Energy Efficient Retrofit Case Study

Disaster With a Happy Ending

We got a call from some people that a pipe in their cabin froze enough to burst. The pump was still on and it was pumping water into the crawl space, then above the floor and on the floor. The bottom parts of the wall were all wet and he had torn the wall apart so he could look at the insulation which he found was all wet. It was in the middle of the winter and very cold so he called me to remove the old insulation and install new. When I looked at the damage, I realized that we were going to have to take it all apart.

Since we were essentially starting from scratch, I asked him what his goal was for this project.  He said, “well what do you mean?” I asked him how much he wanted to pay for heat? He responded that he didn’t want to pay anything or very little since they spend most of the winter in Florida. To his surprise, I explained that we could make that happen but that we would have to put in new windows, replace the insulation in the damaged walls and put more insulation on the outside of the walls.

One thing led to another and we rebuilt their cabin using our energy efficient products. We replaced the seven existing windows with our Wasco windows. It’s a small cabin on the south side of a beautiful lake so the view was to the north.  Well, having windows facing north is less than an ideal situation but that’s where the view is, so the windows had to stay there. On top of that, they had to put their couch in front of one of the windows because it had nowhere else to go. They were amazed that it wasn’t cold at all when they’re sitting on their couch in front of the window in the middle of winter like it used to be.

Their heating bills were roughly $450 a month with just resistance heating they had been using before.  We got the energy load down far enough that he’s using a mini split air to air heat pump mostly with electric baseboard for backup if that isn’t enough. He’s now spending about $55 a month and roughly 30-32 dollars of that is the basic monthly charge. With the improvements we made he’s heating his cabin for next to nothing achieving his goal.

End Result:

By retrofitting his existing cabin with our energy efficient products, their place heats for next to nothing, a result that they didn’t think was possible……………. And they’re thrilled with the overall results.