This Sudbury, Ont. homeowner is sharing how he saved money on his green renos
CBC
Ryan Mariotti estimates solar panels he installed on the roof of his Sudbury, Ont., home could produce up to 95 per cent of his annual energy consumption.
On Wednesday, Mariotti is sharing his "retrofit journey" through a presentation at Laurentian University's Vale Living with Lakes Centre. The event will also be broadcast on Facebook Live.
"We started our retrofit journey back in 2021, the summer of 2021," he said.
"We had a daughter on the way, and we didn't have any air conditioning in our house, and we knew that we wanted to make it a little more acclimatized indoors."
The first thing he did was to have a heat pump installed to supplement his heating, and provide air conditioning in the summer.
Heat pumps transfer heat from a cool space to a warm space, which means they can be used for heating during the winter and cooling during the summer.
"The big bonus of heat pumps is that they can have a return of energy, typically three to one, even four to one, and sometimes even five to one if it's working as AC in the summer," Mariotti said.
"So what that means is for every kilowatt-hour of electricity you put in, you get out about three to four, sometimes even five kilowatt hours back."
He said the heat pump, combined with some more efficient spray foam insulation he installed on some of his walls, reduced his energy consumption by half during the winter.
On very cold days, below -25 C, Mariotti said he still needs to use his gas boiler to supplement the heat pump.
"If the heat loss rate of your house is high enough, like our house is fairly old, it cannot keep up with that heat loss," he said.
"So as it gets colder you want to make sure you still have a backup supplement heating system, whether it be your old furnace, your old boiler, or a wood stove."
But he hopes with better insulation throughout his house he can further reduce any dependence on his gas boiler.
Mariotti said it cost him $10,000 to install the heat pump in 2021, but the federal government's Canada Greener Homes Grant covered half the cost.