Time to button up

A variety of choices are available to help you fight back winter's cold

So, this is the year you're finally going to bring your house in from the cold? You're not alone, and there's help available from many places to narrow the number of winterization choices to the most effective, and steer clear of the costly.

Despite the retreat in oil prices, heating fuel costs remain high - home heating oil, for example, is in the mid-$3-a-gallon range.

Numbers like these were the tipping point for Brookline resident Rebecca Mailer-Howat. Her household held off for years before spending thousands of dollars last month on an energy-efficient retrofit of their 1870s Colonial Revival. The Mailer-Howats started with an ecologically friendly insulation foam called Aircrete, which was blown inside the walls of the house, and then expanded to fill in airways and hidden gaps and holes. Next the family plans to upgrade its hot water system, and add solar panels.

"I always wanted to do it, but circumstances have indicated that we should hurry up," Mailer-Howat said. "And everything's just going to keep getting more expensive."

Like Mailer-Howat, homeowners hoping to dodge the winter heating bullet should get going now. But be cautious about spending large sums on big-ticket projects that may do little to lower your bills.

Bruce Harley, technical director at the nonprofit efficient energy consultant Conservation Services Group, said there are multiple ways homeowners can cut heating costs by themselves. He divides home winterization into four primary elements: insulation, air sealing, ductwork, and heating equipment.

"I liken insulation and air sealing to the sweater-windbreaker analogy. Neither one alone is going to keep you warm on a chilly day, but put them together and it's a really good system," said Harley, who has authored two books on home energy-saving projects. Filling walls with cellulose, foam, or fiberglass insulation can boost the house's R-value (the measure of its thermal resistance) from an insulation-free 3, to a whopping 12. But air leaks - gaps, slits, and other hidden openings - throughout a house can defeat that improvement. "Ideally the contractor seals leaks as part of the prep for insulation," Harley said. "Of course, some contractors understand this much better than others."

Finding those air leaks, however, is not always easy. They are sometimes behind walls, along chimneys, or in dark and hard-to-reach spaces in the attic or in the basement where the house foundation meets the sill.

And, because some of these gaps can be tucked away doesn't mean they are small. According to Hurley, they can be "large enough to put your arm or head through; even newer homes often have large air leaks that render insulation practically useless." These gaps can be plugged with a variety of foams, or other insulation and even closed off with sheet metal.

While most New England homes are spared the expense of energy loss via ductwork, Harley said, sealing such pathways where they do run - typically in crawl spaces or garages - becomes critical to capturing the benefits of new insulation.

And that leaves the heat generator itself; the hardware in the basement. "If your furnace or boiler is more than 20 years old, chances are it's reaching the end of its service life," Harley said.

Homeowners can realize enormous savings by replacing old systems with modern, certified high-efficiency boilers and furnaces. Though they run into the thousands of dollars, new heating systems will yield immediate savings in fuel consumption, savings that can pay for the upgrade within 10 years.

So, how to pay for one or all four of these winterization projects? State and federal resources are available. While federal residential tax credits for home energy improvements expired last year, most available financial assistance starts with a home energy audit, said Michael Berry, an account manager at consultant ICF International, which was hired by a consortium of Massachusetts utilities to run a statewide program to make new homes energy efficient. "Many utility-based audits are free and will provide rebates, incentives towards the installations of energy-efficient materials," Berry said. Lower-income residents who qualify for federal fuel aid may be able to get these services and materials for free.

There are also programs that offer low-interest loans, and Harley recommended homeowners browse the website of MassSAVE (www.masssave.org), to learn more.

"You can pay off something that will give you substantial energy savings, and if you structure it right, you can do it with net-flat cash flow for the life of loan," Harley said. "It's possible to create some positive cash flow during the life of the loan . . . and once you've paid it off, you've got major positive cash flow."

But Harley and Berry cautioned homeowners to think twice about some big ticket items - chief among them are new replacement windows. Often the costs of the new windows far outweigh the savings they deliver. "When you look at the amount of space your windows take up compared to the overinsulated portion of wall space, it is most likely cheaper and more cost effective to add additional insulation to a wall," Berry said.

For far less money - as much as half the price - new exterior storm windows can be a smart investment in increasing the efficiency of aging windows, because they slow the loss of heat from inside and reduce air leakage. Meanwhile Harley identified other energy efficiency measures that don't pay off, including duct cleaning (as opposed to sealing), fan-fold insulation board used in typical re-siding projects, and anything marketed as "reflectivity" or radiant barrier.

These include thin insulation with foil layers and, believe it or not, paint. "They always have hugely inflated claims for R-value, which are simply not justified by physical reality, Harley said.

For some homeowners, conventional costs are not the only consideration. The Mailer-Howats wanted to use environmentally beneficial products, so for insulation, they chose Aircrete, a magnesium oxide expanding foam, which is fireproof and nontoxic, over the more common blown-in cellulose insulation. Aircrete costs $2.70-per-square-foot, compared to $1.40 or more for cellulose.

"We always wanted to do this, but what we wanted was something that made sense ecologically and environmentally, that didn't have any toxic complications," said Patrick L. Mailer-Howat, as workers from All Weather Green Insulation scaled ladders at his home in preparation for the installation.

"We're not bleeding heart, naive hippie children," added Mailer-Howat, who is chairman of Vita Bio Group, a biomass energy development business. "We are interested in being proactive in our husbandry of resources, with an outlook to a mid- to long-term future. I mean this is my retirement home."