Where to start
Conservation comes first.
CWell almost first, the first thing that you need to do is to see where your home is leaking . The most accurate way to do this is to have an energy audit of your home done by a certified rater.
What is done is we use the bower door to depressurize the house and from that we can read gauges that will tell us the total amount leakage in your house.
Yes I have heard many times that a house need to breath and I agree with that but I do not agree with, is where the air is coming from. Like the crawlspace,attic,and through your exterior walls.
There have been studies that have shown that the average house being built today has enough places where air is coming into the living space, that if you added the area up in square inches it would equal an average size window being open year round.
What we want to do is seal up the place that the bad air is coming from and then manage the air coming in by filtering it and only bringing in what you need
Our thought of the way to attack these issues is to fix the lowest hanging fruit first
For example
- Repair leaks in the crawl space to help also prevent air that can cause asthma issues for people
- Correct issues in the attic in air sealing and correcting moisture issue
- Correct and or help reduce energy use ( whether it is light fixtures/bulbs,appliances,or vampires )
- Add insulation where particle and accessible
- Correct heating systems with leakage corrections being the first thing to look at
- Try to bring heating and cooling and hot water systems into the heated space (the envelope )