Unless you have recently undergone a heating and cooling system upgrade, your Coastal Bend home has areas that could be improved when it comes to being energy efficient. A professional energy audit would identify projects you can do yourself to remedy energy loss now and save money in the process. For an overview of your home’s energy and what a home energy audit consists of, read on.
Components of a Professional Energy Audit
During a professional energy audit, your technician will:
- Tour of your entire home, with a particular focus on your HVAC equipment and ducts.
- Look at your past energy/utility bills to detect any patterns or unusual spikes in energy use.
- Conduct a blower-door test, which involves placing a powerful fan in an exterior door, facing outward. When the fan is turned on, it sucks the air from the house, and gauges how quickly interior air pressure returns to normal. This allows the auditor to determine your home’s airtightness.
- Conduct a thermographic scan that identifies where air is leaking from the home (or rushing back in during the blower-door test) and where insulation is lacking or missing.
- Perform an air infiltration scan, using PFT (perfluorocarbon tracer gas).
Once the energy assessment is complete, your energy auditor will give you a report that includes detailed recommendations for how to improve your home’s energy efficiency, along with an offer to perform some of the corrective steps.
DIY Energy Saving Projects
Even if you aren’t very handy, you can identify and/or perform some aspects some energy saving tasks today:
- Searching for air leaks in your home’s periphery and sealing them
- Checking on insulation where it’s accessible
- Looking to see if hot water pipes, your water heater and ductwork are insulated, especially in areas that don’t receive full cooling and heating
- Changing HVAC air filters on a regular basis
- Scheduling annual maintenance on cooling and heating systems
- Switching out old-school incandescent light-bulbs with modern energy-saving options such as CFLs
For a comprehensive evaluation of your home’s energy use and efficiency, however, you’ll want to contact a trusted professional HVAC company to complete an energy audit.
To schedule an energy audit today for your Corpus Christi home, please contact us at Bodine-Scott Air Conditioning Co.
