I wrote last spring about the two-family home we’ve renovated on Gilbert Road to occupy with my parents. We did a “deep energy retrofit” — super-insulation on all sides (except the basement floor where we lacked the headroom to add insulation).
We moved in August and our energy bills are nice and low — we’re running only 20 therms of gas per month to heat the upstairs apartment in the winter months and only about twice that for my parents downstairs, who are keeping their apartment toasty. No ice dams or icicles either — the snow just doesn’t melt on the super-insulated roof; it just blows away over time.
Building Sciences Corporation was involved in supervising the project for the National Grid grant program. BSC published a case study of our project.
Also of interest is this study by Jeffrey North of the life-cycle costs of the project.
I’m working on some economic analysis of the project and will report on that over the next month or two.
See this link for reports on some similar projects.