New Jersey homeowners are getting wise about increasing home performance. There are many potential energy wasters in the average household. Air leaks in ducts, your building’s shell and the attic, inadequate insulation, drafty windows and old or inefficient heating and cooling equipment are just a few. While making home improvements in the name of efficiency is commendable, it’s unwise to do so without energy evaluations. You wouldn’t want to spend thousands of dollars on new windows, only to find that your biggest energy waster was faulty ductwork.
Energy evaluations, sometimes called home energy audits, are essentially detailed studies of the energy your home uses. They analyze the amount of energy consumed, the various ways it is consumed, and showcase the most wasteful problems.
A few tests performed during energy evaluations are:
- Room by room analysis of energy consumption, including the heating and cooling load (how much energy it takes to keep each room comfortable)
- Assessment of your past utility bills
- Evaluation of your HVAC equipment’s efficiency, including whether it is sized correctly for your home’s heating and cooling load
- Evaluation of your ductwork, including the design and sizing, insulation and air leaks
- Insulation inspection, looking for gaps or inadequate performance
- Blower door tests, looking for air leaks in the building
- Infrared camera testing, to find otherwise hard to see areas of energy loss and inadequate insulation
Before the energy auditor arrives, make a list of household problems you’re experiencing, such as musty smells, water spots or excessive dust. That way he’ll know what to look for. After energy evaluations, you should have a report detailing how much your home improvements are likely to cost, and what you can expect the return investment to look like.
There are plenty of federal and state tax incentives to make the initial cost of going high-efficiency more friendly. The environment wins, too, as your household will burn fewer fossil fuels and generate fewer greenhouse gases.
Call Pipe Works Services for in-depth energy evaluations on your household. We’re proud to help New Jersey homeowners save money while staying comfortable!
Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information, click here to download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
Pipe Works Services serves Chatham, New Jersey and the surrounding areas. To get started, check out our website.
