Year of the Energy Audit

Your government wants you to save energy and they are getting ready to help you do it. The buzz from Washington is a "Cash for Caulkers" program that puts your home front and center. Nobody knows what this really means yet, but you can bet the Energy Audit will be a central part of it. Many local utilities and cities have already made energy audits available. A home energy audit provides an invaluable diagnostic of the two largest energy and comfort issues of a home: air infiltration through the air barrier and heat loss/ heat gain through insulation. The homes shell and its insulation are very important, but for years now have not been properly regarded. Things have changed and with building science and good diagnostic tools we can find where your home is not performing so we can then do something about it.

Energy Audits will be free (or close to it) for almost anybody in the states in the coming year. You call up your local utility or municipality and they will happily send out a RESNET or BPI certified energy auditor to your home. The auditor will schlep out a big fan which slips into an adjustable frame that fills the front door. After turning off pilot lights and sealing appliance exhaust vents on goes the blower. In short order they will adjust the fan to create a precise pressure difference (50 pascals as the control) between the outside and inside. Now the science begins. What they are looking for is the volume of air entering your home through all the hidden holes in the outside walls. They measure the air changes per hour and use this to tell how leaky your home really is. Congratulations you now have a number. This number doesn't mean much though until you find those leaks.

This is where building science meets building sleuth. A well trained auditor has a lot of tricks on how to find those holes, missing or inadequate insulation, and other building envelope problems. First thing they need to do is ask about your experience of comfort in the home. A cold or hot room, a noisy furnace, drafty stair wells are all signs of the hidden life of wasted energy. Your experience of discomfort is a great indicator of what the problems are. A good building scientist knows what to test for but a good energy sleuth knows how to extract the critical information. The auditor then will walk through the home looking for air infiltration building issues. The big problems are usually where you never are, the attic and basement or crawl space. If you set the blower to blow air into the home and stick your head into the attic you may see insulation dance around the holes in the ceiling or top of the walls. A smoke stick in the basement can quickly show the rim joist leaking air, even if they are insulated. Electrical outlets are a prime candidate for cold air to make a break for it.

This is good news. "Cash for Caulkers" implies that we are not just testing a home but doing something about it. Foam, caulk and air barriers are extraordinary but humble guards on the quest for energy efficiency and comfort. Now that the crime scene is laid out they go into attics, crawl spaces, electrical boxes and hidden corners across America to protect you from high energy prices and according to some politicians, "To stop the terrorists" (ok, whatever it takes.) A good energy auditor is now not just a scientist and sleuth but also the judge- laying out a sentence to ban the infiltration of air into the home.

We have a lot riding on the energy auditor and rely on their professionalism. Now that you get the service for free a new dynamic is in the works. A good audit takes at the very least an hour and a half and provides a thorough unbiased report of the findings. If the auditor is suddenly burdened with a lot of jobs and the folks getting the audit have no financial commitment.... well you can see where I am going. The value of the information is the basis for everything that comes next. A thorough audit is very useful, a poorly done audit can simply steer you in the wrong direction and waste serious money in the process.

How do you know that you're getting the real deal? The audit process does not just give you the somewhat esoteric air exchange number but they tell you what it means in regards to your homes general performance. They keep the blower on and snoop around the corners, attic, and even the crawl space. They seek out complicated framing and check its thermal properties. They look at the duct work, combustion air, water heater, building penetrations, insulation, etc. They ask questions and examine your energy bill. If you have a freezer in the garage and a hot tub in back, they give you the "what for". Safety and energy do not always run parallel so they provide a good energy saving plan without leaving you with bad air or a poorly running system. They do not give you expensive solutions right off the bat and they prioritize the work to be done.

When it come to the work to be done keep an open mind. If the auditor's company also does the retrofits take a serious look at what the real priorities are. New windows and a new furnace do not happen before you seal and insulate. The ethicality of an audit can be seriously compromised if the company also wants to do the work. I can lie about your buildings performance as easily as I can tell the truth with a thermal imagining camera (but a good thermal camera operator can "see" into the wall). When it come to pay back and comfort you cannot beat the caulk gun, foam and quality insulation.

As the free Energy Audits rolls out I would like to see two things. A good customer feedback system and internal auditing system should be required to see that the auditors are doing a good job and not steering the owner to overly expensive installation work (this is already a part of the RESNET standard). Just as important is not having the municipalities and energy companies simply contract out the work but create a voucher system that allows more energy audit teams to get a chance to show you that they can do a great job helping you lower your energy bills and improve your quality of life. With good feed back in a competitive market these audits will only get better. Just giving them away to a few select auditing providers could keep the maket for efficency from realizing it true potential.

Maybe you already heard the news about our president recently calling insulation "sexy". President Obama exclaimed "Here's what's sexy about it: saving money. Think about it this way: If you haven't upgraded your home yet, it's not just heat or cool air that's escaping- its energy and money that you are wasting. If you saw $20 bills just sort of floating through the window up into the atmosphere, you'd try to figure out how you were going to keep that. But that's exactly what's happening because of the lack of efficiency in our buildings."

Energy Auditor, patriot.

Andrew Michler LEED AP, MIGP  owner Baosol LLC Adaptive Building Consulting

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