Autograph Energy Audit Report Made Easy

Autograph energy audit report

hello my name is Andrew Grigsby I'm with Common Wealth sustainability works and I'm a home energy rater and we're here today at the clubhouse of Forest Lake subdivision in Charlottesville Virginia to go through basically a home energy audit of course this is not someone's house but it's going to have many of the same features that you might encounter in your house we're going to look at issues of air sealing insulation appliances doors windows so we're going to do a little detective work and we're going to come up with a list of suggestions for how this building can be more efficient and also how you can learn how to be more efficient in your own house and save some money here we are in the unfinished part of the basement and probably it looks probably a lot like your house looks we've got some uninsulated masonry wall we've got some insulation above this is called the band joist it's where the floor joists intersect the perimeter of the of the building and it's a space that tends to be very leaky there just moves right through the fiberglass and the fiberglass just filters it what I would call for this spot in this location is to take the fiberglass out of the banjoist area and reinsulate that with spray foam which go it sprays in and expands out it fills every hole it stops all the air movement we're here at the heating system we've got a heat pump and which is a good way to heat and cool in this climate the other thing about having an efficient heating cooling system it going to be the air filter in it and your air filter might be at one of your return vents this one's here at the what we call the air handler this one's very clean after a while as they get clogged up the fan has to work harder to move the air through for some reason we've got some of the tape coming loose I always recommend using mastic which is a paint on adhesive which is going to perform a lot better than tape basically the point is do everything you can to make this system as airtight as possible heating water the average house puts at least 10 percent of total energy used in the water into water heating can go up to 15% but basically good test to see how efficient how how well insulated it is is to feel just put your hands on it what we can do is to add a layer of insulation to it you can buy a blanket of insulation at a home improvement store wrap it around this you also want to check the setting 120 degrees is a good setting the other thing we can do to make this more efficient is to insulate these pipes if you think about this is a hot water pipe running from here at every bathroom in the house and it's losing that heat the whole way it goes so you can get hotter water quicker at the bathroom on the second floor if you insulate all the pipes I can feel a little cold air there's not a big breeze coming out of there but canned foam as you can get it at a home improvement store you know just filling this area with that canned foam bullet will again add a little r-value to the spot stop any air movement here someone has kindly removed the grill so we can see and you see the gap between the drywall in the metal you know if we were on the second floor that would be a gap right straight to the Attic and all it takes is cook so in your own house just take some regular caulk and seal that gap between the drywall and the metal and you'll prevent all that warm air from rushing to the outside very cheap very effective electrical outlets tend to be places where you might get some some wind blowing through and you can buy foam gaskets that you put underneath the cover to help stop that if you if you're feeling air blowing underneath the baseboard you can remove the shoe mold and caulk behind it and put the shoe mold back to stop that air from leaking underneath if you look up here we've had the access to the attic and this tends to be a real problem area in lots of houses it's a door to the outside and we need to make sure it's well insulated we also need to make sure it's weather stripped this looks like just this one looks like it's just a piece of plywood and there's probably no insulation on the other side this is the vertical wall that abuts the cathedral ceiling area in the eight room on the other side so lots of houses are going to have spaces like this where you've got rather than a insulated floor in an attic you're actually looking at a wall and this is a real problem for several reasons one you can see here there's a whole Bay between studs that they left uninsulated and again it's at the the highest point in this house so that's where all the warm air is going and it warms that space up if their air leaks the warm air gets out this is the outside of what we call the thermal envelope of the house so it needs to have an air barrier it needs to be sealed and a real layperson might come up here and look down and here we're looking down and we see our 30 right there on the insulation they might think oh great my attic is our 30 but again it's important to make the distinction between what you read and what the what the installation quality is actually delivering as I pick up this piece of our 30 it's not doing much at all insulation needs to fill all the gaps need to fill around it and and cover everything so this is not doing the job over here it's hard to tell what's going on there's just stuff scattered all over the place and over here we have a recessed light which is completely uncovered now old recessed lights were not designed for insulin what we call insulation contact and they get very hot and that be a problem you need to make sure do you have insulation contact rated recessed lights and if you don't just replace them get the new modern ones that are here we are learning a little bit about how the television uses energy and what we have is this little device that the television is plugged into it and it plugs into the wall and it's telling us the flow through wattage so right now to operate this television is using 88 watts and now what we going to do is turn it off and I think most people would assume you turn the power off on something it isn't using any more power well our little device here is telling us that actually this is still still you in 57 watts so even when you think it's off you're still using the same as a 60 watt bulb 24/7 and if you think of all the TVs all across the country sitting there it's pretty amazing how much energy we're just throwing away appliances which are plugged in and have a light on are using energy put all your electronics or the ones that make sense on a power strip now way you can just you walk out of your office at the end of the day just hit that power strip and everything's off we talked a little bit about lighting lighting is a major energy user in your home 10 15 20 percent depending on your house and here in this public building I mean your house is probably done in a men's room but you'll notice how that as I open the door the light back there cut on it's a it's on a motion sensor and you might find that there places in your house where photosensitive or motion sensitive lighting would be appropriate there's other compact fluorescent lighting and this is a good example where here's a bulb that looks just like an incandescent but actually it's a compact fluorescent and compact fluorescents now they come in all they're not just the curlicue ones they come in a round bulb they come for chandeliers are dimmable they come in more yellow all the way to a more white light so in all different shades and they'll use two-thirds less energy on average than your incandescent bulbs so it's it's a it's a great way to save some energy this is the thermostat for the upstairs portion of this house and it's a programmable thermostat which is a great thing what that allows you to do is have the little brain inside this cut the heat on and off when you want it so it's not keeping the house warmer that needs to be when there's no one here or at night when you're sleeping it can it's a very effective way to save energy could be up to a hundred dollars a year depending on the house one issue with water heating is how much water you end up using coming out of the faucet and the aerators are good if you reduce the amount of water coming out so you use less water to do the same work and then good for saving energy when you're talking about hot water the energy audit also include the radar looking at that household energy bill purpose of this determine if there's anything peculiar going on that may not be evident on the walkthrough from the test and all of this information should be included in a detailed report but the imagery auditor will provide to the homeowner after the whole process is done and the report should list out what are the recommended improvements sort of prioritized those improvements hopefully maybe provide the cost estimate so that can be a hard thing the report is really a crucial part at the end of this process if the homeowner something they can do to take is a document to learn from and then take you out and speak with different contractors about getting the work done and actually start saving some money