Out of energy

I'm glad I took advantage of Canada's Energuide program last year -- the new Conservative government has apparently just slashed it. At a cost of about $150, I had an energy auditor go over my old, leaky house, and he gave me a score of 55 out of 100 for energy efficiency. After replacing my ancient boiler, insulating an upstairs ceiling, putting down miles of caulking and a few other things, the rating went up to 68. I received a government grant of over $800, which really helped, because the boiler alone cost me at least $6,000.

Evidently the feds are telling us they'll soon bring out their "own environmental plan" -- this I want to see.

The nutty thing is that replacing my boiler has been a mixed blessing. I hate hot water radiant heating -- because I have no ductwork, I can't get central air conditioning -- and there is no radiator in my basement. I've been told that I can't have one on the same level as the boiler. But the old boiler, a cast-iron affair that was as old as the house (about a century) and used to burn coal before it was converted to gas, was so inefficient that it handily heated the basement just by throwing off its own heat. So a radiator wasn't necessary. My new, efficient boiler is completely cool to the touch, so now my basement is freezing. I've put in a couple of electric baseboard heaters, and they ship the heat up the stairwell, leaving the basement as cold as ever. (And I'm now paying a premium for green electricity from Bullfrog Power -- at least my gas consumption seems to have dropped, though I think I was overpaying for a while because of an administrative foul-up. More on Bullfrog Power another day).

The other nutty thing is that my old boiler had no electrical parts. The water was pushed through the system by gravity. In a power outage, I would have had heat. Now I have an electric pump (which makes the system no more responsive than before, to my surprise). So -- no power, no heat.