Kelowna company will provide road map to better home efficiency

You would like to retrofit your home to increase its efficiency, improve your comfort, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money at the same time.

You are just uncertain how to go about implementing the most effective method, what rebate incentives are available and how much you would actually be accomplishing in the end.

This is where Brendon Gray and Kelowna's Egnite Sustainability will step in and make the process simple to understand. Egnite provides energy efficiency consulting services that will get the ball rolling on your quest for increased performance and efficiency.

“As certified Energy Advisors licensed through National Resources Canada, we provide EnerGuide home evaluations and renovation upgrade reports that detail potential retrofit options that are available to homeowners,” Gray says.

Egnite will come to your home and perform an on-site assessment, after which it will designate your home with an EnerGuide rating. The lower it is, the better it is for the environment and for your pocketbook.

“Detailed feedback is broken down in an easy to follow roadmap to assist in providing homeowners with education and awareness in implementing energy retrofit improvements to their home," Gray says. “We also break down all the rebates that the homeowner would be eligible to apply for if they were to perform those upgrades.

"Usually, on average, with those evaluations that we do we try and target doing a 30 to 50 per cent energy improvement to the home, and a lot of times homeowners are seeing a range of anywhere between $4,000 to $8,000 in home renovation rebates just for doing those.”

The best part is the province and the City of Kelowna both provide rebate incentives that cover between 50% to 75% of the EnerGuide home evaluation cost.

After all, 40% of Kelowna’s greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings. Homes built prior to the year 2000 that operate natural gas furnaces and hot water heaters can typically produce as much as five tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year. The city’s goal, based on provincial greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, is to retrofit 1,617 residential units per year achieving a 30% improvement in energy efficiency in each of those units.

Egnite Sustainability will be attending the Kelowna Spring Home Show on Feb. 22 and 23 at Prospera Place. Gray invites everyone and anyone to come over to his booth to chat about the topic of home energy efficiency and how they can take advantage of the available home rebate incentives being offered.

Attendees will be able to enter into a draw to win a Nest Smart Programmable Thermostat and other giveaways. Those who can't attend the home show can send an email to Gray at [email protected].