The Good Kind of Audit

You may remember that about a month ago, we had our scheduled energy audit. Even after doing some research, I didn't really know what to expect, but it turned out to be a pretty thorough look at our house that gave us a good idea of what we need to do to make the place more comfortable.

The audit seemed to consist of 3 parts. The first (and longest) was the visual inspection. Our auditor circled the outside of the house and then went through every bit of the inside of our house, looking for problems. He went into our crawl space, our mini-attics (apparently called knee walls--I learned all sorts of great things from the audit report), and everywhere in between. He occasionally stopped back in to the dining room where he had parked his laptop and jotted down some findings.

The second part of the audit, done in conjunction with the first part, was the infrared reading. Unfortunately, our audit ended up taking place on a day where the inside temperature and outside temperature were almost identical. So even though we were hoping for something dramatic like this:

Link to original
(Not our house)

We didn't get any cool pictures to show off. Our auditor said that the results were not particularly helpful, though in the end a visual inspection is often all that's necessary to determine problem areas.

The third part, by far the most exciting, was the blower door test. Our auditor installed this funky-looking contraption in our front door, started the blowing, and then wander around the house opening and closing door.

He wandered in periodically to check the gauges. He was very patient with me as I continued to snap pictures.

And that was it! The whole thing took almost 4 hours but didn't involve us much. In the end, he talked to us about his initial findings and what to expect next, and then he sent us our formal audit report a few days later by email. Fast forward a couple of weeks and we had a contract with the same company to do our repairs and a lot of forms filled out with the state and our electric company that will ensure we are eligible for rebates. (There are a lot of rebates out there for energy savings--the government wants us to make our homes more energy efficient. Our audit should have cost $400 but after the two rebates we were eligible for it was free! And our repairs will only cost us 50% of their actual cost.)

The audit pretty much confirmed all our suspicions and gave us ideas of what we need to do to fix them. We got a score of 32 out of 50, scoring worst on air exchange, attic insulation and best on system upgrades and energy management. The most telling figure on how awful our house holds its heat (or cool) came from the blower test, which measures air leakage. An "optimal" house leaks about 2000 cubic feet per minute. Ours leaks almost 7000 cfm. So everything that the contractors do is designed to help stop the air from getting out (or in), mostly in the basement and the attic. We're aiming for about 4000 cfm (because any better is pretty much impossible in our old house without starting from scratch). I'll post more about what exactly we're having done when I blog about the repairs. I'm hoping to get a lot of crazy pictures too!