Audit gives homeowners energy-saving tips

Craig and Lindsey Jacobson were always interested in getting an energy audit done on their home.

After all, the upper level of their split level home is too warm in the summer and hard to cool. In the winter, it seems cool and the interior walls seem cold to the touch. The garage attached to their home, situated between the upper and lower levels was blazing hot in the summer.

Lindsey Jacobson said they did get some relief after they put a new roof on the house because of a roof vent that was installed.

Still, the couple didn’t know if the windows of their 1981-built home might be in need of replacement.

“I’m thinking they’re original,” Lindsey said.

So the couple contacted Proenergy Consultants, a national firm with the know-how to evaluate their home to determine the best course of action to balance out the temperature of their home.

Karl Rosenau, a consultant with the firm who covers northwest Wisconsin and northeast Minnesota, inserted a special frame in an exterior door to install a fan to pressurize the house, then set out to find where air may be leaking into the house with a specialized camera that can identify hot and cold spots and a device that emits smoke to show homeowners visually where air is leaking the worst.

Rosenau said the fan creates a pressure equivalent to having a 10 mph wind blowing on all sides of the house.

As he set out through the house, he evaluated walls and ceilings – the specialized camera showed up yellow, indicating that insulation in the home was evenly distributed. The corners of the living room appeared blue in color, indicating where east met north and the ceiling line.

That’s normal to have corners appear like that; he said construction techniques don’t allow for insulation in the corners, Rosenau said.

As Rosenau pointed the special camera at the windows, again they appeared blue on the small monitor of the camera indicating a cool spot in the wall. However, when he pulled out the device to send puffs of smoke out around the window, the smoke dissipated as if unaffected by wind.

The windows aren’t a problem, the consultant said. While windows are commonly believed to be a problem, they simply have a lower value in insulating a building that the walls around them, Rosenau said.

Learning that the windows were fine and didn’t need replacing was “good news,” to Craig Jacobson, who had wondered if they would need replacing.

Rosenau said while many would replace windows, it’s often not necessary and a project that typically has a very long return on investment.

However, as Rosenau walked through the kitchen the cool spots and smoke blowing rapidly away from a ceiling fan mounted to the ceiling and recessed over the kitchen counters. The same was true when he tested outlets on exterior walls – smoke moved rapidly away from the outlet.

“I would have never thought of that,” Lindsey Jacobson said as she reached up to feel the cool breeze coming in around the recessed lighting.

Replacing the lights with insulated fixtures and insulating outlets – both small projects a homeowner could do – would help solve those problems and have a rapid return on investment in terms of savings on energy costs, Rosenau said

“We’ve had an interest in having an energy audit done for a long time,” Lindsey said. And the couple said they were glad they did because solutions to their problems were not what they expected.

Tags: news, energy, money, environment