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Get a Home Energy Audit
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BENEFITS for the Environment:
An energy inefficient home will waste electricity and/or fuel. Some of the top electricity sources for the United States are fossil fuels: coal, natural gas, and petroleum. Fossil fuels have many harmful environmental effects, such as global warming, air pollution, water and land pollution, and thermal pollution
BENEFITS for Your Wallet:
A home energy audit can help you reduce your energy consumption by about 15-25%. You can calculate for yourself how much that can save your home every year! With the price of natural gas, heating oil, propane, and electricity all on the rise, now is the time to get an energy audit. To top it all off, you can actually receive federal tax credits for having an energy-efficient home.
BENEFITS for You:
In the process of looking for energy and air leaks, the energy audit will ensure that your home is a comfortable place to live. Rather than being too cold or too hot from the weather, your house will maintain the temperature that you really want. Also, it keeps your home from having unpleasant drafts or uneven air circulation. This can be especially important if you live in a climate with extreme weather conditions.
Cost: Low to High
If you do this yourself, an energy audit can be free!
If you choose to have someone else do it for you, the costs of professional home energy audits can vary widely, depending on your energy provider and location. Often, you can ask your local utility company and receive one for free or very little cost. However, if this is not available to you, you can get an independent energy audit at an average cost of $300.
The cost of actually making your home energy efficient varies widely, depending on what kind of upgrades you choose to make.
Time and effort: Low to Moderate
Conducting a home energy audit on your own can take approximately an hour or so. It's just a matter of touring your house and checking out the most common places where your house may be leaking energy.
If you hire a professional energy auditor, this will take even less effort on your part.
Upgrades to your home can require differing time and effort investments. Some changes are easy enough to conduct as you walk around your home, while other more complicated modifications may require extensive home renovation.
Hire a professional or do it yourself?
The kind of audit you want depends mostly on how much you need to upgrade your energy efficiency.
Hiring a professional: If you know there is a lot to do, or if you prefer precise measurements, it's best to hire a professional auditor. For example, if you have an older home, it probably isn't as energy efficient as modern homes, and a professional can give you the best advice about how to begin to upgrade it. Also, if it often snows where you live, you might want to consider a professional, since even the smallest energy leaks can mean a lot when you want to keep your house warm.
Doing it yourself: If you know your house is relatively energy efficient already, or if you just tend to be handy around the house, it's probably easiest to check everything out yourself. You'll save the money and have the convenience of doing it anytime you like, even in your pajamas!
Hiring a professional home energy auditor:
1. Call up your local utility company to see if you can get a free home energy audit. If this isn't available to the general public, you may still qualify for low-income free energy audits, either from your local utility or from a non-profit in the area. If you can get one for free, skip to step 4. If not, go on to step 2.
2. Shop around for independent home energy auditors. Your utility company or local energy office may recommend some local auditors. If they don't have any recommendations, try looking in the phone book under the heading "Energy".
3. Check to make sure the auditor is reliable and has the right equipment. Ask for references and follow-up in contacting each of them. Contact the Better Business Bureau, either by phone or online, to see if there have been complaints about the company. Ask to confirm that your house will get a calibrated blower door test and thermographic inspections.
4. Have copies of your energy bills for the past year. If you don't want to dig them up, you can contact your local utility and ask them for copies.
5. Prepare a list of known problem areas: Are there any drafty rooms? Is there a part of the house that is either always too cold or always too hot? Are there any damp spots? Is there condensation on any windows or walls?
6. To prepare for the calibrated blower door test, close all the doors and windows that let in air from outside, but open all the doors inside the house. Turn down the thermostat on heaters and water heaters. Cover any ashes in fireplaces and wood stoves and close or shut off any air circulating through them.
7. To prepare for a thermographic inspection, move furniture away from any walls that are in contact with the outside (exterior walls). Remove any drapes from the windows. If you want to have the best result, get an audit when there is the biggest temperature difference between inside and outside. If you live in a hot climate, get an audit in the summer. If you live in a relatively cold climate, get an audit in the winter.
8. After getting your home energy audit and following all the instructions for home energy efficiency, contact a certified rater to qualify for the federal tax credits: http://www.natresnet.org/directory/raters.aspx
Performing your own home energy audit:
1. It's always best to see if you can get professional work done for you for free. Call up your local utility company to see if you can get a free home energy audit. If this isn't available to the general public, you may still qualify for low-income free energy audits, either from your local utility or from a non-profit in the area. If nothing free is available, go onto the next step.
2. Insulation can reduce heat either moving into or out of your home. Proper insulation ensures that your house stays at a comfortable temperature without much effort. Otherwise, your AC or heater can use tons of energy and wear itself out just trying to maintain the temperature of an inefficient house.
Do you know if your exterior walls have insulation? Check for insulation in the exterior walls by removing either a light switch plate or outlet cover. Turn off the circuit breaker to that outlet and remove the plate and peek inside. There may be a small gap between the electrical box and the wall through which you can see any insulation. If there is none, you can either get a professional or install insulation yourself. This process involves drilling holes in the siding and blowing insulation through the holes.
Does your attic have proper insulation? Once you find the access door or stairwell to your attic, use a ruler to measure the depth of the insulation. If your insulation is 8" thick or less, consider adding more. You can either hire a professional or install some insulation yourself, which involves renting a blowing machine. Also, check below the insulation to see if there is a vapor barrier, which may be made up of many materials such as heavy paper, metal, or plastic. Look around for ducts in the attic. If there are, make sure that these are well-insulated and that any insulation on them is not wearing out. On your way out of the attic, make sure that the attic access door itself has an insulation cover and closes tightly.
Is your floor properly insulated? Look at what percent of the floor is covered by rugs, carpet, and other padding. If there isn't any insulation under the floors, you have a heated basement or crawl space. If you have a basement, make sure the foundation walls have insulation to keep the basement warm. If you have rim joists (wood on the corners between the ceiling and the walls of the basement), insulate these. If you have a crawl space, measure the floor for at least 6" of insulation. On your way out, make sure that the crawl space access door is insulated itself.
3. Air, invisible though it may be, is very important in energy efficiency. If there are any leaks around your house, the temperature and moisture of the air outside your house can make it difficult to maintain the air inside your house. Also, with dusty and moldy filters your entire ventilation system may be inefficient and energy consumptive.
Check your air conditioner or furnace filters. If they are dirty, they may be using a lot more energy than necessary to push the same amount of air through the system. If they are disposable, replace them. If they are permanent, you can just clean them. Make sure your air registers (vents on the floor from which your heating or air conditioning system blows air) don't have any furniture or curtains blocking them.
Do you know whether your ducts move through unconditioned spaces? If so, they may be wasting energy trying to maintain the proper temperature air. For these situations, you can purchase duct insulation at a hardware store. Also, check the duct for leaks and cracks. If the duct loses air, it can become significantly less efficient, since it takes even more energy to push the same amount of air all the way through the system.
Check to see that your doors are sealed. If you can see light coming in the edges of the door even when it is closed, install weather stripping to seal it. Especially check the seal on the bottom of the door, or the threshold, which can be replaced. Apply caulk to plug the leak. If you have a very inefficient door, like hollow wood doors, a professional can replace it with a very efficient door, like foam filled steel doors.
Check to see that your windows are sealed. If they are loose, install weather stripping. Replace any cracked or missing window panes. Caulk up any cracks between the windows and the walls. If you want to replace your windows with something more energy-efficient, the best are double pane, argon gas filled windows.
To find every last leak, you can conduct a basic building pressurization test. Close all doors, windows, fireplaces, and wood stoves that may let air in from outside. Open all inside doors to let the air from every room flow freely. Turn off all combustion appliances (gas furnaces, gas-powered water heaters). Next, turn on all the exhaust fans over your stove and in your bathrooms to suck out all the air. Walk around your house either with lit incense sticks (and watch to see when the smoke wavers) or with a damp hand (and feel the coolness of a draft). Especially check for air leaks around electrical outlets, foundation seals, mail slots, switch plates, window frames, baseboards, weather stripping around doors, fireplace dampers, attic hatches, and mounted air conditioners. Plug, caulk, and seal any holes and cracks you find.
4. Your appliances are ultimately the keys to energy efficiency. While insulation and weathering can make sure that you make the most of the heating or cooling that you have around the house, your appliances determine whether you need a little or a lot of energy to have them operating.
Check your water heater's temperature. Turn down the temperature of the thermostat to about 120° F. Check to see if there is adequate insulation around the water heater. You can install a water heater insulation jacket and 6 feet of water pipe insulation. If your water heater is very old, consider getting it replaced with a high efficiency energy star unit or solar water heater.
Check your heating and cooling equipment. If the system is over 15 years old, you may want to replace it with an energy-efficient energy star unit. You can also install a programmable thermostat which will automatically set the temperatures at certain times to save energy.
Consider upgrading all the other energy-hungry large appliances. Does your dishwasher have an energy saving feature? Are your refrigerator, washer, and dryer the energy star models? Check the refrigerator or freezer for broken or misaligned gaskets (refrigerator door seal) and replace them.
5. After upgrading everything in your home to their highest efficiency, contact a certified rater to qualify for the federal tax credits for home energy efficiency: http://www.natresnet.org/directory/raters.aspx
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