How can a renovation help to save money?
Imagine the house’s external walls as a continuous shell, and every little gap you have in this shell will result in heat loss, or the other way around in summer.
Hence, every time you stop this unwanted heat transfer, you can reduce your energy bill.
Energy Cost Calculator
With the FirstRate5 energy rating assessment tool, we can determine the Total Energy Usage per year of the different Star Rated versions of our home.
Once we have the annual energy costs, we can factor in the effects of inflation to understand how much money the renovation can save us over a period of 7 years.
The existing house, with 0.8 Stars, will cost us more than $33.500 over the 7 years.
Insulating our house, sealing all wall and ceiling vents, putting in self-closing exhaust fans and weather-stripping windows and doors bring us to 3.6 Stars and we will use 38% of the energy – saving approximately $20,000.
Putting in an air-lock and replacing some single glazing aluminium windows with good performing double glazing windows will increase the energy rating to 5.6 Stars. We will use 19% of the energy – a saving of more than $27,000.