Do Your Own Home Energy Audit
You must know what your dealing with before you should start a home energy audit yourself, begin by know what your dealing with. Collect all your energy bills from the past few years, compare each month and look for trends. It’s the spikes in your energy usage that happens at certain times of the year that will offer clues about your energy consumption.
So here’s what you can do.
Find where the air leaks are: Walk around your house and feel for air leaks in the following areas:
- Gaps in the baseboard and where the walls and ceiling meet
- Window and door frames, as well as their weather stripping and caulking
- Mail slots and doggie doors
- Fireplace dampers
- Window-mounted air conditioners
- Electrical outlets and switch plates
- Pipes
- Areas where building materials come together (such as in corners, around chimneys and along the foundation of your home)
To get the best results, close any doors, windows and fireplace flues. Turn off combustion appliances, such as the water heater and furnace. Then turn on exhaust fans to pull air from the outside and make leaks more obvious. Use ether a wet hand and wave it in front of suspected areas (the draft should feel cool on your hand) or use smoke from a stick of incense to see where the air moves.
Look closely at the insulation: look at the thickness of your attic insulation and make sure it meets current recommendations. Look for a vapor barrier under the insulation. Make sure the insulation covers holes in duct work, pipes and chimneys.
When done with the attic, go downstairs and check the basement. Basements that are unheated should also have insulation under the floor of the living area. Heated basements should have it in the foundation walls, as well as around the water heater, hot water pipes and furnace ducts.
Look into check crawl spaces, ceilings and outside walls and be sure they too are well insulated. To find out of there’s insulation in your walls, turn off circuit breakers so that the electricity is off, get a flashlight, then remove a cover plate from one of your outlets and insert a straightened out wire hanger or push a long, thin wooden stick into the wall (or if yu prefer, drill a hole into the back of a closet). If you meet resistance, or pull out shreds of fiber, then there is some insulation.
Look at Your Heating and cooling equipment: The furnace and air conditioner can be big culprits on excessive usage of energy. If your units are more than 15 years old, consider replacing them with more energy-efficient systems, or consider our environment and the carbon footprint we all leave behind, think about going Green and look into building your own solar panel systems or home wind power systems. You can save money by doing it yourself and the end result will save bundles on your home energy costs.
At the beginning of each year have your heating and cooling systems checked professionally. Replace furnace filters as often as the manufacturer recommends (usually about once every month or two, especially during the winter when it’s running more often). And for central air units, vacuum the coils when they get dirty.
Consider replacing your current lightbulbs: Using the wrong kind can put a strain on your energy bill too. Think about replacing any 100 watt bulbs, with 60 or 75 watts. Or even compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), which use about 75 percent less energy than standard bulbs. By using more energy-efficient lighting , you may be entitled to a rebate from your utility company. Save more energy by installing dimmer switches and sensors that flip off lights when no one is around.
Seek out the energy losers: Refrigerators, dishwashers and other appliances can use up energy if they’re not set up and maintained properly. To see how much energy your appliances are using, plug in a Kill-A-Watt Electric Usage Monitor, which will give you details on energy use and show you how much extra you’re spending. You might be able to make some small adjustments — fas an example, adjust the temperature on your refrigerator — to improve your numbers. Also unplug any appliances (like DVD players or computers) when they’re not in use.
I hope this is of some help.