• Drafts – If you have a room that is cold in the winter and hot in the summer look for air leaks in the room. When the wind blows, can you feel air coming in around doors, windows, plug plates, or plumbing penetrations? If so, that could be a key factor in the cold air that you may feel moving across your feet.

• Windows – Windows are a major factor in a room’s comfort. Even the most efficient windows are still not as insulative as your walls. Windows also allow sun rays into the house. This can heat up a room significantly in the summer making it too hot. If your windows face the east or west you can use shades or window films to block the sun’s heat.

• Humidity – Have you ever noticed that 100 degrees in a hot humid climate feels a lot different than 100 degrees in a hot dry climate? High humidity makes your home feel clammy. Even though the temperature of your house may be right, high humidity will keep you from feeling comfortable. Humidity can be caused by improper venting, crawlspace moisture, or a poorly functioning HV/AC system. Since up to 50% of the air that enters your house comes from the crawlspace, managing the moisture in there is very important.

• Balance – When an HV/AC system is installed it is supposed to be designed to supply the right amount of conditioned air to each room. If the HV/AC installer makes an error, or the room is not performing as designed, it can cause there to be either too much or too little conditioned air flowing to a room. If it is too little, it will be cold in the winter and hot in the summer. If it is too much, it will be hot in the winter and cold in the summer. If you think you have this problem you can use the baffles on your duct system to try and adjust the flow to a room. The best option is having your system balanced by a professional who can calculate how much air should be flowing to each room and match the air flow from your system to that calculation.

Your home’s comfort is very important because it can cause your home to be a pleasant or unpleasant place to live. Improving your home’s comfort can also help avoid family feuds over what temperature to set the thermostat at.

Improved Home Value:
With the option of selling your home is on the table, the first thing to do is determine the approximate timeframe of when the house will go on the market. Figuring out whether you will keep your house for the next 5, 10, 15, or 30 years will help you analyze the potential benefits you will realize from specific energy efficient improvements. Based on your timeframe, look at each energy feature and begin estimating the approximate amount that it will increase your home’s value and what the annual savings will be. Once you have determined this for each improvement, subtract the amount it will improve your home’s value from the total cost of the product and divide adjusted cost by the annual savings to get an estimated return on investment. Once you have done this you will be able to pick out the improvements that will pay themselves back so that you can realize a financial benefit by the time you sell your home. If you chose improvements that pay themselves back in two years and you plan on living in the home five more years, at the point of sale you will have received a 150% return on your investment… and that is a lot better than most investments these days.

Selling Features:
The other aspect that must be considered is how much it will increase the appeal of your home to a potential home buyer. In order for someone to buy your home, they must see benefits that are more attractive than the house down the street. If you can feature new windows, a clean sealed crawlspace, or a warm, draft-free home, these benefits can set your home apart and make it sell. I just received an email from a builder we worked with to install a sealed crawlspace system in one of his new homes. He informed me that it was under contract and included this quote from the buyer. “My husband was very impressed with your home and especially with the crawl space-as was the inspector.” So clearly, energy efficient features can make your home more attractive to buyers. The key is making your realtor aware of the improvements and marketing the benefits.

Working with Appraisers:
If you get your home appraised before selling it, work with the appraiser to inform him of the improvements you have done so that he can account for them in the home’s value. Some appraisers are more aware about energy efficiency, but many don’t even consider it when looking at a home. Let them know the cost of the improvements and the approximate energy savings from them. If they are equipped with this information and can see the benefits, then they are much more likely to accurately account for your investments.

“Energy Audit” is a term that is somewhat unclear and when you hear people use it don’t think that they all mean the same thing. Today, there are a variety of people offering energy audits ranging from your local handy man to the public utility company, and with that diversity comes a variety of services and expertise offered under the title of “energy audit”. So that is why I intend to equip you with the information necessary to discern what you are really getting when you sign up for an energy audit. Here are some simple questions to ask during your investigation process.

Who Are They?

This is the first question you ask to discern who you are dealing with. If they answer that they are a window replacement company offering an energy audit you can bet that you will get not much more than a free window estimate and a lecture on how much money “their windows” can save you. The key objective in asking this question is to discern what their motivation is for providing the audit.

What are Their Credentials?

If someone is truly an expert in their field they should have some training or credentials to point to. In the energy world, two of the leading credentials are offered through the Building Performance Institute (BPI) and the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET). Ask the service provider if they are certified by either of these companies or have other additional training. If their answer is no, although they may be well read, they are probably not equipped to be doing professional energy testing.

What Services are They Offering?

Finding out exactly what services they are offering is one of the best ways to discern the value of their “energy audit”.

1. Consultation: One of the most basic elements of an energy audit is consulting the customer to find out what their past energy bills have been, if there are any comfort problems, and what their main objectives are.

2. Visual Examination: An energy audit should always include a thorough examination of the house from the crawlspace to the attic and from inside to out. It is clues from this investigation that set the savvy energy professional on the track to determine the right solutions.

3. Blower Door Test: Using a fan system, the energy auditor can blow air out of your home and measure the rate at which it is being replaced. This test will find out exactly how much air is leaking out of your home and where those air leaks are coming from.

4. Duct Leakage Test: A duct blaster can be used to calculate the exact amount of air that is being lost through leaks in your duct system. Duct leaks can be hard to locate and this test will let you know if they are there.

5. Thermal Imaging: An infrared camera can be used to visually examine your home for insulation voids and air leaks. Because it captures images based on temperatures, you can see cold air (represented by a blue color) coming in around your doors or a cold spot in your wall caused by missing insulation. A thermal scan can often pick up problems that the naked eye could never see.

6. Computer Modeling: By using computer software, an auditor can increase the accuracy in determining the return on investment of energy improvements and calculate a projected reduction in cost based on the improvements he recommends.

7. Analysis and Reporting: An energy audit is only as good as the auditor’s ability to analyze the data collected, determine a prioritized list of improvements, and communicate his findings in a clear and understandable way. Chances are, if an energy auditor can’t clearly explain what is offered in his energy audit, then he won’t be able to clearly explain what you are to do once he has conducted it.

Energy audits range in price from free to around $800 for a residential building. As a general rule of thumb, the fewer of the above services offered the less you should pay. If you are having trouble figuring out how much you should invest in a diagnostic audit, it is wise to pay no more than 10% of the total amount you are willing to invest in improving the efficiency of your home.

So when you go to choose an energy audit for your home, use these tips to help you to find a quality auditor and avoid an energy imposter.

Assessing your doors:
If you think your doors are leaking, you need to inspect them to find out. First, go to each of your exterior doors and look to see if the weather-stripping is in contact with the door frame. You can use a business card and try to slide it between the weather-stripping and the frame and if you feel resistance from the pressure of the weather-stripping contacting the frame, then you know you have a good seal. If the card slides freely or if you can see light through the crack in the door, then your weather-stripping needs to be replaced.

Finding the Right Solution:
If you peruse the weather-stripping options at your local hardware store you will find a variety of styles. To select the right product you need to observe the features on the door you are addressing. A door that is less than 10 years old should have a groove in the door frame in which weather-stripping can be inserted. If your door has this groove you can purchase weather-stripping that slides into this groove. For doors that don’t have this groove, the best option is weather-stripping that is mechanically fastened to your door frame with screws or nails. This type of weather-stripping should be screwed to your door frame so that it firmly contacts the door when it is shut. The third option, which is not as durable, is adhesive weather-stripping. If you choose to use adhesive, foam, weather-stripping, you will need to measure the average width of the crack between your door and the frame and select weather-stripping with the appropriate thickness.

Door Sweeps:
Air creeping under your doors can be stopped by improving your door sweep. To replace them, you will have to get out a screwdriver and back out the screws on your existing door sweep. If it is worn and needs to be replaced you can use it as a guide to buy a replacement one that matches the size of your door. You will have to adjust the door sweep until it makes contact with your threshold, creating a snug seal.

Attic Access Doors:
Often attic access doors are not well sealed. Attic doors that close over carpet instead of a proper threshold are certainly leaking air. Also, if your attic door only has a magnet holding it closed, it likely doesn’t have enough pressure to create a good seal. You can fix this problem by installing a door handle or latch that allows you to close the door and latch it, creating a tight air seal.

Properly sealed doors lower the amount of conditioned air that escapes from your home, improves your home’s comfort, and saves you energy year round.

A few weeks ago I heard a radio advertiser trumpeting the fact that they saved one of their customers 50% on energy by replacing their windows. And to make it even more amazing, they claimed that the windows they took out were fairly new, double pane windows. To the uninformed home owner, this ad might have seemed to be the perfect solution to saving energy. But is their claim true?

Stop for a moment and forget all the information you have heard about windows through radio, TV, and newspaper ads, and let’s start from square one and equip you with the information you need to think about windows sanely.

Real benefits of replacing your windows

1. Energy Savings – Since you have heard so much about replacement windows slashing your energy costs, let’s lay out the savings you can really expect. Windows are measured in U-values. This term can be confusing, but it simply describes the amount of heat the window conducts. U-values are the inverse of R-values which measure the amount of heat that is resisted. R-values are used to measure products like insulation. This means if you have an older home with single pane wood windows, they will have a U-value of approximately .99. Convert this into R-values and it equals R-1. If your walls are insulated with a standard R-13, then your windows are letting heat out of your house 13 times faster than your walls. Windows also lose heat because they usually leak air around the sashes. On average, windows represent an estimated 20% of a home’s overall air leaks.

So now we know windows are a big drain on energy, but how much will replacement windows save you? Let’s say that you replace your single pane wood windows with an Energy Star replacement window having a U-value of .32. You have 15 windows in your house with a combined area of 120 square feet. Using the calculation formula based on the number of heating and cooling days for a particular region we can come up with an estimated amount of savings due to better thermal characteristics. For the scenario we have laid out, we would see an annual savings of $208 from thermal improvements alone. If we also figure that the new windows result in a 75% decrease in window air leaks, that would account for an additional savings of approximately $94 bringing us to a grand total of $302 savings per year. Before you pass judgment on replacement windows let’s look at some of the other benefits.

2. Comfort – Often windows are the first thing that comes to people’s minds when they think about air leaks. Although they account for only 20% of an average home’s overall leakage, they are some of the first ones you feel. And when the wind picks up, and the weather gets cold, they can have you reaching for the nearest blanket just to stay warm. Replacing leaky windows can make a major impact on your home’s comfort. And keeping the home owner comfortable and happy is a fantastic benefit!

3. Convenience – Is washing windows a challenge? If you install new double hung windows you can select a model with a tilt-in sash feature so you can clean both sides of your windows from inside your house. This saves you the hassle of hauling out the ladder or the cost of hiring a window cleaning company.

4. Aesthetics – If you have old windows that you replace with bright, fresh new ones, I would bet my last dollar on the fact that you will have many friends and neighbors comment on how great they look. From both the inside and the outside, new windows make your home look newer and cleaner.

5. Re-sale Value – According to a 2005 survey of cost versus value done by Remodeling Magazine, replacement windows have an 89.6% return on investment. Although this figure may be less in our current housing market, replacement windows will still yield a higher price for your home, covering a good portion of the cost you invested.

So what is the return on investment for replacement windows? That question is packed with lots of variables. Based on the scenario we started with, if we figure that each window costs $425, and there are 15 of them, we have a total window replacement cost of $6,375. If we look at the return on investment strictly from an energy stand point, we divide the $6,375 by the $302 annual savings to get a ROI (return on investment) of 21 years. This number on its own is not very impressive, but when we figure that at least 70% of the cost of the windows will be recouped in the increased value of your home we can drop that ROI (return on investment) to 6.3 years. Add the additional annual savings you might see by firing your window cleaner (because you can easily clean them yourself), and you could save another $120 a year dropping your ROI (return on investment) to 4.5 years. And on top of all that, add the benefit for being more comfortable, enjoying a bright clean view, and hearing your neighbors and friends remark about how good it looks, and now you can see why it is an extremely worthwhile investment for home owners looking to achieve these goals. So next time you hear someone advertising windows that will slash your energy prices take it with a grain or two of salt.

The HERS index is a rating system that takes into consideration a home’s building components, orientation, and mechanical equipment to determine its overall energy consumption.  A computer modeling software takes those building components and compares them to a reference home. The reference home represents the average efficiency of a home built to current code and it is equal to 100 on the HERS index.  Based on how efficient your home is, it will be placed on the HERS index in relation to the reference home or 100.

Each 1-point decrease in the HERS Index corresponds to a 1% reduction in energy consumption compared to the HERS Reference Home. Thus, a home with a HERS Index of 85 is 15% more energy efficient than the HERS Reference Home and a home with a HERS Index of 80 is 20% more energy efficient.  If you are looking to know where your home stands on this nationally recognized rating system or want to get an energy star certification for a new home we can provide you with the services necessary at a cost effective price.