What is an Energy Audit?
The short answer:
An Energy Audit uses both visual inspection and diagnostic tools to evaluate the performance of your existing home. It helps identify areas that could be improved upon related to air tightness, insulation levels, and performance of heating systems.
The longer answer:
An Energy Audit is basically a methodology of evaluating the way your home uses energy to condition the space you live in. Since homes come in a variety of shapes and sizes, we customize the Energy Audit to fit your personal needs.
Energy Audits are sometimes called Home Energy Assessments, or Home Evaluations, but the general idea of the process is to help people compare the components that make up their living space, to the most ideal version of their living space.
Chances are pretty good, if you bought a home, you didn’t get to choose how much insulation was used inside the walls, or what type of heating system was installed. Several decisions were made when the home was built that have a profound effect on your comfort and utility bills.
An Energy Audit is the first step towards understanding everything you can do to make your home a more comfortable, safer, and more efficient place to live.
While an Energy Audit will help identify what types of improvements can be made to each building component, none of this information is useful, if it isn’t customized for you, and based on your needs. Your personal goals are critical to the process. Not all clients have the same goals in mind when they schedule an Energy Audit. Your interest might be in saving money on your utility bills, or being more comfortable in specific areas of your home. You may just want to be proactive and change out a heating system before it fails unexpectedly. Maybe someone you know got something for free through an Energy Efficiency program and you want to see if you qualify. Some of the current government incentives are incredible, and having an Energy Audit done is part of the process to access these funds.
When it come to our industry, there are a lot of buzz-word terms floating around out there. While many of them are somewhat descriptive, it’s probably worth distinguishing a few of them.
What is Energy Efficiency?
There’s a general awareness that exists today about Energy Efficiency, but the way it’s defined, and what it means to you may be different than what it means to your neighbor, or your relative, or whomever.
The textbook definition of Energy Efficiency is “a system that uses the least amount of energy to achieve a desired result.”
So, to break that down a bit. The system here is a home. The easiest way to save energy in a home, is by turning down the thermostat. If you turned the thermostat way down, like 10 degrees down, it would use way less energy, and therefore be more efficient, right? Sure, but you most likely wouldn’t quite achieve the desired result. Simply, because we are all different people, we all have different ideas of what a desired result feels like. Another name for this is called comfort. In every home we walk into, their comfort level varies based on the occupants. Sometimes it even varies by family member.
Comfort is literally built into the definition of Energy Efficiency. So, what’s more important – efficiency, or comfort? Would you prefer to live in a comfortable house that isn’t efficient? Generally, most of our customers want a comfortable home that is also efficient.
Comfort can be a bit of a wild card, and it’s different for every home we walk into because every human being has a different idea of what comfort means to them. It’s also critical to understand that while every person’s definition of comfort may vary; they are each 100% correct. This is why it’s so important to discuss your personal goals before we try to prescribe solutions to comfort issues.
Sometimes the solution for the same comfort issue in two identical homes could be a different outcome based on the occupants’ personal feelings or what they believe is most important. Sometimes that looks like attic insulation. Sometimes that looks like an upgraded heating system.
At Hughesco of Rochester, we have over two decades of technical experience with diagnostic testing and providing solutions for homeowners and renters in Central and Western New York. We enjoy meeting and helping people meet their needs. If your goals are just saving money on your energy bills, or installing a Cold Climate Air Source Heat Pump, give us a call to get the process started!