Stop Paying for Wasted Energy
Greentips: October 2005
The typical American family spends close to $1,500 a year on utility bills, and as much as half of that expense could be unnecessary if a home is not energy-efficient. An inefficient home not only puts needless strain on your wallet, but on the environment as well, since the fossil fuel-generated electricity consumed by a single house puts more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air than two average cars.
With heating fuel prices on the rise again, it's a good time to conduct an energy audit of your home. Whether performed by you or a professional, an energy audit can help you determine where your house is losing energy and what changes would most improve its efficiency. Areas where energy is typically lost include:
- Insulation—Insulation helps keep a home warm in winter and cool in summer. A standard feature of exterior walls, it should also be used in ceilings, floors, attics, crawlspaces, and around pipes and ducts in uninsulated spaces (such as basements).
- Heating and cooling—Heating and cooling systems consume more energy than any other system in your home. Older furnaces, boilers, and air conditioners are often inefficient, and leaky or uninsulated ducts exacerbate the problem.
- Water heating—Many water heaters are set at a higher temperature than necessary (120°F is sufficient) and units with a water-holding tank are often uninsulated, allowing heat to escape.
- Air leaks—Warm air can escape your home in the winter and enter it in the summer through leaky window and door frames, baseboards, electrical outlets, fireplaces, and foundations.
- Lighting—Energy is often wasted by lighting empty rooms, lighting an entire room when only a small part of the room is occupied, using brighter lights than necessary, and using traditional incandescent bulbs rather than the new generation of compact fluorescent bulbs.
- Appliances—Household appliances account for about 20 percent of annual home energy consumption. Refrigerators, clothes washers, and dryers are prime candidates for replacement by Energy Star-rated models.
You can find and eliminate most of these problems on your own; several of the websites listed on the sidebar offer help for the do-it-yourself energy auditor. For a more thorough inspection and assessment, hire a professional auditor who can run specialized tests such as a blower door test, which finds air leaks by forcing air out of your home, thereby lowering the internal air pressure and causing air to flow back into the home through any leaks. Alternatively, an infrared camera can be used to produce a thermographic scan indicating where heat is escaping from your home. Though a professional audit can cost several hundred dollars depending on the tests being done, some local utilities offer existing customers free or discounted audits.
