Homeowners across the country have been practicing the age old process of assessing their home energy efficiency. In a state like Virginia, which is one of a few states that go through seasonal extremes, residents habitually and knowingly check on the flow of energy or thermal profile of their homes. It allows them to customize their energy in any way that they like.
An energy audit basically helps you to detect where and how energy is lost in one's home and determine what you can do to fix it. Eventually, the more important goal is to make you feel safer, healthier and more comfortable in your own home. This assessment will allow you to focus your energy use on areas that need it the most.
This is what you can expect from an energy audit. A professional energy auditor visits your home and uses all sorts of professional equipment such as blower doors and infra-red cameras and records characteristics of your walls, floors, ceilings, windows and skylights. An auditor will test for the air tightness of the building to establish its capacity to retain or deflect heat and cold.
Other factors such as heating and cooling systems will also be assessed. A valuation of energy usage can be made using not only elements that exist within the house but also from behind the exterior walls like amount of sunlight, temperature and weather. Gas and electricity bills also give hints as to what equipment consumes the most energy at a given time.
Your insight, as a homeowner is a valuable part of the assessment process. You will be asked about your daily habits, pattern of use, and the age of your home. The ratio of people using specific devices at a time can influence energy consumption.
The goal here is to eliminate all irrelevant expenditures without sacrificing comfort. The government offers opportunities to obtain grant money for home energy efficiency needs. Performing an energy audit of your home is one of the few beneficial things that come without any adverse effects.
Home energy audits cane done by certified energy specialist who may be affiliated with utility and energy service companies. Energy audit companies are expected to propose solutions after conducting tests. They will be able to help with your heating or cooling systems that they deem as inefficient or faulty.
Energy audits are done in three different ways. One audit requires the building analyst nothing more than a walk around the premises and taking note of problem areas that need to be addressed. It is also called screening audit or walk-through audit.
General audit, on the other hand, expands from the preliminary audit to include a more detailed facility evaluation and energy measures identification. A copy of your previous electric bills may be used to calculate the amount of energy wastage. Meanwhile, investment-grade audit applies to corporations that are concerned with return on investments (ROI).
To know more about how energy audits are changing homes in Virginia, give your local auditor a call. Virginia residents are better energy consumers now. The growth of energy audit firms in the place may have been one of the best reasons why.
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