Home Energy Audits

An energy audit's purpose is to identify places in the home where energy is being wasted and prioritize the projects needed to fix them.The end result is intended to reduce the amount of energy the home needs to operate and keep occupants comfortable. While the word "audit" may sound ominous, a home energy audit is just the first step in the process of lowering energy bills by making a home more efficient. Energy audits range from simple walk-throughs you can do yourself, to more elaborate services performed by trained professionals. Which is right for you will depend on your situation, abilities and interest level.

If you own the home, there is a clearly defined benefit for your efforts. You'll start saving money on your energy bills as soon as you identify and fix energy wasters. If you rent or lease, it's a good idea to check with your landlord early on to see if the audit findings can be acted on. A landlord who pays the utility bills is more likely to invest in the process knowing that there will be savings through lower utility bills down the road. If you are a tenant and pay the utility bills yourself, you'll benefit immediately from no-cost and low-cost measures uncovered by an energy audit. Improvements requiring an investment in the building itself or its systems should be carefully evaluated since you don't own them and won't be taking them with you if you move to another property.

The Internet has brought consumers many new conveniences and tools, including help evaluating your home's energy use. Online calculators let you enter information about your home and appliances and compute your energy costs.Such calculators can be helpful as part of an overall energy plan to help you assess and analyze your best savings opportunities.

Perform Your Own Audit

Whether you plan on hiring a professional energy auditor or not, conducting your own audit is a good starting point. The information you gather will be helpful to professionals if you go that route, it will queue up questions in your mind, and may even convince you that your audit is sufficient. Begin by doing a simple walk around the outside and inside looking for problems, like holes where air can leak in or out and dripping faucets.

First! Find and Fix Air Leaks

The first place to focus your attention is on places where air is leaking into and out of your home. Therefore, as you walk around, make a list of all the places where such leaks could occur. The potential energy savings from reducing air leaks, also known as drafts, can be as high as 30% per year, and the home is usually more comfortable afterwards. That's why it's recommended as the first place to begin your audit.

On the outside of your house, inspect all areas where two different building materials meet. Pay particular attention to possible gaps at the place the foundation meets the walls. Studies have shown that this can be one of the largest offenders in allowing air to flow in and out of homes practically unobstructed. Also inspect all exterior corners; where siding and chimneys meet; and areas where the foundation and the bottom of exterior brick or siding meet. Plug and caulk holes or penetrations for faucets, pipes, electric outlets, and wiring. Look for cracks and holes in the mortar, foundation, and siding, and seal them with the appropriate material. Check the exterior caulking around doors and windows, and see whether exterior storm doors and primary doors seal tightly.

Inside, look for gaps along the baseboard or edge of the flooring, and where the walls meet the ceiling. Check to see if air can flow through electrical outlets, switch plates, window frames, baseboards, weather-stripping around doors, fireplace dampers, attic hatches, and wall- or window-mounted air conditioners. Look for gaps around pipes and wires, electrical outlets, and mail slots. Check to see if the caulking and weather-stripping are in place with no gaps or cracks and are in good condition.

Inspect windows and doors for air leaks. See if you can rattle them, since movement means possible air leaks. If you can see daylight around door and window frames, then the door or window leaks. You can usually seal these leaks by caulking or weather-stripping them. Check the storm windows to see if they fit and are not broken. You may also wish to consider replacing your old windows and doors with newer, high-performance ones. If new factory-made doors or windows are too costly, you can install low-cost plastic sheets over the windows.

One creative way of finding leaks is to slightly pressurize your home using fans, then walk around and feel for air leaks. They'll identify themselves to you if you place your hand over areas where you suspect a leak.Placing a little moisture on your hand intensifies the effect, making it even easier to find leaks.Before you begin, close all exterior doors, windows, and fireplace flues. Turn off all combustion appliances such as gas burning furnaces and water heaters. (Remember to turn them back on when you've completed the test.) Then turn on all of your home's exhaust fans.Most homes have these in the kitchen and bathrooms. Alternatively, or in addition, you can use a large window fan to blow air out of the house. This increases infiltration through cracks and leaks, making them easier to detect.

Check Insulation Levels

Heat loss through your home's ceiling and walls could be large if the insulation levels are less than the recommended minimum. Check to see if the level of the attic and wall insulation of your home is at least at the minimum recommended amount. When your house was built, the insulation levels were probably what was recommended at the time. Given today's energy prices, and that future prices probably will be higher, the level might be inadequate, especially if you have an older home.

If the attic hatch is located above a conditioned space, check to see if it is at least as heavily insulated as the attic, has weather-stripping to stop air leaks, and closes tightly.

Checking a wall's insulation level can be tricky. One way of seeing what's in your walls is to peek into them by removing the faceplate from an electrical socket. Select an exterior wall and turn off the circuit breaker or unscrew the fuse for any outlets in the wall. Be sure to test the outlets by plugging in a portable radio or lamp to make certain that they are not "hot." Remove the cover plate from one of the outlets and gently probe into the wall with a stick or screwdriver. A crochet hook works particularly well because with its hook it can snag a sample of the material in the wall. If you encounter a slight resistance, you have some insulation there. Outside of looking into the walls through existing openings, you could also make a small hole in a closet, behind a couch, or in some other unobtrusive place to see what, if anything, is in the wall cavity. Ideally, the wall cavity should be totally filled with some form of insulation material.

For unheated basements, determine if there is insulation under the flooring of the living area. In most areas of the country, R-25 is the recommended minimum level of insulation. The insulation at the top of the foundation wall and first floor perimeter should have an R-Value of 19 or greater. For heated basements, the exterior-to-air walls should be insulated to at least R-19.

Heating and Cooling Equipment

Now take a look at the systems that keep your home comfortable. Your home's heating and cooling equipment are probably its largest energy consumers. Begin by locating them and giving them a visual inspection. Many homes have split systems, which means you have equipment inside and outside the house.If you have a forced air furnace, check your filters and replace them as needed. Generally they should be changed about every couple of months. Some people use the season change to remind themselves to change filters. If the unit is more than 15 years old, consider replacing it with one of the newer, energy-efficient units.

As part of your equipment check, inspect ductwork for dirt streaks, especially near seams. These indicate air leaks, and they should be sealed. Make a note to insulate any ducts or pipes that travel through unheated spaces.

Water Heater

Your audit should include locating and evaluating your water heater. In many homes, the water heater is the second largest energy user, so it's worth taking some time to investigate. Check its temperature setting. Keeping it as low as possible will save energy and money. Place your hand on the tank to see if is warm to the touch. If it is, it may be a candidate for an insulating blanket, especially if it is located in unconditioned space.

Cooking, Laundry, Appliances and Lighting

Energy for all of these other end-uses can add up to a quarter of your total energy expenditures, so do take a look at what you have, but recognize that changes made to a system that only uses a small percentage of the home's total energy use won't save as much as changes made to one of the larger users like the heating and cooling system or the water heater. Start with the refrigerator and freezer if you have one.Check the door seals, temperature settings and for good airflow across the coils. If you have an extra old refrigerator as many people do stored in the garage or basement, consider getting rid of it. Old units are potentially huge energy wasters.

As for lighting, which can be up to 10 percent of the electric bill, your best bet is looking for places where you can substitute compact fluorescents for incandescent bulbs. And keep them off when not needed. With outdoor lights, if you aren't methodical about their use, controls like timers or photocells have quick paybacks. One of the fastest growing categories of appliances in homes these days is in TVs, home entertainment equipment and computers. The Department of Energy reports 2 percent of a typical home's energy is for TVs, and related systems, and 2 percent goes for computers, monitors and peripherals. On these, there isn't much you can do with your current ones except keeping them off when not in use. But when purchasing new equipment, look for the most efficient models. The ENERGY STAR label, which identifies higher efficiency equipment, is recommended.

Professional Energy Audits

Professional auditors use a variety of techniques and equipment to determine the energy efficiency of a home. Usually requiring several hours to a full day to conduct, they generally range in price from $250 to $500 depending on the services performed. Any retrofit work would of course cost additional money, but some companies offering energy audits will discount the price of the audit if follow-on work is performed.

A professional energy audit should include a walk-around and a walk-through to identify problems. The auditor should do a room-by-room examination and do a careful examination of past utility bills. Thorough audits often use equipment such as blower doors, which measure the extent and location of air leaks, as well as infrared cameras, which reveal hard-to-detect areas of air leakage and missing insulation.

A blower door is a powerful fan that mounts into the frame of an exterior door. The fan pulls air out of the house, lowering the air pressure inside. The higher outside air pressure then flows in through all unsealed cracks and openings. These tests determine the home's rate of air infiltration.

Infrared scanning, or thermography, is used to detect hot spots, cold spots and air leakage in building envelopes. Thermographic scans are also commonly used when the blower door is running. The blower door helps exaggerate air leaking through defects in the building shell. Such air leaks appear as black streaks in the infrared camera's viewfinder.

Before the auditor visits your house, make a list of any problems or concerns you want to discuss. Have copies or a summary of the home's energy bills. The auditors use this information to establish what to look for during the audit.

For a free detailed energy audit, contact your local Touchstone Energy® Cooperative.