BACK IN 2007...

Since the energy audit and insulation consult I mentioned in my last post will take some time, I thought I'd introduce you to our old Nova Scotia home which we lovingly refer to as the Cottage. It's hard to believe it was 15 years ago that we bought on the South Shore.

We were living in Ontario at the time but knew we would be coming back home to Nova Scotia at some point. We had been looking on real estate sites for places but really had not seen anything we liked or could afford. During a trip to Nova Scotia to visit family, we were driving along the Medway River and found a little house for sale. We stopped to look in the front windows and were won over by the sun shining in the side window into the kitchen. We immediately contacted the agent but she said there was already a pending sale. A month later she contacted us to say the deal had fallen through. After a quick trip by one of us back to Nova Scotia in November ahead of a hurricane and the inside sight unseen by the other spouse, we had a new house. This is what it looked like then.

That Christmas, we drove down to investigate our diamond in the rough. We slept on an air mattress on the living room floor and we were so happy LOL. Renovations started in the Spring when we were able to come down for a whole week and still continue. I'll post some before and after pictures another day.

ON THE ROAD TO ENERGY SAVINGS....

One of the things we want to achieve with the old house we live in is to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce fuel costs. Our initial step was to figure out how much energy our 1516 sq. ft. old house has historically used to provide heat and hot water. As you can see from the image below, most of our basement is stone and dirt. Luckily my organized wife had kept all our furnace oil bills since we owned our house. Our average liters of furnace oil consumed per year from 2013 to 2022 was 2,746 L. Using data provided by the Efficiency Nova Scotia website, we know furnace oil generates 36,500 BTU/L. Therefore, on average our old house has used 100,229,000 BTU or 100 MBTU per year to heat our home and provide hot water.

Efficiency Nova Scotia’s (ENS) website gives some great data and examples for home energy usage for a variety of heating methods. For a 1700 sq. ft. home they calculate the average energy consumed to heat the home with furnace oil is 65 MBTU. They do a separate calculation for hot water, which gives an additional energy of 32.5 MBTU for a tankless coil oil furnace which is the kind we have in our house. Combining the two, ENS's prediction of average energy use for heat and hot water would be 97.5 MBTU. Based on this, our old house compares reasonably well to the ENS calculations. Interestingly, ENS does a similar calculation for what they call an “old house” where the energy to heat the home is 80 MBTU, for a total of 112.5 MBTU for heat and hot water. Again, our old house is comparing reasonably well.

This comparison is a bit of a surprise. Our oil furnace is 27 years old and internet sources suggest that an oil furnace this old would have an efficiency in the range of 60 to 75%. A value ENS uses for an old oil furnace that gave the 80 MBTU energy consumption calculated above is 70% efficiency. So is our furnace more efficient than I thought? Not likely. The fact that we keep our thermostat set at 64 °F during the day and 58 °F at night during the cold weather may account for a lower energy usage than the ENS calculations. Our house is also a little smaller (1516 sq. ft.) than the 1700 sq. ft. ENS example which may also factor into the favourable comparison.

I don’t think our house is very well insulated. The basement and crawlspace have no insulation on the walls or ceilings. We think the outside walls of the 1^st and 2^nd floor have some blown-in insulation but it has settled in the wall cavities. Our attic does have some insulation, so it appears there is lots of room for improvement.

Even though our old house seems to compare well with what might be expected, we want to see what we can do to reduce the energy consumption of our old house. Hopefully, this would allow us to reduce the cost of heating and reduce our contribution to greenhouse gases to help mitigate, in our small way, the impact of the climate crisis. Our next steps will be to get an energy audit and have our house assessed by professionals for insulation improvements. Stay tuned for the results of these tests!

IN THE BEGINNING...

While there is some truth to the old saying that the only things working in an old house are the people who live in it, for those of us lucky enough to live in one, it is a labor of love. In our case, we actually own two, both century homes. One in Bedford and one on the South Shore in Queens County. 

Over the last 15 years, we have spent lots of time and money working on the houses and still there is always lots more to do. We hope you will be interested in hearing about the changes and seeing some of our before and afters. Join us as we dig into the pros and cons of more renovation and upgrades while still maintaining the character of the homes we love.

If we have time, we would also like to share a bit about the renovation experiences of other owners of old Nova Scotia homes, so stay tuned.