Q: How can I make my home more comfortable and energy efficient this summer?
A: As the sweltering days of another summer approach, you may wonder what steps could be taken regarding your home to keep you more comfortable and reduce your utility bills. In the Piedmont region of North Carolina, cooling costs account for approximately one-third of total yearly heating, ventilation and air conditioning expenses. For homeowners, the challenge of keeping a house comfortable in the summer can be just as important as reducing utility bills.
The first step in making your home more comfortable — and energy efficient — is to generate a full snapshot of a dwelling’s energy leakage. A certified building performance analyst can evaluate your home for energy-reduction potential.
Your house should be assessed for air leakage of the conditioned air transfer system (the duct work), and the thermal envelope (the surfaces that surround the interior living space). This analysis is sometimes referred to as an energy audit. In a nutshell, the main goal in energy reduction is to make sure your conditioned air arrives intact to its intended destination (your living spaces), and once there, kept there.
The analyst or assessor is the building detective, using his or her knowledge, experience, tools and a willingness to get down and dirty searching for energy leaks in your home’s least accessible places, including the far corners of your home’s attic and crawlspace. So, if the building analyst shows up wearing khaki pants and loafers, send him or her back home.
Some of the tools used by a building energy analyst can include a blower door, used to test leakage in the building envelope; a duct blaster, used to test leakage in the heating, ventilating and air conditioning system; and a thermal imaging camera, used to find large temperature disparities on surfaces of the living space. These tools aid the analyst in determining the extent and locations of the repairs needed.
With the information gathered at the home inspection, the building analyst should generate a report to the homeowner that would include a repair strategy, along with an estimated cost to complete the repairs.
“A home energy audit is often the first step in making your home more efficient,” according to energystar.gov. “An audit can help you assess how much energy your home uses and evaluate what measures you can take to improve efficiency. But remember, audits alone don’t save energy. You need to implement the recommended improvements.”
So whether you attempt to do the repairs yourself or hire an energy-reduction professional, don’t flinch at this stage in the game; make the improvements!
Often the building analyst will return after the work is completed to see if the repairs were done skillfully and completely. The same tools used during the initial inspection can also be employed at the return visit to quantify the amount of improvement made.
There are also personal choices homeowners can make to improve a home’s energy consumption. I strongly recommend replacing incandescent light bulbs with more energy-efficient compact fluorescents, or LEDs.
“Where an incandescent bulb may use 75 watts of energy, a CFL will only consume 15 watts, and emit the same or more lumens (amount of light),” says Steve Armstrong of ESG Energy.
Keep in mind that incandescent light bulbs generate a lot of heat and create more work for your cooling system.
Also consider turning the temperature setting on your water heater lower (the recommended setting is 120 degrees) and setting your thermostat temperature higher. An individual’s comfort level is very subjective. In our home, my family stays comfortable at around 76 degrees. I have met a few folks that like their home at 68 degrees, and I know families that prefer 78. Here is a tip from NC Public Power: “Set your thermostat at 78 degrees or higher in the summer; one degree change either will increase (or decrease) your energy use by 3 percent to 5 percent.”
So enjoy your summer, have plenty of fun with friends and family, and take the first steps toward making your home more comfortable and energy efficient.
Gary Silverstein, chairman of the Triad Green Building Council, is owner of Silverstein Construction and president of Energy Reduction Specialists of N.C. Inc. He can be reached at gary@silversteinconstruction.com.
