Almost 20 years ago, I moved into an apartment with electric heat. The landlord said that he would cut the rent during the winter months because it would be so expensive to keep the place going. When the electric bill arrived, I looked at all the fine print on it and noticed on the back of the bill a phone number offering help with energy efficiency. It turns out, it was for a program that did energy audits on houses and other buildings. The program was paid for out of a portion of the bill set aside for efficiency upgrades. The energy audit was free. My landlord agreed to have them come look at the house, signed some paperwork (in triplicate), and the fun began.
[Photo from Jayvirdy on Flickr]
The energy auditor came with a blower door. This was an adjustable canvas cover that fit over the door opening. It had a fan on it and some pressure gauges. We closed the windows and he turned it on. This device sucked the air out of the house, and we then went around feeling for drafts. Any moving air would be the result of a gap. The largest gap we found was about six feet long, where the header over the closet door had not been finished properly with sheet rock. He discovered lots of other ways to improve the efficiency of that apartment, and discovered that it was eligible for loads more energy savings upgrades.
A few weeks later, a crew came and blew insulation into the walls and attic. They drilled a whole bunch of holes after removing siding, and made some more in the knee walls and sloped ceilings. That house, an antique cape, was built by a blind veteran after the Civil War. It had no insulation, which was an important part of the reason why our electric bill was so incredibly high.
When the project was done, I had spent no money, nor had the landlord, but the apartment was much more comfortable and cost less to run. By increasing the energy efficiency of the house, it was a better place to live and was more gentle on the electrical grid. Eventually, the landlord lost the place to the bank in the economic downturn of the early 1990s, and we had to move on. The building was better for our having lived there because of the free energy audit. I have since had energy audits on each of the places I've lived in since. I wouldn't think of living in a place that I didn't know the energy status of. If audits are not available for free where you live, you can certainly do a DIY audit.
Upon moving into the next place, also an apartment, I promptly called for an energy audit, even though I didn't get the heat or electric bill. It seemed like a good thing to do, and it was free anyway. No problems for that landlord, who had his business downstairs and would benefit from our tighter apartment. The incentives were not as good for that project as the previous one. We did get some flow restrictors for the faucets, a couple of compact fluorescent light bulbs and a programmable thermostat for the heater.
The programmable thermostat is great, because it allows the house to turn itself up and down based on the rules I program into the timer. Basically, the house should be cool when we are away or asleep, and warm when we are home and awake. This makes the house more comfy when we want it that way and stingy with energy when we don't need the heat. Since we don't have central air, when the heating season is over, I just set the temperatures so that it doesn't go on for the summer months.
[Photo from Connors934 on Flickr]
These energy audits are great. They can cost nothing to the consumer. They help make our houses and apartments more comfortable by keeping the heat in during the winter and the heat out during the summer. A house that is not tight feels drafty. When you are heating the place, cold air works its way in and the furnace is, in part, heating the great outdoors. They can help give you a project list for how to make the house a more efficient consumer of energy of all forms, electric, natural gas, oil, wood heat, solar, or wind power.
In fact, having an energy audit is one of the most cost-effective things you can do to your home. The audit will turn up a lot of the ways that energy, and money, are leaking out of your house. If you are considering getting into an alternative energy system like solar or wind, or even your own basement electrolysis unit and fuel cell, then one of the most important first steps you can make is to decrease your energy usage. A lot of the steps are mind numbingly simple, like turning off the lights, or putting your devices on power strips so you can make sure they're really inert and not drawing trickles of juice when they appear to be off.
There are a lot of things that we can do to increase our energy efficiency. See more ideas after the jump...
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