St. Croix Energy Solutions Inc. has been providing professional residential and light commercial energy consultancy services throughout the Twin Cities Metro area of Minnesota and Western Wisconsin since 2007.

Whether you are in the design phases of a new construction home, undertaking a remodel or renovation, or are just looking to make improvements to your existing home - we are here to put our decades of combined testing and construction experience to work for you. Reliable, budget conscious, and customer focused - we can help you build your dream home, achieve numerous green-building certifications, and ensure compliance to the ever changing building code.

Consultancy Services Include:

Focus on Energy New Homes Certification and Rebates
Green Built Homes Certification
ENERGY STAR Version 3.0 Certification
REMRATE Residential Energy Modeling
Blower Door Testing and Verification
Infrared Scanning, Diagnostics and Troubleshooting
Duct Blaster Duct Leakage Testing
Zone Pressure Diagnostics
Insulation and Building Envelope Design, Installation and Inspection
...and much more

Contact us to day to discuss your project. Whether you're building your dream home or building out an entire development - we can help make your dreams a beautiful, affordable and energy-efficient reality!

Attic Air Sealing

Insulation is wonderful stuff, but it can’t fight heat loss and high energy bills on its own. As much as one third of the energy loss in the home escapes through various gaps, cracks, penetrations and bypasses in the structure of your house.

Attic Insulation

St. Croix Energy Solutions offers attic insulation to make sure your Twin Cities-area home stays comfortable year-round. Not all insulation is created equal, and we insist on the best.

Attic Ventilation

After air sealing and insulation, proper ventilation is the third prong in our comprehensive approach to a high performance attic.

Rim Joists: Insulation and Air Sealing

The connection between the block or concrete foundation and wood framing of the home is referred to as the rim joist or sill box. This is the most-often overlooked source of infiltration in the home, even though the air lost in this connection is very significant.

Rooms above garages

Rooms above garages are often built as “bonus rooms,” flexible space added at low cost to modern homes. These rooms have a variety of uses, whether it’s as a guest room, home gym, or even a "man cave." When improperly insulated, however, homeowners often refer to these "bonus" rooms with much more... colorful language. They can be swelteringly hot or freezing cold - and all of that bonus space just becomes unusable.

Sidewalls (Open & Closed Cavities)

In many “pre-war” homes, exterior sidewalls were often left uninsulated, plaster on the inside and sheathing and siding on the outside used in its place. These walls allow the transfer of large amounts of heat, making the home inefficient, drafty, and uncomfortable.

Dense-Packing Sidewalls

Insulation can be added to exterior walls by “dense-packing” cellulose insulation into wall cavities from the exterior. This is accomplished by:

Removing a few rows of siding (above and below “window level” on each floor);

Sloped & Vaulted Ceilings

Maintaining adequate ventilation in a “Cape Cod” home, a “Story and a Half” home, “A-Frame” home, or home with a vaulted ceiling requires some special approaches. See our pages on story-and-a-half homes for more information.

Bathroom Exhaust Fans

Ventilation in bathrooms is critical to controlling moisture and humidity. Almost without exception, however, most “builder grade” bath fans installed in homes don’t living up to the airflow requirements specified in the building code. These bath fans are also often noisy, and have leaky ductwork, back-draft, and condensation issues due to poor installation. All things considered, many bath fans end up causing more problems than they solve. That’s where St. Croix Energy Solutions comes in.

Basement Walls

Is your basement finished? In an unfinished basement, the walls are usually bare concrete, stone, or block. These types of material transfer massive amounts of heat and energy from warm to cold, without providing much heat transfer resistance (R-Value) at all.

Story-and-a-half Homes

Cape Cod, Salt Box, Modified A-Frame, Bungalow

Homes with a second “half-story” pose unique challenges for proper air sealing and insulation. Prone to ice dams and other issues, the SCES team pays story-and-a-half homes special attention. We are careful to maintain adequate air sealing, insulation, and ventilation at every step.

Anatomy of a Story-and-a-Half Home

All story and a half homes have some variation of the following components:

Crawlspace Moisture Control & Insulation

Leaky rim joists and un-insulated foundation walls in crawlspaces are often the major infiltration point for outside air. During the cold winters in the Twin Cities Metro area, these areas leak out hot air, cooling the basement and taxing heating equipment, especially when ductwork and plumbing runs through the space. Cool, air-conditioned air leaks out during the summer, slowly turning your cool home into a lukewarm, uncomfortable space.

Making sure these areas are properly insulated and sealed is key to maintaining comfort in the home and keeping your utility bills down.

Insulation Cantilevered floors

Overhangs, bump-outs, four season porches, and rooms built over garages all expose their floors to the temperature extremes of the outdoor Minnesota and Wisconsin air. This creates uncomfortable, hard-to-heat spaces above. Often, the insulation installed in these cantilevers has fallen away from the flooring above, creating a leaky air gap and rendering the insulation useless. Thankfully, there are effective ways to improve the insulation value in these areas.

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Testimonials

Tom E., St. Paul, MN

Thanks for the excellent safe work done by St Croix Energy Solutions in completing the work insulating and adding attic ventilation for our home in St Paul. We had the attic knee-walls reinsulated with spray-on foam, and all the ceilings reinsulated with cellulous to R-60 or more. The ventilation will eliminate summer heat and winter moisture build-up. Very nicely done. Also, thanks for the rebate program that helps incentivize this work. I would have done this work anyway, but the rebates help bring the payback time sooner than if done without the rebate.