Home Energy Audit

Plenty of helpful advice and some revelations came out of our home energy audit. We called our local electric utility to set up an appointment for the audit through an ongoing program they offer. If you happen to live within the Traverse City Light & Power service area in northern Michigan as we do, for $10 an energy expert will come to your home and review and inspect your appliances, lighting, insulation, heating and cooling zones, windows, doors, and other things having to do with energy consumption that may fall into your particular auditor’s area of expertise. Wherever you live, call your local utility to see if they offer a similar program.

Our auditor was a knowledgeable fellow named Randy Smith who has an extensive background in construction, energy management, recycling as well as renewable energy production. In addition to his work with the utility, he designs and installs home energy systems for his customers. He also won some instant street cred with me when I learned that his home is completely off the grid. I respect people who practice what they preach. He brought a box of educational goodies such as examples of weather stripping, different kinds of light bulbs, instructive literature, and a compact fluorescent bulb to leave with us as part of the deal. After giving us an introductory talk on his approach and the basic concepts of energy conservation (examine everything you do and find ways to use less power to accomplish the same tasks, examine your living infrastructure and root out waste, leaks, and inefficiency, examine the products and services you buy and look for lower energy-intensive replacements), Randy gave us a print out of our electricity use over the past year, prepared by the utility company, and showed us where we fall relative to the average household in our service area. We’re already at the low end of electric usage: 2.6 kW-hrs/square foot/year compared with 14 kW-hrs/square foot/year at the highest and 2.2 kW-hrs/square foot/year at the lowest. Randy pointed out that the homes at the highest usage per square foot are likely using electric hot water heaters, ovens and ranges, while our house uses natural gas for those tasks. There is also a noticeable lack of a television in our house. We ditched the TV about five years ago at an opportune moment when a goodwill truck was here picking up a couch. I asked the guys to hold on a moment before driving off and then went in and yanked the TV out of the wall and brought it out to them. It was an impulsive act at the time, but we truly don’t miss it, and TVs are a typically big energy hog in modern homes, especially when they are on for hours a day. At the time we got rid of it, our reasons were mostly in the camp of poor programming availability, but I digress.

Randy took us on a tour of our home and, gentle soul that he is, started many of his observations with, "I don’t mean to pick on you, but …" He showed us where some old windows are actually letting daylight in under the worn sashes, took an inventory of our lighting and told us that we would likely reduce our usage by 20% by completing the migration to compact fluorescent bulbs, looked at the appliances and noted which ones might be up for replacement with more efficient models (the fridge is a candidate), looked at our furnace, hot water heater, pipes, foundation and crawl spaces, checked out the insulation, and shared anecdotes and tips along the way. He told us to think of our house as a heating and cooling envelope with airflow management. Any leak or unintentional heat transfer in the envelope is a point where both energy and money are being wasted. He also shared other problems to look out for in a poorly maintained envelope: a one square foot opening in an exterior wall—and by opening we’re only talking about a space without proper insulation, not a hole to the outside—will allow 30 quarts of water in the form of vapor to move through over the course of a heating season. Not only does this mean heat loss, it can mean water, mildew, rot, and mold in the wall cavity. Not good. He stressed the importance of maintaining the envelope. He talked about the efficacy of various insulation materials and methods and corroborated what our insulation auditor (also named Randy) told us about that aspect of our house.

Randy left us with a list of to-do's, organized rationally into inexpensive "do tomorrow" items and bigger ticket "do if you have the budget" items. Some of what he told us are things that, in reflection, I think I should have known or should be intuitive, but I admit that it's helpful to me to have someone draw my attention to those things. It also helps to have an expert's perspective on the relative importance of seemingly small improvements.

A recurrent theme of Randy’s is that "the little things are really adding up now."

Here is our to-do list for the immediate future:

[ ] vacuum our refrigerator coils
[ ] wash the seals and gaskets on all appliances that have them
[ ] check the settings on the dishwasher, clothes washer, drier, fridge to use the lower energy settings whenever appropriate; don't just use the default settings
[ ] switch to low flow shower heads
[ ] wrap the copper water pipes with closed cell foam and tape
[ ] tape the joints on all air ducts (yes that would be "duct" tape, except make sure it's the aluminum backed kind, or ask your hardware person what kind to use, because some of the brands don't actually work on ducts very well - they fall off when heated)
[ ] buy a few bucks worth of weather stripping and seal off those old windows! (he told us the sealed windows would more than pay us back in only ONE month of our gas bill)
[ ] finish replacing our incandescent lights with CFLs (the energy it takes to manufacture and ship a light bulb is small compared with the amount an incandescent wastes, so don't wait until they burn out to replace them!)
[ ] borrow a "kill-o-watt" meter from our local utility to check for phantom loads (energy draw when the appliance is turned off) on our appliances and chargers. Use power strips on or unplug the ones that have phantom loads when not in use.

Here is our bigger ticket list:
[ ] get the insulation contractor in to tighten up the insulation in the exterior walls and attic. Also insulate the foundation above grade in the basement and crawl spaces. Randy said we would likely see that paid back in 1 – 2 heating seasons.
[ ] explore on-demand hot water systems. He told us they typically use 50% less energy over time.
[ ] consider replacement windows with higher R values in certain key spots in the house
[ ] when it's time to replace the fridge, go with a smaller one with freezer on top or bottom, and allow more ventilation around it so heat doesn’t collect and fight against the cooling.
[ ] consider insulating the basement floor.

We'll take care of the smaller items in the next couple weeks and price out the big things to see when they might make the calendar.