Home Energy Audits

Renewed interest in energy conservation is driven primarily by skyrocketing oil prices and societal emphasis on environmental stewardship. This focus has resulted in an increase in home energy audits. Making one’s home more energy efficient reduces its carbon footprint and potentially reduces the energy bill by as much as 30 percent. These audits are proving invaluable in identifying air leaks, assessing the adequacy of insulation, and suggesting replacement or revised operations of major household appliances. Depending on specific goals and available funds, home owners can either perform a do-it-yourself audit or hire a professional.

Do-it-Yourself Home Energy Audit

Prior to conducting your own home energy audit, take the time to review the past 2 years of energy bills to identify trends and gain insights on energy consumption. This will increase the likelihood that the audit emphasizes the inspections that will offer the best leverage in terms of improved energy efficiency for least cost. This audit typically addresses five areas:

• Air Leaks: Inspect for gaps in the baseboard where the walls and ceiling meet, check out window and door frames along with any weather stripping and caulking, and look for drafts through mail slots, fireplace dampers, window-mounted air conditioners, electrical outlets, pipe,s and any areas where building materials join.
• Insulation: Verify that the thickness of the insulation in the attic is adequate, covers holes in the duct work, pipes and chimneys, and that a vapor barrier exists under the insulation. Also, check out the basement for proper insulation under the floor of the living area (unheated basement) and in the foundation walls and around the water heater, hot water pipes and furnace ducts (heated basement). And last, inspect the crawl spaces, ceilings, and outside walls to ensure they are well-insulated.
• Heating and Cooling Equipment: If the furnace and air conditioner exceeds 15 years in age, homeowners should consider replacement with current energy efficient systems. Also, ensure these systems are inspected by a professional annually, that the furnace filters are replaced per manufacturer’s recommendation, and that the coils of the central air conditioning system are vacuumed.
• Lighting: Ensure that the wattage on installed light bulbs does not exceed the design of the system, that compact fluorescent light bulbs are appropriately used, and explore opportunities to use dimmer switches and sensors that automatically turn off the lights when no one is around.
• Potential Energy Losers: Review the setup and use of refrigerators, dishwashers, and other major appliances and verify that smaller appliances (e.g. DVD and personal computer) are unplugged when not in use.

Professional Home Energy Audit

The obvious option to a “do-it-yourself” home energy audit is to hire a professional who will perform a room-by-room inspection, typically for a cost of $200. Though the results of any such audit vary significantly, one should expect to more than recover this investment in dollars that will be saved in incorporating the energy savings related recommendations.

In order to receive the most value from this effort prepare a preliminary list of any items you suspect may be impacting energy efficiency and retrieve copies of your energy bill over the past year. Here are a couple of hints in selecting a qualified energy auditor:

• Exercise your network of friends for a recommendation and / or call your local government energy office or utility company.
• Ensure the individual is licensed and insured.
• Ask for references and check them.
• Call the Better Business Bureau to see if any complaints have been filed against his / her company.

During the audit, you can anticipate the following practices to be used:

• Calibrated blower door test for verifying how well the home is sealed for outside drafts.
• Thermography inspection to identify leaks
• Inspection of duct system for leaks
• Operational test of the heating and air conditioning

Energy Audit Follow Up

Whether one opts for the “do-it-yourself” or professional home energy audit, there will likely be a list of actions to make the home more energy efficient, and a corresponding analysis of potential savings in implementing these actions. Typically, this list can be rather easily segregated into high and low investment level actions. Our recommendation is to avoid taking on the more costly actions (e.g. replace the furnace or air conditioning unit) until first implementing some quick fixes. It may be that projects like adding insulation or applying caulking to crevices will be sufficient. In this light, the following summarizes some of the more common actions that are identified through these audits:

• Seal sources of Air Leaks and Cracks: For small leaks caulk can be quite effective where as larger holes typically require use of expanding foam. Huge openings should be filled with either rigid foam or fiberglass insulation, and of course any gaps in the insulation lining of the attic, basement, crawl spaces or walls should be filled.
• Repair Seals around Doors and Window Sashes: Add weather stripping to the edges of the doors and around windows and repair any windows that are damaged or cracked. If the windows warrant total replacement, consider installing energy efficient windows.
• Light Bulbs: Replace high energy light bulbs with those of lower wattage or compact fluorescent light bulbs.
• Major Appliances: As major appliances reach 10 years of service life, consider replacing them with those qualified to carry the Energy Star label. For those that do not warrant replacement, implement the recommended maintenance procedures specified by the manufacturer to improve their operation (e.g. vacuum coils for the refrigerator and / or air conditioning unit).