0% loans for enery efficiency upgrades

With our energy costs going up and up, now is a good time to be thinking about making your home more efficient.

The City of Austin has a great rebate program that rebates homeowners for certain renovations they make to their home. The renovations have to improve the energy efficiency of the home and are items such as: AC replacement, AC duct repair, insulation, weatherstripping and solar screens among others.

The rebates are 20% of the costs of the upgrades, so can amount to quite a lot when doing a big job such as replacing the AC unit. They also offer 9% loans for these repairs.

If you don't have, or don't want to use, the cash to pay for the repairs immediately. The City also has a program that will give you a short term loan at 0% interest for AC replacement. The loans are repayable over 3 years, and longer terms are available but do accrue interest.
Check out http://www.austinenergy.com/energy%20efficiency/Programs/Loans/Residential/Home%20Performance%20with%20Energy%20Star/index.htm for all the details.

With our energy costs going up and up, now is a good time to be thinking about making your home more efficient.

**Special note: The City asks that you use one of the approved providers for the work. Be careful who you pick and make sure to get multiple bids. I had a company come and look at one of my homes and he wanted to charge almost double what other companies were charging. So even with the rebates I would have still been way overpaying. I'd recommend too getting a bid from a contractor not on the list for comparison purposes.

If you need a recommendation please let me know, I'd be happy to refer you to a contractor that I have used and been very satisfied with before.