USM energy program finds drafty ‘dream home’

Drafty? Yup. Construction dating back to the 1800s? Got that, too. Poor insulation? Check. Old, inefficient oil-fired burner? Sure thing.

Oh, honey, it’s perfect. I don’t care how much it costs, we can make it work!

That may not have been exactly how the conversation went, but the University of Southern Maine announced this past week that the school’s applied energy program has found what a USM release called its “dream home.”

It’s an old home, built in the late 19th century — fieldstone foundation and all — and it’s already owned by the school and sits at 19 Allen Ave. on the Gorham campus.

Dr. Daniel Martinez

Here’s a prepared comment by Daniel Martinez, assistant research professor in the USM Department of Environmental Science and proud new manager of the house:

We couldn’t be happier. This is the ideal structure in which to conduct research and teach students and community members about residential energy use and how to implement effective weatherization programs and other low-cost energy conservation measures on a typical Maine home.

So to put two and two together here, the reason this old, drafty place is a dream home for the USM applied energy program is it provides students an environment for testing weatherization and energy saving techniques. If they can research and implement effective ways to seal up 19 Allen Avenue, they can probably do it for your house, too.

It’s well-known that Maine has among the oldest housing stock in the country, despite having a climate less than ideal for old housing. The USM release notes that 72 percent of Maine homes are reliant on imported oil for heat, and that heating oil prices have risen by 60 percent since 2004-05.

Again, Martinez:

We need the ability to research and teach using an actual, energy inefficient Maine house, rather than a controlled laboratory. We need to know what works best here under actual conditions.

Here’s another paragraph from the USM announcement describing more specifically the type of work Martinez and the applied energy students will be doing:

Martinez and his colleagues in the Department of Environmental Science’s applied energy program are reaching out to private and public organizations to partner in the testing, research, and education of affordable and new energy-saving technologies. Plans for the house include the installation of real-time sensors, probes, and cameras to test and monitor the performance of improvements. All information eventually will be made available through a “Residential Energy House” website. The energy house, said Martinez, is also ideal to monitor and test indoor air quality, which can be affected with the introduction of energy conservation and supplementary heating measures.