[Greenbuilding] Cost of Poor Insulation Installation

[Chris Green]

Speireag Alden wrote:
> Sgrìobh sho11 at comcast.net:
>
>   
>> Here on the West Coast with a mild climate the quality of insulation 
>> is generally awful.  I think most people don't think it matters but 
>> my house near Santa Cruz costs nearly $3000 each year just to heat 
>> it!
>>     
>
>      Ye gods.  I live in New Hampshire, and this last winter my house 
> was not completely sealed (very leaky, actually, what with plastic 
> spread over a missing wall and all).  We used electric heat, because 
> whilst we're building we can move the heater around as needed.  We 
> used about $1000 of rather expensive electricity.  That will be it 
> for the year.
>
>      $3000 in central coastal California?  That's just wrong.
>
> -Speireag.
>
>   
I agree completely.

I live in a leaky 1960's house in Canada, one with 4 apartments. 
Everything's electric, although there is a fireplace upstairs that is 
used during the winter (burns about 1 - 1 1/2 cords per year. ), and we 
have some light sculptures in the yard which are lit until about midnight.
 The electric bill here is under $3,000/ year for all 4 units, so that 
averages out to about $750/ year each unit.
 It would be much lower if the 2x4 walls actually had R-12 in them and 
the window frames weren't aluminum....

That's at about $0.068 CAD per kwh, tax included, or about $0.064US.

Try the free HEED (Home Energy Efficient Design ) software to compare 
different building models for your area.
http://www2.aud.ucla.edu/heed/
Unfortunately, it doesn't model super-insulted (straw bale) houses at my 
latitude very well...it could use an update.

Cheers,

Chris Green.