We strongly recommend that our customers arrange for energy audits for homes in Slidell, LA. A house isn’t just the place where you live, eat, sleep, and spend time with your family. It’s also an entire energy system, and like any energy system, it can become wasteful and lose energy.
A home energy audit allows professionals a chance to examine your home’s use of energy and identify places to improve it. With the improvements based on an energy audit, a household can save anywhere from 5–30% on its energy bills. That definitely makes an energy audit worth it, and that’s before we consider that these improvements will also make for a more comfortable home.
When you sign up for an energy audit with our team, what can you expect? The steps aren’t always the same, but we can give you a broad outline of what goes on.
The Audit Basics
The first step is to evaluate the envelope of the house. The envelope is the separation between the inside and the outside of the house, and the audit looks to see where there are gaps where heat can enter or escape. Our auditors will examine the walls, the windows, roof, and doors, both visually inspecting and using special thermal equipment to spot heat leaks or trouble with insulation.
Parf of evaluating the envelope may involve a blower door test. This is when the auditors seal all the doors and windows of the house and then place a special plastic door cover over the opening of the front door. This blower door has a powerful fan in it that pulls air out to lower pressure inside the house. This causes outside air to rush inside through any avenue—and the auditors can find out where it’s entering.
Next, the auditors examine the HVAC system, looking over the AC, heater, blower fan, and ductwork. The HVAC system is often one of the major energy-wasters in a house. One particular area of attention is the ducts: the auditors check to see if there are any air leaks.
The auditors move on to examining the lights and other major appliances. This includes the water heater, dishwasher, dryer, washer, etc. The auditor will check on the energy efficiency of these appliances and make note of their age and model.
Afterwards
At this point, the auditors will have the information they need to make recommendations to you about how to best improve your home’s performance. The auditors will go over a checklist of places where they think the house is wasting energy (outdated equipment, poor insulation, duct leaks, old lightbulbs). The auditor will also give you an estimate on the cost of improvements and the potential energy savings based on making them. It’s up to you which improvements you want to make.
Along with handling energy audits, our team can help with energy efficiency improvements: upgrading old HVAC equipment, putting in new and better insulation, replacing an energy-gobbling water heater, sealing up leaks ducts. We’ll tell you exactly how we can help!
Gowland’s Heating & A/C Believes in “Relationship over revenue”! Schedule a home energy audit with our experts today.