Weatherization

We are having a snow day in South Texas. Technically, it was only a dusting of snow but prior to the snow falling, ice fell. Seeing that it has been below freezing for two days now and is still below freezing at 11:24 am, the roads, school, and most companies closed for the day.

We told Sy last night that even if school was open, he didn't have to go in until 9:30 and we totally didn't mind if he slept in. He was up at 6:07 am. On a regular school day, I'm encouraging him to get up at 7:00 and listen to him tell me how tired he is for the next 15 minutes. He does this on stay at home family days. I don't know what that is but I really wish he would learn to sleep until 8 - that would be nice.

Now that I have that out of the way, I think today is an appropriate day to discuss weatherizing your home. When Roy bought this property in 95, he never intended on living down here so he didn't care that the house was a disaster. But after a year of going back and forth to town every other day, it got to be too much and he decided to make this place home. So he turned his attention from the outside and focused on the inside. And when I say focused, he basically patched it up, brought in some furniture, turned on the water, electric, and propane and called it home.

The first few winters he used space heaters for warmth in the winter and fans for a breeze in the summer. The windows were old and thin single pane glass. Some had screens, most didn't but they all opened and that was a good thing.

For the third winter, he installed a central heating system. Somewhere in this time frame, he blew insulation into the attic and added an attic fan. All of these helped but still the heater ran almost all the time through the winter and then in the summer, the fans were on constantly to help with the heat.

The fourth summer, he put an a/c unit in the bedroom.When I moved in in 2002, we added another unit to the living room.

And since 2004 (post wedding), Roy has stripped the bathroom, bedrooms, living room and foyer to the studs. In putting the rooms back together, he added insulation (more than recommended), insulated double pane vinyl windows with argon, and energy efficient lighting. We closed up the cat door by adding a box they walk into in the garage to help keep the cold/heat from coming in there and Roy re-did the weather stripping on the outside doors.

In addition to all of that, we added central air conditioning, put a timer on the water heater, added a clothes line, and made the outside lights around the house sensor activated.

We took all of these steps because we wanted to keep the noise of the train out of the house, be "green", and most importantly save money. The latter really came into play because Texas deregulated and the company Roy was using for electricity kept raising it's rates - to the point where the monthly electricity bill was more than the house payment. Now, keep in mind, he has three area lights, the fish room and the house so we pay on three meters. But still, it was crazy. And especially when we were trying to fix up the house, we had a baby, and trying to pay off debt brought to the marriage, it was extremely stressful and money debates were an almost daily topic. Not fun.

Roy was great and researched other electricity providers with lower rates that provided service in our area. So we switched. We wound up doing it twice but we are very happy with the provider we selected with the second switch and we have stayed with them for the last five years.

I am happy to say that the expense of closing up all the gaps and making all these improvements is finally paying off. The electric bills have stayed pretty constant even all year long. The floors are still a little cold (we are putting that plan together) but overall the house is warm and cozy or cool and comfortable and the units are not running all the time.

The electricity provider told us when we signed up that a few dollars every month went into an emergency fund. If it wasn't used we would get it back, with interest. At the time, we really just wanted those few extra dollars in our bank account, but finally it has paid off. We did not have to pay anything for November and December's electricity usage because they used what they owed us from that fund to credit those two months bills. That was a nice break.

While it was painful having to pay for all these improvements, they have proven themselves worthy of our time and investment.  And it's nice to not be pulling so many Kw from the grid.