A home energy efficiency assessment helps you to understand your home’s energy use. It is used to help you determine how much energy your home consumes, where energy is being lost and which problems you need to prioritize to make your home more energy efficient. An energy audit should be the first step you take before making any changes to help with your home’s energy efficiency such as adding a renewable system to your home, for example. You can preform an assessment yourself or have professionals do it for you.
Do It Yourself Home Energy Audits
A professional energy audit will provide the most comprehensive view of your energy use, but a diligent self-assessment can be a good start to highlight problem areas and help you to prioritize any energy efficiency upgrades.
Walk through your home and keep a checklist of the areas you have inspected and any problems you find. This will help you to prioritize your energy efficiency goals. even if your home is recently constructed, or new, there may still be opportunities to save energy as technology has evolved rapidly in the recent past and has outpaced training available to most builders, including the most reputable.
Professional Home Energy Audits
A professional home energy audit is a better option because it gives you a thorough assessment of your home’s energy use that is performed by experts. As well as a room-by-room assessment of your house, a professional auditor can employ equipment such as blower doors and infrared cameras to highlight areas of your home where energy is being lost.
A professional energy assessment will go into greater detail than you can when assessing a home’s energy use. The energy auditor conducts an examination of each room in the residence and will perform a thorough analysis of your past utility bills. Many professionals will perform a blower door test, to show where leaks occur, as well as a thermographic scan that shows heat and cold spots in your home.
Temporary meters are often used to see exactly where in your house the most energy is being used. These meters are often used on a longer time-frame to capture a true representation of energy use (such as on different days or weeks and in different seasonal conditions.
Conducting an energy efficiency assessment of your home is one of the best ways that you can save energy and reduce your energy costs.
