Pinching Pennies

It seems to be what everyone is doing nowadays, so we're doing it, too. This posting will be more of an FYI for any homeowners who are looking to save a few bucks on your monthly utility bills.

Joe gets Family Handyman magazine, which is an awesome one for those that don't get it. It's published by Readers Digest, and makes a great gift for any do-it-yourselfer husband you may have. (It's also a great gift alternative to Maxim or like magazine!) Anyhow, there have been a couple articles in the past about energy audits. They mentioned how you can get one done on your home by your energy provider, and they can find air leaks, poorly insulated spots, and give you tips on how to increase the efficiency of your home. It mentioned that they can run anywhere from $250 - $400, but some energy companies will provide discounts. So I decided to call ours and potentially have one done. When I talked to our provider (Union Rural Electric), he told me everything he would do, and that it could take anywhere from 1 - 4 hours, depending on what we wanted done. I asked how much it costs, and he asked me, "do you pay your electric bill on time?" to which I replied, "yes, of course!" He said, "then there's no charge." Great! Sign us up - when can you come out? As an added bonus, he said that he would bring out 48 CFE bulbs (compact flourescents) to replace every incandescent bulb in our house - FOR FREE!

Long story short, he came out within a week, found out that our house was pretty airtight, and gave us a few suggestions to improve it. One of them was to insulate our crawlspace better, which had a few cracks in the foundation, was missing insulation on some spots on the wall, wasn't installed properly in others, and didn't have any along the floor above. (That was our lovely New Year's Eve project) I have to say, there is already a huge difference - the air coming out the vents into our family room is now warm instead of cool, the room stays warm, it isn't as drafty, and there isn't a 10 degree temperature difference between the basement and upstairs anymore.

Step 1: Hook up the big fan to a door to create a negative pressure inside the house, equivalent to 20mph winds blowing on all four sides of the house. It makes it real easy to detect leaks that way...

Up close view - the computer on the side monitors how much air is leaving the house. Ideally, a 1/1 ratio of the size of the house is what you want. For our case, our house is about 2000 sq. ft, so we would want a rating of 2000 cfm (cubic feet per minute). Our actual reading was about 2400, so it was pretty good, but could be better...

Step 3: Using the infrared gun, we went around the house and he checked all the walls and typical problem areas (attic access doors, exterior doors & windows, outlets on exterior walls, etc.). The screen visually displayed temperature differences, and also measured the actual temperature at the point where the laser beam was pointed at (bottom left corner of the door in this case).
Overall, he was here for 3 hours, but he liked to talk, and was a very knowledgeable guy, so we were interested in what he had to say. If you're interested in doing something like this, call your energy company and see if they offer any similar programs! It will be interesting to see if our next month's gas bill is any lower than our average...