Energy Audit Options

This article was first published in Albuquerque's Local IQ MagazineArchives are available at Issuu.

This article first appeared in Local IQ, Albuquerque NM

As we head into winter and start noticing the chill, it is a good time to talk about doing an energy audit on your house. I can describe the group which should be investing in an energy audit in four words: they own a house. No matter how old or how new, you will more than recoup all the money you invest in an energy audit. The return on investment may be anywhere from 150% to 200% and if you invest $10 in energy efficiency it will be less than a year before you get the money back (and you'll get the $10 back the next year and the next year and the next year...). There's two kinds of energy audits -- you can hire a professional, or you can do it yourself.

Thermal Image UK, Tom Barbour, UK

The Mercedes (or it is Prius?) option is to hire a professional to do a home energy audit. This may cost $300-600 dollars, depending on the size of your house. The auditor will installer a blower on your door that pressurizes your house and then find all the places where your hard earned money is going to heat or cool the great outdoors. During the winter or summer, when the contrast between indoor and outdoor temperatures are the greatest, they may take digital thermal photos to record places where outside air is leaking in. They will investigate your appliances and check your heating and cooling equipment. They may give your house a HERS number -- HERS stands for Home Energy Efficiency Standard.

In the end the audit company should hand you a list of to-do items, with an estimate of what each of those steps should save you. One inconvenient thing for home owners is that after the energy audit, the homeowner will have to find a contractor to carry out the larger steps, like blown-in insulation in the attic. Professional energy auditors don't do energy upgrades themselves, in order to avoid a conflict of interest. There is no doubt that if you take even a few of the actions on the list, you will recoup the cost of an energy audit. If you are a precise person, who wants evidence of loss, and an expert opinion, then the professional energy audit is for you, and the HERS rating is an independent verification of your success.

At the other end is the do-it-yourself energy audit. The blunt truth is that your house isn't very special -- it probably has the energy efficiency problems every house other does. First your should get two years of electric and heating (gas, propane) records, so that you can pat yourself on the back each month as the bill comes in lower. The DIY audit doesn't distinguish between measuring and fixing, so I highly recommend you fix things as you find them. Any internet search for "DIY home energy audit" will turn up a long list of items. I'll list my favorites in a future article.

There are two advantages to the professional energy audit. First, it is difficult without thermal photographs to find unusual places where there is no insulation. It is pretty common to find insulation holes around light fixtures and electrical outlets, but in some houses the insulation is missing from random spacings between two-by-fours, or missing from the top two feet of a wall due to an old roof leak. Second, the professional auditor has a good sense of how much utility bills are for houses of your age and type in Albuquerque. They also can help you make larger decisions about replacing windows or the heating/cooling system.

A lot of research has been done into executive decision-making and the plain truth is that in most cases, which decision you choose doesn't matter. What matters is that you make a decision, and follow through with it.


Articles on Teaspoon Energy by Kristy Dyer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License You can reprint it for free, as-is.