Posts from — April 2009

If you live anywhere in central North Carolina and you are thinking about using our company, Home Performance NC (or any other company, for that matter) for a home energy audit, you should know exactly what is going to happen when we come to your home.  First, an energy audit is exactly what it sounds like – an audit to see exactly how energy efficient your home is. This is accomplished using special equipment that will measure exactly how much energy your home is losing and which will pinpoint exactly where the energy is leaving your home. 

The first thing that happens when we visit your home is that our energy auditor, Mark, will conduct a visual inspection of the exterior of your home to get an overall picture of the house’s layout, the types of energy used, and other bits of information important to the audit 

After the exterior visual, Mark will check your attic and crawl space to look for mold or asbestos or any other immediate problems. This is very important since the first test he conducts, the blower door test, pulls air through your home, and if there are unhealthy elements in those areas it can be dangerous to do a test. 

Next is the blower door test. A door is sealed and a powerful fan is connected to the door. Once the fan is activated Mark can measure air leakage in the home. At that point he takes pictures using an infrared camera to pinpoint temperature differentials in the home. The infrared camera can show air leaks in obvious places, like at windows and doors, as well as not-so-obvious places, like where insulation might have settled in walls. 

At this point he  will walk around with the homeowner to show where the blower door has indicated problems. He will, of course, do a written report, but the walk-through is a very useful part of the audit, since you can see for yourself where the problems are.

Finally, he hooks up the duct blaster to test duct leakage in your HVAC system. This is crucial, since the energy industry reports that 20-30% of the average homeowner’s energy bills are spent on energy lost through leaky ducts. The duct blaster will measure how much leakage you have in your ductworks. We will then do a visual inspection to find out exactly where the leaks are occurring.

A couple of days later a written report, including a list of priority repairs, ordered by what is most important for your home’s safety, energy efficiency, and comfort, will be e-mailed to you, and Mark is always available for questions and discussion of the audit after the fact.

Home Performance NC conducts energy audits in Orange, Chatham, Durham, Wake, Lee, and Alamance counties, including Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Pittsboro, Hillsborough, Burlington, Mebane, Efland, Sanford, Southern Pines, Cary, Apex, Raleigh, Durham, Holly Springs, and all points in between. Call us at (919)360-1570 to make an appointment.

Replacing regular lightbulbs with compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) is supposed to help you save money and energy. They’re more expensive than conventional (incandescent) lightbulbs, however, and due to their mercury content you can’t just throw them away when they break. According to the CFL makers, CFLs last 10 times as long as a conventional bulb, although based on personal experience I’d say that’s an overestimate.

We use mostly CFLs in our house and we’ve had some quit working after only a couple of months; while others have been working as long as we’ve owned our house: 3 years. Apparently there are ways to extend the life of CFLs, like keeping them on at least 15 minutes at a time and only installing them in areas where the temperature will stay constant, but while it’s possible to only install them inside at our house, keeping them on 15 minutes at a time is often impractical. Think about it: do you spend 15 or more minutes in the bathroom every time you go in there?

Hey – and if you buy a bulb and it quits working earlier than it should, return it! This requires keeping your receipts, of course, and having an idea of which bulb goes with which receipt, which for many people (like me) is a pain, but IF you are good at that sort of thing then you should be able to get your money back, or at least another bulb, depending on the place you bought it.

But let’s say that we’re accepting that CFLs do last 10x longer than conventional bulbs. We’re all using them optimally and we didn’t get any bum bulbs from the manufacturer. Using my house as an example, I’ll do the math. Please keep in mind that everything in my little word problem is an estimate, from cost of bulbs to time saved to energy cost savings. But if I calculate it right I should be able to figure out if it’s really worth it, financially, to replace all your conventional bulbs with CFLs.

# of lightbulbs needed: 60 (our house is about 2500 sq. feet and we have overhead light fixtures in every room plus various lamps, etc. 

cost of conventional bulbs: $1/ea, so $60

cost of CFLs: $7/ea, so $420 (I’m using the CFL currently in my desk lamp as an example of a typical bulb: it’s a 13 watt, 120 volt medium screw)

energy savings for each CFL (according to the pamphlet my energy company, Central Electric Membership Corporation, sent us): $4.80/year, or $36 over the lifetime of the bulb. This means each bulb should last 7+ years! If we accept that CFLs last 10x longer than conventional bulbs, this means we’d have to replace our conventional bulbs 10 times in the 7 years we have our CFLs, so…

replacement conventional bulbs over the next 7 years (7 x 10 years x $60 worth of bulbs) = $420

So we’re even in terms of cost.

Add in the energy savings (60 bulbs x $36/ea) and I get $2160 in savings over the next 7 years, or $300 year. Then add in the $.50 credit that our electric company gives us for each bulb, and we get $2190 in savings over 7 years.

That is not too shabby. And even if the industry claims are grossly exaggerated, say, by half, then it’s still over $1000 in energy savings over a 7-year period.

It all adds up, doesn’t it?

Um, yeah. It does.

Here’s the deal: a huge amount of energy is lost through leaking duct work, but leaking duct work is probably the most ignored when people think about making their homes more energy efficient.

• You don’t see ducts, so you don’t think about them.
• You figure the guy (or gal) who installed them knew what they were doing.
• The media/vendors/whoever promote other products as being the do-all be-all for making your home more energy efficient (e.g. replacement windows, compact fluorescent light bulbs).
• Who wants to mess around in the crawl space, anyway? It’s icky down there.

All true! But in reality, the typical homeowner is losing 20-30% of his/her energy bill through leaky ducts. Why not burn money? Or better yet, throw it into your crawl space, because that’s where your heat and air are going.

And while your heated or cooled air is leaking out…nasty stuff from your crawlspace and attic are being drawn in.

Gross.

The good news is that most ductwork doesn’t need to be replaced, it just needs to be repaired and/or insulated to work properly. Which, in the scheme of things, isn’t very pricey when you compare this kind of home improvement to, say, replacing all your windows.

The best way to figure out if your ducts are leaking? Hire an anergy auditor to do a duct blaster test. This will show how much they’re leaking and will also show exactly where repairs need to be made.

Here is a kind of dry website (though very thorough) from the U.S. Dept. of Energy that shows how leaky ducts affect a home.  Here’s a slightly more readable site, although not as thorough.

And here’s a great visual of how leaky ducts can let the heated/cooled air out and the yucky air in, compliments of the Department of Energy:

Technorati Profile

Having a home that performs like it should and doesn’t leak energy into the outside and doesn’t let dirty, musty, moldy, unhealthy air in is one way to lead a more sustainable lifestyle. Conserving energy is a “green” thing to do. I’m sure most people would agree!

Another “green” thing to do is to keep it local when spending your $. Employ small businesses and visit locally owned stores to keep your money in your community. I know it’s a global economy and all, but for many of us it’s very possible to spend close to home.

I’m not saying anything new or revolutionary or anything that hasn’t been said before by a billion other people. Which is cool, because if a billion other people are putting their money where their mouths are then a lot of that money is staying close to home. In our house we certainly make trips to the big box stores on occasion, but we balance it with visits to smaller, closer places. And lots of times these smaller places give better service and have better bargains. I happen to go to a grocery store owned by a guy who lives in the next town over. For whatever reason this grocery store often charges 1/2 the price for things like meat and cheese than the larger chain stores. Plus, the people at that store are nice and helpful and accomodating. What’s not to like? No, they don’t have a fancy deli department or designer veggies, but they have organic milk and a coffee grinder and the best cashiers in the world, especially since the grumpy one quit!

My partner and I own a company that does home energy audits, among other things. So obviously I’m a bit biased when I say that every home owner needs to get a home energy audit. But as a homeowner, and as a person whose own home has had a recent energy audit, I can give you 5 great reasons why you should have this done.

1. A home energy audit will save you money. This is probably the most obvious and compelling reason to get an audit. A full energy audit, complete with blower door test, infrared imaging, and duct blaster test can pay for itself with two years, if not less, depending on the state of your home’s energy drain. We recently did an audit (and weatherization) for a property that will probably be paid for in 3 months’ electric and gas bills. Most homes are a bit more airtight, but getting the audit (and then fixing the problems) pays for itself in energy savings.
2. A home energy audit will help you be more comfortable in your home.  Most people have an area or room in their home that is too hot, too cold, or too humid. A home energy audit will help you discover why and will give you an idea how to fix it.
3. A home energy audit will help your home be a safer place to live in.  The duct blaster test, a crucial part of the audit, will measure leaks in your home’s ductwork. Leaks let air out (costing you money), but they also draw air into your house from your attic (dust) and your crawlspace (mold, mildew, and dirt).
4. A home energy audit will pinpoint ways you can make your home more energy efficient. Your home might already be fairly airtight and your ductwork, too, but small leaks, such as those around recessed lighting or electrical outlets can add up to be the same as big leaks.
5. A home energy audit helps you prioritize home improvements. You might already know that your home leaks energy, but hiring a professional energy auditor, specifically someone who is a RESNET® HERS rater and a BPI analyst, will help you prioritize how to spend your home improvement money to get the best results. For example, most people assume that they need to replace their windows, but in reality duct leak repairs will have a greater impact on energy savings and are far less expensive than replacement windows.

I hope this helped convince you that you need a home energy audit! To find someone local to you go to the Energy Star website and search for a home energy rater in your area. Of course, if you’re in central North Carolina, we’d love it if you’d contact us!

This is hilarious. A Green Buildings music video from Stanford.
Although, as my partner, Mark, the RESNET® HERS rater, energy auditor, and BPI analyst says, there’s too much focus on windows and not enough on ductwork.
True, but really funny just the same!

This blog is all about home performance – in other words – getting the best performance out of your home to achieve comfort, safety, energy-efficiency, and health.

1. Get a complete home energy audit to pinpoint problems.
2. Seal your home’s air and duct leaks.
3. Change your air filters regularly.
4. Service your HVAC system.
5. Unplug unused devices. 
6. Replace older appliances.
7. Install compact flourescent bulbs
8. Repair water leaks
9. Turn down your water heater’s temperature 
10. Install a programmable thermostat.