How Efficient Is Your Home?

Posted by Lindsay on Nov 20, 2009 in Environmental, Exterior, Featured Articles, eco-friendly | 1 comment

Have you ever wondered where those chilly drafts are coming from?  If your windows are sealed tightly?  How well your walls are insulated?  Or if you have a moisture leak somewhere in your home?  Maybe you should try having an Infrared Energy Audit done on your home.

‘What is an Infrared Energy Audit?’ you may ask…well, a qualified and trained professional (such as David, shown in the pictures below) comes into your home and uses an infrared camera to capture temperature differences in various areas throughout your home. Throughout their training, they learn the key areas to look at; appliances, corners, windows, etc. He or she will take infrared pictures of your home, compile them, do the research and create a detailed report to send back to you. They’ll give you tips on how you can fix inefficiencies that they find, and make recommendations on the next steps that you should take. It might be as simple as caulking a seal around a window, or they might recommend that you upgrade appliances (only a recommendation, though, but they can really tell how much energy that fridge is draining!).

These first 2 images are both sides of the brochure for the company that David works out of — feel free to download it and check it out. It might answer a few more questions, or it has the contact info. for The Rider Group, who was great to work with.  They are based out of Reno, Nevada.  Download the PDF of the brochure here. I should be receiving their detailed report any day now, and I’m excited to share those results with you as well!

The overall process took about an hour and a half (our house is approximately 1400 square feet), and he looked at every window, corner, closet, doorway, appliance and wall – and he even went outside to take infrared photos of the exterior, roof, and windows.

He even let me follow him around to take pictures of him and ask questions.

I was very interested to know how much of a difference our new windows were making, how well sealed our doors were, and if there were any leaks around the wood stove that he could see.

This window (in my office) is not new…brr.

Harper’s closet has the trap door to access the crawl space underneath the house, plus it’s back to back with the bathroom, so I wanted to make sure things were nice and clean there.

“What is this stranger doing in MY room?!?!”

Lots of moisture, even on our new windows…but I don’t think it has anything to do with the windows themselves.

The color differences account for temperature changes, and there is a handy little scale on the right side of the screen that can tell you exactly how hot or cold something is.

See the studs in the walls? Very handy (but expensive) stud finder.

He also measured and counted all of our windows to account for the proper ratio of heat loss that we should be having in our house (square footage/area of windows). Again, I’m very excited to see the results that he’s compiled and I’m sure I’ll share them next week. To read more about Infrared Energy Audits, click here.

Have a warm and toasty weekend! And Happy Thanksgiving!