Retrofit Planning: Why?

Home Remodel Project

Some key reasons why we need do something:

• Family Changes - We've added 3 kids since we moved in 8 years ago and we're living out of two bedrooms upstairs, since the kids are too small to want to be in the basement.
• Professional development - live the message. The secret to satisfaction is to find something you care about and live your life to show it.
• Some issues with the building - some things need work.
• Risk mitigation for the future - Economy, peak oil, climate change... Shit happens.

We're enjoying the house. It has great character with the large beams, nice flooring, double sided fireplace, and large, plentiful windows. The location is great - being in town, but totally surrounded by trees, near a pond, and in a nice neighborhood. Heating bills are low, but I'm hoping for performance that will never leave my family or grandkids wondering how they'll heat the place. We want to be stewards of a nice home and the land and not leave an energy suck for another owner. When energy prices rise, we'll be highly valuable if we want to sell and build something else. Retrofits are of critical importance for society and this will be an interesting experiment.

We have a $183K mortgage. We love the location. We like the style, floor plan and the 3800 sq ft of the house. If we could do a near-ARC retrofit here for $100-150K, then we'd be in a good position compared to the price of building new for a home the size we have.

Resilience Goals:

1. Make the house super insulated and easy to heat
2. Reduce heating costs and water heating costs dramatically by using the ground water heat pump to heat domestic water like in the NARC only off-peak, too
3. Retain ability to heat with the fireplace
4. Retain well in basement and add manual pump option
5. Enhance cold storage room/root cellar function
6. Reduce susceptibility to forest fire by increasing space to trees and adding cement-board siding and steel roof
7. Decrease maintenance issues with new siding/roofing
8. Increase kitchen efficiency - expanded/counter dish washing space, better dish/appliance storage, more pantry space, easier people flow around island
9. Make more bedroom space for our children
10. Increase laundry efficiency by moving it upstairs, and maybe new appliances
11. Increase hot water efficiency with recycling shower in upstairs bathroom
12. Make many productive raised bed gardens in yard to take advantage of nutrient cycle in our yard (not part of this project, though)