The Energy Star Home Advisor tool allows you to quickly and easily assess your home’s energy u
se vis-a-vis your participating neighbors and gives some practical, easy to do tasks to reduce energy use and increase efficiency. It also assigns some pretty hefty tasks but you can feel good about yourself as you tick off the little ones while you contemplate the work ahead.
The system asks questions about your appliances, insulation, utility bills (a year’s worth), windows, fans and your air sealing efforts. Then it calculates a score for your home.
We have only been in this house for a few months so we made up some annual numbers based on usage so far….somehow we scored a 10….10 being best. That I don’t believe but the to-do list of tasks are all going to help us reduce energy usage. The system assigned us ten tasks – three remain –
- Choose Energy Star certified light bulbs
- Seal the duct work
- and Air seal the envelope
The bulbs and the duct work may be the next easy to accomplish tasks – the envelope is a challenge. When Energy Score conducted its class here, the house performed poorly – 19 air changes an hour!!!! It was clear that the recessed lights and several windows were major culprits. We plan to start there and retest as we move along.
One hint about using the Energy Star system; constantly save your work as the system will not remember to do it for you. It is very funny…or maybe not… to have the To-Do List constantly repopulate with done activities because you forget to save.
