Sep 10 2010

Story of a Residential Energy Audit

By admin
Energy Audit Blower

Building Alternatives performs residential energy audits

Back in May of this year, we had an energy audit done on the house.  I was very excited to have this done for two reasons.  One, because I hoped we would identify a flaw that if fixed would save us money and I had hoped we could qualify for energy rebate to curb the cost.  Second, because I love the science and tech of it.  However, I should have known that it wouldn’t be all fireworks and streamers when I entered our electric and propane usage into the energy calculators and it determined us to be “in the green”.  The truth is, our house is fairly tight-sealed.  We had good windows (double paned argon gas)…possibly the sills could be sealed with spray foam.  Also, we have air leaks in expected places for a log home (the corners).  The main place where we had room for improvement was the “attic” but it would be too costly to be worth it.  Now I put “attic” in quotes because we don’t have one.  We have metal roof, fiberglass insulation, and v-grove pine board paneling. There is room for improvement there because we could have more efficient foam board or blown insulation.

See how the audit was done in these videos:

Overall, I’m glad we did this because I got to see the process, but my advice is, if the energy calculator shows you in the green, leave it be.  Naturally, we still want to replace our traditional water heater with a tankless water heater.  Surely, we’d love to install solar panels and perhaps a wind turbine.  But these things will not be to save money in any less than 20 years.  These things will be simply because we don’t want to waste energy, especially free energy.  It’s my dream to be off the grid!

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  • Michelle Quillin says:
    September 14, 2010 at 8:42 am

    Barbara, thanks for sharing this with me! We rent, so we’ve never had an energy audit done, but we saw a 50 percent-plus drop in our gas heating bill when we moved from a house with old, drafty windows to this one, which has new, double-paned windows.

    Exciting that you want to get “off the grid” and conserve energy! Is it possible to get completely off-grid?

    Michelle Quillin for New England Multimedia/New England HD
    http://twitter.com/NEMultimedia

    S: I love the little monkey hanging from your curtain rod in the 2nd video. What’s on the other side? I can’t make it out!

    • admin says:
      September 14, 2010 at 10:29 am

      Oh definitely, it’s possible to get off the grid. I think it requires a significant investment for a normal sized house but if the scale is smaller or one has the capital to buy combinations of energy generators (e.g. solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal heat pumps) and better house materials, you can do it. The trick is generating as much energy as you consume, using natural resources. You can have a giant house that will require many improvements or you can have a small house that requires just a few. The energy auditors usually stress the point you made earlier…the larger return on investment will come from sealing your home so you don’t let heat and cooling go out the windows/doors/walls. That was the morale of this story too. :) Thanks for reading.

      PS: The other curtain rod resident is a bear holding a smiley face (I can’t remember why it’s there, but the monkey is leftover from a pirate-themed halloween party).