Ro Troia

What Is A Renewable Retrofit?

For starters, a renewable retrofit is not only economical and promotes energy efficiency but in Boulder Colorado, it is also trendy.  Picture an older home built in the 50’s or 60’s with its original appliances, outdated insulation, and air leaks.  In addition to adding solar panels, retrofitted homes include programmable thermostats, energy efficient appliances, icynene insulation, and heat recovery ventilators.  These photos are of a pop-top home in South Boulder Colorado that converted its 40’s built property to double the size while reducing overall utility bills.  Continue to read about home energy efficiency.

According to Molly Rettig of Home and Garden magazine, rising energy costs make it essential to target residential emissions.  Buildings for example, account for about 50% of Boulder’s total carbon footprint, with nearly 1/3 of that from homes.  Boulder County adopted one of the nation’s strictest building codes in spring 2008 with Build Smart.  However, only about 100 new homes are built in Boulder every year so it’s the city’s 51,000 existing homes that represent the bulk of the problem. 

Ken Regelson, owner of a Boulder Retrofitted home, further explains that we need to figure out what to do with these older homes and that insulating, sealing leaks, and upgrading appliances only reaps about 30% of energy savings.  If you want to get to zero net energy, he suggests further insulation and solar electric roof panels. 

Because these panels can be over the budget of some homeowners, have an energy audit first.  If you are losing a good percentage of energy due to leakage, first seal the foundation, weather strip the doors and insulate the walls.  These improvements run about $2000 and can save the owner around $360/year in energy bills, paying for themselves in less than 6 years.  I have to agree with many Boulder locals however, it’s not about the money  and what your payback will be.  It’s about choosing a quality of life that supports environmental sustainability and doing the right thing.

In conclusion, a retrofitted home is one that makes changes by re-using materials rather than buying new ones.  It means insulating or updating the insulation, replacing the thermostat, upgrading the windows, and sealing leaks.  It is a practical and affordable way to reduce building emissions and cut energy costs.  And from a real estate perspective, the resale of a retrofitted home could increase dramatically due to lower fuel costs.  And most importantly, a renewable retrofit for your older home is the right thing to do! Contact me to talk more about retrofits.

Tags: Tags: boulder colorado, energy audit, energy efficiency, real estate, renewable retrofit, resale, solar panels

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 8:17 am and is filed under Focus on Boulder, Home Inspections and Maintenance, Selling Thoughts, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. David said at July 9th, 2009 at 5:27 pm

   Juelz, you have a lot of good info to share. Anyways I seen this blog and just wanted to drop aline. Hope all is well. By the way you are still looking good!

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