In the "Burning down coals" thread, there was some discussion about possible insulation problems.
If you have a fossil fuel heating system or if you know your fuel consumption in BTUs, you can figure out how efficient your house is in such a way that you can compare it to other houses of different sizes and in different regions. Calculate the heating BTUs per square foot per degree day. To get the heating BTUs you need to subtract out your baseline which is typically domestic hot water and maybe cooking and clothes drying. For square footage use your "conditioned" square feet, and for degree days I use http://www.wunderground.com. My baseline use is about 1 therm or 100,000 BTUs per day, and my heating BTUs per sf per dd was 8.3 for December and 7.3 so far for January. I have 2x4 walls blown with cellulose, so about R-11 there, the attic is insulated and the windows are new Andersen. No insulation in the basement, which was 48 degrees yesterday. My sense is that my house is slightly better than average, not great. My natural gas bills have come down quite a bit with the insulation and windows, which were done midway through last year's heating season.
Does anyone else track this? On some other blogs people have reported numbers as low as 2 BTUs per sf per dd.
If you have a fossil fuel heating system or if you know your fuel consumption in BTUs, you can figure out how efficient your house is in such a way that you can compare it to other houses of different sizes and in different regions. Calculate the heating BTUs per square foot per degree day. To get the heating BTUs you need to subtract out your baseline which is typically domestic hot water and maybe cooking and clothes drying. For square footage use your "conditioned" square feet, and for degree days I use http://www.wunderground.com. My baseline use is about 1 therm or 100,000 BTUs per day, and my heating BTUs per sf per dd was 8.3 for December and 7.3 so far for January. I have 2x4 walls blown with cellulose, so about R-11 there, the attic is insulated and the windows are new Andersen. No insulation in the basement, which was 48 degrees yesterday. My sense is that my house is slightly better than average, not great. My natural gas bills have come down quite a bit with the insulation and windows, which were done midway through last year's heating season.
Does anyone else track this? On some other blogs people have reported numbers as low as 2 BTUs per sf per dd.
