The call for conserving energy is everywhere these days, from stanching global warming and weaning the U.S off of foreign fuels to just making household heating and cooling affordable.
While the siren song of energy tax credits for big-ticket building projects is tempting, if you’re trying to save dollars, why not spend time, money, and effort where it will get you a payback in a timely manner? One way to do this in an old house is to concentrate on energy upgrades that are themselves efficient. Start with the simplest, lowest-investment efforts that can give you the biggest (and quickest) bang for your buck. It’s a strategy that’s not only easy on the pocketbook, but also has the least impact on the historic fabric of an old house.
If you consider improving energy efficiency as problem-solving— and you should—the classic first step is to define and limit the problem. In an old house, this means identifying locations where the building is losing heat (or in the case of cooling, gaining heat). Rather than guess, the best way to do this is to seek professional help in the form of an energy audit. Utility companies sometimes offer rudimentary versions of this service at no charge, but hiring an independent auditor will produce an analysis that’s not only bias-free, but also more in-depth, with the potential to pay for itself in energy savings.