Doing a Home Energy Audit Yourself – Part 1 Air Leaks and Insulation
Households consume one-fifth of all the energy used in the United States. If you own your own single family home, chances are you spend at least $1,500 a year on energy costs — and possibly a lot more.
A home energy audit is a way of testing your home to assess how much energy your home uses, and how efficient it is in its energy usage. An energy audit will generally alert you to problems in your home’s efficiency, and when those problems are fixed correctly, you can save huge amounts of money on your energy bills. During an energy audit, you will be able to pinpoint each problem area where your home is loosing energy, which is generally in the form of air and heat loss from the house.
There are two ways of obtaining a home energy audit— homeowners can do it themselves or hire a professional home energy auditor.
The following is to help you do this audit yourself.
1. Finding Air Leaks Indoors
• Check for leaks along the baseboard or edge of the flooring, and where walls meet walls and ceilings.
• Check to see if there are air leaks around electrical outlets, switch plates, window frames, baseboards, fireplace dampers, attic hatches, and wall or window mounted air conditioners.
• Look for gaps around pipes and wires, electrical outlets, foundation seals, and mail slots where air can travel. Check to see if the caulking and weather stripping are in good shape with no gaps or cracks.
• To help you locate leaks, on a breezy day, hold a lit incense stick next to your windows, doors, baseboards, electrical boxes and outlets, plumbing fixtures, ceiling fixtures, attic hatches and other locations where there is a possible air path to the outside. If the smoke stream travels away from or towards the wall or opening, you have located an air leak that needs caulking, sealing, or weather stripping.
2. Finding Air Leaks Outdoors
• On the outside of your house, all places where two different building materials have been used. Like where the siding and a chimney meets, and where the foundation and the bottom of exterior brick or siding meet.
• Look for cracks and holes in the mortar, foundation, and siding.
• Check the exterior caulking around doors and windows.
1. Wall Insulation
• If you don’t know if your walls are insulated you may be able to find out by taking off an exterior wall switch plate (either plug or light switch). There may be a small gap between the electrical wiring box and the wall through which to look to see if insulation is visible. If there isn’t a space make one that will still be covered by the electrical cover.
• While you are evaluating your exterior walls for insulation, you can check for switch plate insulation. Air can leak into and out of a home though switch boxes (plugs, light switches) in your home’s outer walls. Switch boxes usually don’t seal well. Placing a foam gasket behind the switch cover can help plug this leak.
3. Attic Insulation
• The next thing is to find out how much attic insulation you have. If you have attic insulation, and it is 12″ – 14″ deep, then you are all set.
• If you do not have attic insulation, or the depth is 6″ – 8″ or less then you should add some. You can add attic insulation yourself in various ways with fiberglass rolls or bats.
3. Basement and Crawl Space Insulation
• Do you know if you have insulation on the exterior walls of your basement or crawl space? You need to also find out if your rim joist (the joist above you exterior foundation wall) is insulated.
• If it is insulated is it at least R12 or 3.5”. If not you need to insulate or add some more insulation.
• There are two goals here, stop any air infiltration through the foundation walls and raise the resistance to heat movement with insulation.
• Remember to insulate and weather-strip your crawl space access door if you have one.
