our first reference was the acquaintance (brother of a neighbour) where we initially got the name of the builder and architect. John is adding a floor to his house a few blocks away so when i talked to Bruce across the alley he told us all about it. Bruce has done a ton of work on his house over the decades so if he was willing to recommend the builder that was enough for us. We hadn’t actually talked to John about his project though until this week and it was a blast. John has so much energy and is SO EXCITED about his reno it was infectious. Sarah and i both got off the phone exhausted but feeling the excitement. You’d have to be dead not to. John worked in the trades when he was younger and is doing a lot (lot, lot, lot) more of the work than we are tackling so after rushing through answering our questions he started to grill us about what we were doing. He was full of advice and had nothing but great things to say about both the builder and the architect.

One of the other builder references sent us a ton of photos and did his work with the builder in three phases. We never connected for a chat but he had good things to say about the builder and the fact that he did three significant projects with him gave both of us confidence.

The other architect reference we were able to connect with also had good things to say about the architect and his approach. Like us, their project started with a kitchen redesign and addition but part way in they had to replace their foundation. Can you imagine getting a surprise that size? At least we know we are lifting our house and have budgeted for it but to do it as a revision to your original plans? Oh. My. God. That is basically our nightmare and would totally sink us. I don’t think our project could.. ah… i’m not gonna say it. Don’t want to jinx anything. Basically they said that the architect rolled with the punches and provided therapy as well as lots of support. Obviously the budget questions were out the window but he said that the architect was great throughout. He also gave us a reality check about some of our plans. For example, they wanted to salvage and reuse their lap siding on he bottom of their house but because of city building codes they had to use Hardiplank on the bottom for fire protection. We think we are in control but some of these decisions are out of our hands. Rules are rules.

We talked to another reference for the builder that is also a few blocks away. They had a studio built to replace their garage which is a bit simpler than our project but still pretty significant. Again he had lots of good things to say about attention to detail, good communication, the team and the sub-trades. Somewhat worrying though apparently the timeline and the budget were both off. The reference didn’t blame the builder though because the project was put on hold at the start of COVID so it was hard to judge.

So we are feeling pretty good about our choices and he due diligence. We also had a couple of other conversations that are sending us off to do some research and might change some plans, but more on that later.