Seal up your last few purchases

The HRTC is a tax credit against your income of 15 per cent of what I’ll call permanent upgrades to your home and surrounding property, as well as the labour fees paid to do the work. You can only claim expenses after your first $1000 spent, and that’s only for receipts dated January 27, 2009 to January 31, 2010. The maximum refund is $1,350. For all the details, see the government website.

So far I think my partner and I are up to about a $500 tax credit, thanks to masonry work, adding insulation to our attic, a lot of plumbing and electrical supplies and many other bits and pieces. 15 per cent isn’t an incredible amount of money, but we’re doing the work, so we might as well get the tax benefit. Hopefully the real payback will come from the ecoEnergy Retrofit program and, of course, in reduced utility costs (and a smaller carbon footprint).

If you’ve collected your receipts but need a tool organize your expenses and calculate what you’ll get back, download the Homemakers HRTC tool here.

Blower door test

Last fall, my partner and I bought a house in mid-town Toronto. I scheduled an energy audit through the Eco Energy Retrofit Program for a week after we took possession. We had the house for six weeks before moving in, so I wanted to see if anything messy should be done before we brought in our stuff. We knew we were buying an older home, and while it’s a sturdy brick box without any major issues, we were sure a lot could be done to make it more energy efficient. We plan on doing some renovations anyway, including refinishing our basement and our bathroom, and we’d like to reduce the carbon footprint of the place — and our energy bills — as much as possible.

The audit cost $340, but the province of Ontario sent me a refund for $150 (they automatically send auditees 50 per cent of the fee or up to $150).

I hired Greensaver to come in and do our audit. The technician spent about 20 minutes looking around the house, evaluating how it was constructed and what updates have been done. We talked about the kinds of improvements we’d like to add, and I think he was surprised at some of our ambitions, such as adding a PowerPipe drainwater heat recovery system, an on-demand hot-water heater, blow-in wall insulation to fill the space between the plaster and the brick walls, and other reno goodies. It was worth mentioning these, as it seemed that the technician can gear the report to the kinds of upgrades you’re planning to do.

Next, the technician went up into the attic. Our home inspector had reported that there’s plenty of insulation up there, but the technician said the standards are higher now — the EcoEnergy program recommends taking attics up to R50! He found some gaps in the insulation levels and suggested we could save a lot of money on our heating and cooling bills if we topped up the cellulose in the attic.

The blower door test was somewhat dramatic. As you can see in the picture above, the technician sealed up our front door (a fairly new, well-sealed, efficient door) and proceeded to use a fan to suck air out of the house and through a hole in the enclosure. With the test underway, we ran our hands around the edges of windows, doors, baseboards and other cracks. Wherever there was a gap, however small, I could really feel the air flowing over my hands. Our patio door is definitely leaky, but it’s nothing compared to our back door!

We received our report a couple of weeks later — our house scored a measly 49 where the Ontario average for a house of similar age is 57. The technician noted that, with improvements to the wall insulation, attic, basement walls and door and some general draft sealing we should be able to bring our house up to a 75.

Now we have 13 months left to do our renovations and get re-audited so we can qualify for all of the federal and provincial rebates, and we’ll also qualify for the new Home Renovation Tax Credit. We’ve already added insulation to the walls, but I’m looking forward to doing more to make our house a greener home.

Are you thinking of getting an energy audit? How do you think an audit could help in greening up your place?