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.
Conducting a Home Energy Audit
Chances are your home is leaking energy, a lot of energy and a lot of money. Conducting a home energy audit is a smart way to cut your utility bills. What is a home energy audit? You may know, but not long ago only a few people knew what it was. 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.
The purpose of a home energy audit is to make your home more energy efficient. An energy efficient home is going to result in reduced utility bills now and for years to come. A typical energy audit will identify an average energy saving of 30% of a home’s energy use! Therefore depending on the size of your utility bill, auditing your home can save you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars over the years.
Often the first step in making your home more efficient is a home energy audit. That is because an audit can help you assess how much energy your home uses and evaluate what measures you can take to improve efficiency. But remember, audits alone don’t save energy. You need to implement the improvements that are needed.
Home energy audits identify drafts and leaks around doors and windows or in the ductwork through which heated or air conditioned air flows. They can also determine whether a home has adequate insulation in its walls, ceilings, attic, and foundation. Audits can then highlight ways to conserve on heating, hot water and electricity costs.
You can easily conduct a home energy audit yourself.
When starting a home energy audit yourself, it’s helpful to know what you’re dealing with. Gather your energy bills from the last couple of years and compare them month-by-month to look for trends. Spikes in energy usage during specific times of the year can offer clues about your consumption. This is a way to benchmark how much energy your home currently uses and will help determine what measures you can take to make your home more energy efficient.
The first step to taking a whole-house energy efficiency approach is to find out which parts of your house use the most energy. A home energy audit will help pinpoint those areas and then you can determine the most effective measures for cutting your energy costs.
With a simple but diligent walk-through, you can spot many problems in any type of house. When auditing your home, keep a checklist of areas you have inspected and problems you found. Check the insulation levels in your attic, exterior and basement walls, ceilings, floors, and crawl spaces. Other places where air flow can be detected are around window frames, fireplace dampers, and wall mounted air conditioners. Also look for gaps around pipes and wires, electrical outlets, foundation seals, under baseboard or at the junctures of walls and around mail slots. Check to see if the caulking and weather stripping are applied properly, leaving no gaps or cracks, and are in good condition.
If you’re having trouble knowing how to find leaks, close any doors, windows and fireplace flues. Turn off combustion appliances, such as the water heater and furnace. Then turn on your bathroom and stove exhaust fans to pull air from the outside and make leaks more obvious. By using the smoke from a stick of incense and holding it at different places around the windows and doors etc. you will see exactly where and how much the air moves.
Next time I will give you a detailed list of what to look for and how to actually do your own energy audit.
Energy audits are a must if you hope to fight off rising energy costs and be more green in the way you live. Fortunately, common sense steps can help you do this and save you a ton of money.