We love our 1904 dream home, but we knew the moment we bought that we would need to invest in significant efficiency work. We’ve done home energy audits before. With our first starter home, we diligently insulated everything and made energy-related improvements. Yet, after putting every nickel into buying our house, plus having a new baby, we knew that the home efficiency improvements would have to be put on hold.
Through a stroke of political genius we are now going to be able to afford our green dream home improvements! We’ve been accepted into a new pilot program to help finance our efficiency improvements, called Clean Energy Works. The program is unique, because it’s the first “on-bill loan” with the payment of the loan added to our monthly utility bill. We will pay nothing up front, for $7,675 worth of insulation and home sealing work. We will repay at a rate of $50 a month (3% fixed over 20 years) on our utility bill.
A big reason why we were accepted into the pilot phase of the program is because our house is so darn drafty. We have a new efficient boiler with old-fashioned radiant heating (which apparently is really efficient, but just went out of style). When we had our home energy audit it clocked our house at loosing 5,900 cubic feet per minute (CFM), and we were told that an efficient home would test at 1,700 CFM. Obviously, we were good candidates.
Here’s a little video about how the pilot program will create 10,000 green jobs, and how the program could be replicated nationwide to help more families reduce their energy bills without having to put money up front.
Green For All – Clean Energy Work Portland video from YouTube:
Would you take advantage of the Clean Energy Works program if you could?
More tomorrow on the project’s carbon impact reductions…
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Sustainable Family Finances
The story of a family creating an abundant and sustainable life.
I am so impressed with all the latest technology in geothermal energy-it makes so much sense using the natural resources under the earth for clean , efficient and renewable energy.Thanks for the information on your blog.
Francis,
I haven’t looked in geothermal for our house. Do you have any leads or resources? This might be another project…
Thanks for your comment!