A reasonably tight mostly-insulated 4400' house with at least tight storms over wood sash single panes would have a heat load between 60-75,000 BTU/hr. Your fuel use numbers indicate a 100K of load, so yeah, knocking it back another 25% to ~75K would make it nearly-normal. Getting rid of the fossil burners and sealing up the flue would fix one big-ish air leak. The chimney chase itself may need to be air-sealed at least where it's accessible in the basement, and also at the attic. The foundation sill and band joist is usually worth all of the window & door crackage combined. Plumbing stack chases are often another big stack-effect infiltration driver. Open hearth fireplaces can be reallly REALLY bad, even with the flue dampers closed, but gasketed chimney top dampers can knock that back quite a bit, if the flue liner is in good shape. (If the flue liner isn't in good shape it shouldn't be used.) Fix all the big holes you can, but the blower door folks will probably find more big holes in less-than-obvious places. I'm surprised the MassSave crew wasn't all over you about air sealing (which they DO subsidize in leaky houses.) |