How a Home Energy Audit Can Benefit You
Getting a home energy audit done on your home lets you know where you stand in the scheme of conservation and your immediate impact on our environment. How else are you going to know if your windows leak like a sieve or if you have enough insulation to maximize your heating efficiency?
Home energy audits take a scientific approach to see how your home holds heat and air (or not). Energy audit professionals will measure your home’s air loss using a vacuum to pressurize your home and take measurements. This will tell them where you are losing most of your air in your home. This means they can tell you where your heating and cooling dollars are going and if they are efficient or not.
Are my windows efficient or do they need to be replaced?
Your home’s age is a primary factor in how efficient your windows are at keeping conditioned air in your home. Even windows that were made 35 years ago are less efficient than newer ones because the technology wasn’t available yet. This means your windows could be leaking air around the frame, panes and cracks. Those are dollars literally going out the windows! Your home audit specialist will be able to help you determine whether or not installing replacement windows makes sense for your home.
Does my home have enough insulation?
When homes are built, they start as one large building and are carved out by contractors who add electrical work, piping, dry wall and other elements to it. This creates voids or spaces throughout the entire home through which air flows continuously. The voids can be filled with appropriate R-value insulation to combat this air flow problem. If your house seems to quickly lose the heated and cooled air that gets pumped in, there may not be enough insulation in your house.
Unlike today, if your home was built more than 30 years ago, oil was dirt cheap. This meant that home builders didn’t need to think about insulation much because they knew that people would just turn up the thermostat to get their home to a comfortable temperature.
Plus, as building codes focus more on energy efficiency, the building regulations call for more insulation (or R-value which stands for “resistance to heat”) than in the past. The result is millions of homes with insufficient insulation to keep hot and cold air inside the home from going outside. This means you could be paying hundreds of extra dollars a year because your home builder didn’t need to put enough insulation in your home back then!
Efficient HVAC equipment
Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) makes each building comfortable to be in. The heaters, furnaces, water heaters and air conditioners do the work when we tell the thermometer how hot or cold we want a room to be. To get the maximum benefit from these tools, it’s important to make sure the equipment runs as efficiently as possible. A responsible HVAC technician will make sure equipment is set up right and efficiently when it is installed. If your furnace, air conditioner or heater is really old, the best alternative may be to replace it. Professionals can also make modifications and upgrades to older equipment to be sure you get the maximum out of each machine. This will increase the efficiency of your home and save you money each year to come.
These are just a few quick, ways a home energy audit can benefit you and your wallet. You can have a home energy audit done on your home. It’s quick and easy to do.
