A month ago I wrote about borrowing for the Home Renovation Tax Credit (HRTC). There is one further step you can take that would pay that loan off even faster, qualifying for and receiving an ecoENERGY Retrofit grant.
Home owners can qualify for a ecoENERGY Retrofit grant of up to $5,000 by making their homes more energy efficient. This applies to heating, cooling and ventilation systems as well as hot water, toilets, insulation, windows and doors.
First you have to get a residential energy assessment by an NRCan-licensed advisor. They will inspect your house and provide you with an energy evaluation and an efficiency rating. This evaluation will include a list of recommended retrofits that will improve your home’s energy efficiency and shows the grant amounts that you can receive by carrying out these improvements.
The next step is to complete the recommended items you decide to go ahead with. This must be done within 18 months of the pre-retrofit assessment.
Your energy advisor will then perform your post-retrofit evaluation to confirm your new energy rating and will submit your application. You will then receive your money within 90 days!
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We had the first ecoENERGY energy audit in the fall of 2007, completed our applicable energy conservation tasks followed by the follow-up energy audit in February.
If people wish to learn more about this and what they can expect to experience, plus pictures of what the different sections of the energy audit report (officially called the ecoENERGY Energy Efficiency Assessment Report), they can visit this page of our home web site where we write about our ecoENERGY experiences:
http://dailyhomerenotips.com/ecoenergy/
Remember, you must have the first energy audit before you undertake to replace that worn furnace with a high efficiency model, or add attic insullation, or start to seal the air leaks in your home, etc. in order to qualify for the grants. We did not know this and undertook some of these before the first energy audit and lost out on the grants.
Dan
In some jurisdiction, grants are matched. For example, in Ontario the province meets the Federal amounts dollar for dollar meaning you can get up to $10,000 in grants/rebates. It’s government dollars wisely invested.
Marg,
Thanks for pointing that out, I wasn’t aware. I found this page that details the different provincial programs.
http://www.oee.nrcan.gc.ca/residential/personal/retrofit-homes/provincial-municipal.cfm
Hi there,
Just in case your readers haven’t heard about it, they’ve bumped up the rebates by 25%…
http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/residential/personal/home-improvement.cfm?attr=0
No where on the website could I find the answer to this question…are we eligible for this increase if we’ve already had our initial but not our final inspection?
Using their ‘Contact Us’ email feature, I got this response a few days later:
“Homeowners who have their post-retrofit inspection on or after the March 30, 2009, announcement will be paid according to the new grant table which includes the 25% increase.”
Erick,
I hadn’t heard thanks for letting us know!
The way I read that is you should be good if you haven’t had the second inspection? Makes sense I would hope, since you haven’t officially earned the grant yet.
The 25% bump was announced a few weeks after our second energy audit but prior to us receiving any Federal or Provincial grants.
We didn’t receive the 25% bump from either Federal or Provincial.
You should be good to receive the 25% bump if you had not had your 2nd energy audit until after the announcement back in March 2009.
We had the final evaluation for our geothermal heating system and application for the grant done on 28 July 09 . We are still waiting for a cheque . How do we find out what is happening and when we may anticipate receiving the cheque ? Thank you
Joseph, Try their office at 1-877-953-5454 and they should be able to help you out.