Simple Home Energy Audit
The fastest way to start reducing your electricity and heating and cooling usage is to identify the areas where you are wasting energy. Otherwise you are just guessing and could be wasting your time fixing things that only provide a very small reduction in your usage. A simple home energy audit can quickly identify areas where you are wasting large amounts of energy. This valuable information allows you to focus your efforts on the areas that have the highest payback. Wouldn’t you like to find the energy hogs that are costing you and extra $10 to $100 a month?
The following guide will help you conduct you own home energy audit. These steps will give you a good idea about where to start you conservation efforts. For a more detailed audit, you can call you utility company and they can do a full evaluation of your home (the cost of this service typically depends on your income level.)
This home energy audit guide is split into three areas: heating and cooling, water, and electricity. This guide focuses on auditing the areas that use the largest amount of energy, which will provide the largest payback to your conservation efforts. The following graph depicts that breakdown of utility costs for a typical home.
Breakdown of the Energy Usage of a Typical Home
Each utility category is further broken up into two levels: Easy, which can be done by anyone without special tools, and Moderate, which may require some specialized tools and/or getting to places that may be hard to reach. Even if you can only do the things on the easy levels, you will find plenty of ways to begin lowering energy usage and your utility bills.
Electricity
- Easy
- Check the seals in your refrigerator(s) – Close the door on a piece off paper and then try to pull it out. If it comes out easily the seal is bad and is letting hot air into the refrigerator causing the refrigerator’s compressor to run more often. FIX: If you refrigerator is fairly new, replace the seal otherwise it would be better to replace the refrigerator with a new energy efficient model.
- Check the contents of your refrigerator(s) – Freezers work better when the are full, and refrigerators work best when the air can flow freely within them. So check to make sure your freezer(s) are full, and that nothing is blocking the air flow within your refrigerator (especially on the top rack.) FIX: rearrange items in the refrigerator to promote air flow, and fill the freezer with food or empty bottles filled with water.
- Check your computers’ power management settings – If you leave you computer and monitor on all the time, you are wasting a significant amount of energy. You can find the power management settings under the Control Panel. FIX: Have the computer go into the hibernate mode after 30 minutes of inactivity (this mode saves your current working environment to the hard drive and then shuts down.
- Check your lighting – Determine which lights you use most and look at the wattage of the bulbs. FIX: Lower the wattage of the bulbs in your most used areas (seriously consider using CFLs or LED lights to significantly reduce the wattage.) Also, make sure you turn of lights in rooms that you are not using – this the simplest and cheapest way to start saving on your lighting.
- Moderate
- Check to coils on your refrigerator(s) – This usually requires you to pull the refrigerator, since the coils will be located on the back or bottom of the unit. If the coils are dirty and covered with dust and grim, the refrigerator compressor is having to run longer to keep the inside cold. FIX: Cleaning the coils and underside of the refrigerator with a vacuum or broom.
- Check your appliances – Older models use considerable more energy than the newer energy efficient models (if you have a Kill-a-Watt Meter
you can check exactly how much electricity they are using.) FIX: Replace worn out appliances and begin to use appliances more efficiently (i.e. only run full loads of laundry and dishes.)
Heating and Cooling
- Easy
- Check for air leaks around windows and doors – On a cold and windy day, feel around your windows and window moldings for air infiltration. If you are having trouble feeling for leaks, you can use a stick of incense to detect the leaks. Just find the places where the smoke gets disturbed by air leaking into your home. FIX: Caulk all places where air is leaking into your home.
- Check insulation level in your attic – Since heat rises, having the recommended level of insulation in your attic goes a long way at keeping the heat within your home. Just stick a ruler or yardstick into the insulation to determine the depth. Depending on your location you should have between 12 to 24 inches of fiberglass, or 10 to 20 inches of blown cellulose insulation. FIX: Add more insulation either batts or blown in insulation.
- Check your furnace’s air filter – Always remember to check the air filter on your furnace at least once a month. A dirty filter will make the furnace work harder and longer, shortening its life. FIX: replace dirty air filter.
- Check heating registers – Make sure that nothing is blocking the heating registers. FIX: Move furniture off all heating registers.
- Check thermostat – For each degree you can turn down the thermostat, you will save 3% on your heating costs. FIX: Turn the thermostat down when you are not home and when you are sleeping. Replace your standard thermostat with a cheap programmable one, and let it do all the work.
- Check your fireplace – Make sure that the damper is closed. An open damper will an amazing amount of hot air out of your house. Open fireplaces are very inefficient and will pull heat our of your house even when lit. FIX: Keep the fireplace damper closed. Thing about installing a fireplace insert if you want to use the fireplace. Inserts burn very efficiently and have fans to blow hot air into the home.
- Moderate
- Check for air leaks into the attic. Look for places where the insulation is a darker color. This can indicate a leak that is blowing dust into the insulation. Also look around the tops of walls, above lights, and wherever wires, pipes, and duct work enter the attic. These air leaks are pulling the heat right out of your home. FIX: Seal leaks with spray foam, rope caulking, and plumbers putty. Be careful to keep flammable materials away from any chimneys, or can lights. To seal these you will have to use a high temperature caulking.
- Check duct work for leaks – If you duct work goes into the attic or any uncondition space, check to make sure it is insulation and that there are no air leaks. FIX: Seal the duct work with metal duct tape (do not use standard duct tape – it will deteriorate too quickly.) and then wrap the ducts in insulation.
- Check for thermal leaks. This goes beyond just checking for air infiltration, this will actual find places where heat is being lost through your walls, ceilings and floors. For this you will need a thermal leak detector, a simple device that measures the temperature of a remote surface. FIX: This depends on where the leak is found (i.e. if you detect that the edges of the floor are cold, you might be able to insulate around the rim joist.) Some fixes will require more work and expense then others – if you detect holes in your wall’s insulation, this would require drilling into the wall and blowing in insulation.
Water
- Easy
- Check your water heaters temperature setting – Most water heaters can be set to 120 degrees. FIX: Lower you water heaters temperature to 120 degrees – For each 10 degree reduction, you will save 3% to 5% on your energy costs.
- Check your faucets – Look for leaks – a leaking faucet can waste gallons of water a month. FIX: Replace or repair leaking faucets.
- Check your toilets for leaks – Add a little bit of blue food color to the tank to test if the flapper is leaking. Leave the toilet for 30 minutes and then check to see if there is any of the blue water has leaked into the bowl. If it has the flapper is leaking and wasting your water. FIX: replace the flapper.
