In February or March we signed up for the Alaska Home Energy Rebate program. In this program, people go out to inspect houses and make recommendations on what can be done to improve their energy efficiency. Then once improvements have been made, the state will reimburse the costs at varying levels, based on what work has been done. The sole reason we signed up for the program was to get new windows, but while we were at it we took the opportunity to do a bunch of other projects too.
The first big project was the water heater. When the energy auditor came to do the first inspection we went down in the crawlspace and discovered the water heater was leaking, so that had to be fixed right away. We decided to do as much as we could on our own to save money, so I learned how to replace a water heater. We replaced our old tank water heater in the crawlspace with an on demand unit in the garage. I spent quite a lot of time in the crawlspace and the garage and learned a ton about rerouting water and gas pipes and running exhaust vents to the outside. The new water heater is efficient because it only heats water as you need it, instead of keeping a big tank warm all the time for the few minutes we need hot water every day. Although Marel worries (only half jokingly) that it may turn out to be less efficient for her, because she used to take showers until the hot water ran out, but with the new water heater, it never runs out of hot water so she doesn't know when to get out.
After all the work done and time spent, and with a new water heater hooked up and working, we realized we needed to get the old one out, which turned out to be almost as challenging as the rest of the project, requiring some ratcheting cables to hoist it out of the crawlspace.
We also replaced the front door. The old one was mounted a little crooked and was hard to open and close, and became even harder to open and close on the coldest days, when it's most important to keep the door closed. It's been nice having a door that opens and closes easily.
And in order to get the old door out and new one in, we had to remove the old railing, and when I did so it sort of disintegrated because it was built in such a way that rainwater pooled in it and rotted the wood out. So I replaced the railing too.
We also added insulation to the attic and crawlspace. The crawlspace was a long process because I had to foam-seal between the floor joists and hang fiberglass batts, but the attic was quick and easy. We just had to pick up the machine and a bunch of insulation and blow it in. It was sort of a lot of fun blowing it in. The machine outside that you feed the insulation blocks into is kind of like a giant shop-vac--big and noisy--but being up in the attic with the hose was surprisingly quiet and peaceful. It was like being in heavy snowfall out in the woods.
This is what was happening a lot of times while I was working on projects...we had a pretty nice summer.
Also somewhere along the way we got our garage door replaced, which was the only work we hired out for. Then in December we had the follow-up audit and found out that the efficiency of our home improved enough to get all our money back, minus the cost of tools (which aren't covered by the program). So by doing all these projects ourselves under the state rebate program, we made all these improvements for only the cost of the tools we used to do them! And after all that work last year, we're really ready to sit back and relax in our warm house this winter.
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