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What is Home performance with Energy Star?
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March 27th, 2009 No commentsHome performance auditing is a means to calculate and quantify how well you home is utilizing energy. The purpose of the audit is to empower homeowners with valuable information that they can use to to make energy saving improvements to their home. If you are a homeowner and would like to take advantage of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act’s $1500 energy improvement tax credit, an energy audit is a great place to start.
Who needs an Audit?
- If your home is not comfortable. ie cold in the winter, hot in the summer
- If you are sick and tired of paying high energy bills
- If you are considering replacement of a Furnace or Air Conditioner
- If you are considering replacement windows
- If you are considering remodeling projects including roof repair, water damage, siding, drywall replacement, major plumbing repairs.
- If you suspect that your energy bills are too high
- If your house does not maintain a consistent temperature from room to room within 3 degrees
- If you are concerned about reducing our dependence on foreign oil
- If you would like to reduce your carbon foot print
There are other reasons that a Home Performance audit might be a good idea. Some new houses are so tight that it becomes unhealthy for the occupants because there is not enough fresh air coming into the house.
Other reasons to have a Home Performance Audit:
- Damp, musty, moldy conditions
- Your family complains of headaches, nausea or they just feel bad when they are at home but are fine outside the home
- Your furnace is tucked away in a tiny utility room
- You suffer from severe allergies
What the audit entails:
- The Combustion Appliance Zone test. This test assures that your combustion appliances have enough air for complete combustion and that the flue byproducts always travel up the flue instead of into your home.
- The Blower Door test. A Blower door is used to depressurize the house so that leaks in the building envelope can be detected and repaired.
- A physical inspection of the property to identify noticeable problems.
- A utility bill analysis
After the initial audit is completed the Auditor will crunch the numbers and provide you with a report offering suggestions for inprovement. The report outlines the following:
- Suggested Energy Improvements
- Savings to Investment Ratios for each proposed improvement
- Suggestions regarding safety concerns
Empowered with this information you can make the improvements yourself or hire a contractor. Once the improvements are made the Home Performance Auditor returns to perform an additional Blower Door Test to prove the results.
Power Companies such as KCP&L here and Missouri Gas Energy have always had Energy Programs but now they are requiring that a Certified Energy Star Home Performance Auditor perform an audit before they will pay out for the improvements. The reason is simple. The Audit provides them with a comprehensive report of the condition of the house before and after the improvements are made and the results are quantifiable.
To contact a Home Performance Auditor check your Energy companies website for Energy Star Home Performance programs.
Here are a couple links if you would like to investigate further:
www.missourihomeperformance.org
http://www.kcpl.com/residential/homeperf.html -
The Accidental Environmentalist
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March 21st, 2009 No commentsOk, I admit it, I’m obsessed. I can’t stop checking up on it. My charges keep racking up. No matter how hard I try, my family keeps working against me.The best I can do is tread water. It’s the wee hour of the morning, I’ve done all I can do.
What am I talking about? I just purchased TED. The Energy Detective. It’s a little device that wires into your circuit breaker panel that allows you to monitor your power consumption in real time.
As soon as I was able to install and configure it (without reading the manual of course), I noticed that we were consuming 2.6 kilowatts of energy and the Heat Pump was not even working. Ouch, that’s the equivalent of 26, 100 watt incandescent light bulbs burning in your house.I took immediate action. I whizzed around the house looking for anything that “glowed”. I unplugged the plethora of wall warts that have invaded my electrical outlets. I turned off lights, computers, unplugged coffee pots, printers, night lights. With each “Victory” I ran downstairs to see what effect I had. Just when I figured that I had done all I could do, I noticed a blue light behind a computer I had just turned off. It was the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), which admittedly is a good idea, However this particular unit was drawing 200 watts without the computer even being turned on.
TED was still displaying 1.6 KW. The family was watching American Idol on our 50″ plasma TV. I refrained from turning it off immediately but later I found that it was drawing 800 Watts. My next investment is going to be a coin slot for the television so that we all understand what the real costs are.
I installed TED on one of our kitchen counters, the next day I noticed that my wife had been paying attention to it.
VICTORY!!!!, That’s it. I’m all in. Compact Fluorescent light bulbs, Energy Star rated appliances, High Efficiency Heating and Cooling equipment, whatever it takes. You can’t measure what you can’t see.
Every homeowner needs to invest in energy monitoring. It pays!
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How should I spend my $1500 Energy Tax Credit?
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March 21st, 2009 No commentsThe American Recovery and Reinvestment act is chocked full of goodies. You’ve determined that you are going to do the “Right Thing” and stake your claim on a juicy $1500 tax credit for investing in energy efficiency. But what should you buy? There are sooooo many choices. You need a recipe book like they give you with a bag of Jelly Belly’s.
Before you pick up the phone and call your Heating and Cooling contractor consider hiring a Certified BPI Home Performance auditor. A building performance auditor will inspect your entire property, make recommendations and provide you with Savings to Invesment calculations so that you can make informed decisions. The auditor utilizes a sophisticated instrument called a blower door to depressurize your house so that he can locate the air leaks.
The first rule of Home Performance is to reduce the load. Before you purchase expensive HVAC equipment it may be that you could spend a modest amount of money on insulating, sealing your ductwork as well as your building envelope so that your energy dollars are not being flung into the atmosphere.
Once your house is nearly airtight (Even humans require a little bit of air now and again) the auditor will return to verify that insulation contractors did their jobs effectively. Once your house has been sealed and insulated properly it is quite possible that you can invest in smaller heating and cooling systems that are less expensive to purchase and much less to operate.
It is also very likely that your Utility company has a program to pay all or a portion of the Home Performance Audit. Here in Kansas City, KCP&L offers a rebate up to $600 for energy efficiency improvements recommended by a BPI Certified Home Performance Auditor.
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