Has anyone applied for one of these? You need to have a chargeable inspection beforehand I think. Is it worth doing, what kind of stuff do they give grants for? House is 1976 and I'm sure we'll find cold spots come wintertime.

http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/residential/p...nts.cfm?attr=4

Thanks in anticipation for any info.

No - we were going to do it but then I decided that I couldn't afford it as I was going to England in July for my Mom's birthday. Good job too, because I spent $800 Cdn on just about nothing but gas, meals, and doing touristy things like the Big Bus tour and Bath and Stonehenge and Bodiam Castle etc. etc. Nothing much.

I did speak to someone about it. I believe they come out and rate the energy efficiency of your house and then the grant depends on how much better it is on the second inspection. You can do a little or a lot - but the grant will depend on how much work you do and how much more energy efficient it is afterwards. I don't know if there is a maximum grant. My house needs new windows, new insulation and a new furnace!! When I win the lottery I will do all that!

Thanks Liz. So it's a bit of a lottery as to how much your house is improved, i.e. how much grant you get? Hmmm... I'm not sure if we should take the chance. Maybe just get the window kits and see what it's like the first winter.

Hi Biiiiink,
We had the original energy audit done on our thirty three year old house here in Calgary. We got a Pre-Retrofit energy efficiency rating of 63. Which in their typical ratings list our home is considered to be an "Upgraded older house".

The target Post-Retrofit rating they gave us was an energy efficiency rating of 80 which would have given us a maximum rebate of $996. I'm not sure how much we would have had to spend in order to get the maximum but we felt that it wasn't worth the effort. We did have nearly all of our windows replaced after the initial audit was done but didn't bother trying to claim anything back for them. We had intended to replace the windows anyway and plan on replacing the furnace in the next twelve months.

We also didn't bother getting the second audit to see how much we improved our rating by replacing the windows, partly because we forgot about it and when we remembered we were about to leave for a month long holiday. By the way I understand the cost of the second audit (Post-Retrofit) is included in with the first audit. So we were a bit silly not to get the second one done.

There is a sliding scale that is used for any rebates, in our case if we had tried to go for the maximum improvement, which according to the paperwork we got is an energy efficiency rating of 85 we would have qualified for a maximum rebate of $1322. The absolute maximum rebate you can get is $3348 but this is for raising the energy efficiency rating from 20 or less to 85 or higher.

Cheers
Steve