Energy Audits Educate

A practicable approach for making homes energy efficient

By Rachael Brown

Contributing Writer

Save energy — change a light bulb. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ifevery household in America replaced the five most frequently used light fixtures with ENERGY STAR bulbs, greenhouse gases would be reduced by the equivalent of emissions from 10 million cars.

ENERGY STAR is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy. ENERGY STAR was introduced in 1992 and is a voluntary labeling pro- gram identifying products that are energy efficient and help reduce greenhouse gases.

Here on the local level, energy experts are working hard to offer information, education and services to the Mt. Washington Valley to help save energy, make houses warmer and more efficient. Everyone knows with the high cost of utilities in the Northeast, especially during the long winter months, this is a challenge.

Energy Conservation workshop

Just recently, an Energy Conservation workshop was held at Tin Mountain’s Albany location through a joint effort between Tin Mountain Conservation Center, Russ Lanoie, owner of Rural Home Technology, and Stacy Sands,

owner of Go Green Energy Audits. This workshop was the third in a series intend- ed to help participants sort out the daunting task of where to begin to make a home more energy efficient.

There is a romance associated with renewable energies like wind, solar and the earth, but the reality is, it is not always practicable, explains Lanoie. Attitash Mountain did a study and found that even on Attitash using wind power was not feasible. Sands noted that though wind power would usually be for commercial use, it is not out of the question that a homeowner may have enough wind power to use on their land, but so far this has not been prevalent in our Valley.

Simple works best

Michael Cline, executive director of Tin Mountain Conservation Center, says that if you have nice windows covered up by vegetation, it might be prudent to cut the vegetation, collect the sunshine during the day and use window quilts at night. To maximize sunlight, windows that are screen-free and clean work best.

“Screens can take away 30 to 40 per- cent of sunlight. Washing windows helps — the crud of film also blocks sunlight,” says Cline. Saving energy doesn’t have to be high cost, he adds.

All agreed it can be confusing to sort through energy literature, websites, pro- grams and green conference materials.

“The whole idea behind these workshops [at Tin Mountain] is to break down information. You can attend an energy fair, see the whole spectrum and come back in a daze,” says Cline. This particular work- shop helped people learn concepts, see the progression and investigate, he adds.

Keeping a tight house

The first step towards energy efficiency is making sure your house is tight. Homeowners also need to keep in mind the ‘simple is best’ strategy.

“It’s like a high performance cyclist going out and buying a very expensive ultra light bicycle to be more competitive and the cyclist is 15 pounds overweight. All he really had to do was lose weight,” says Cline.

Lanoie agrees and says the first place to begin is through an energy audit. An energy audit is an inspection, a survey and an analysis of the home to determine how energy is being used. Specific practices like a blower door energy audit and use of an infrared camera help find leaks.

That’s where Sands comes in - she is a local certified energy auditor. She explains that with all the green happening in the new administration and the challenge of wading through all the green online, she decided to become energy certified to work on the local level.

“I asked myself, ‘What can I do at the local level to have an impact?’,” she says. She started Go Green Energy Audits this past August.

Sands tells what’s involved in an audit. “I am trained to measure the energy usage in the home. The biggest part of the audit is the onsite visit, when I measure conductive heat loss,” she says.

Sands is trained to measure and record information, to write a report and give recommendations. The visit begins by performing the Minneapolis Blower Door test. The blower door is a power- ful variable speed fan that is mounted in an adjustable panel which fits in a door- way. The fan is connected to a pressure gauge, which measures the rate of air flow. When the fan is turned on it sucks out the air in the house. “This depressurizes — you can then go around to other doors, walls, cracks, ceilings and feel where air is coming in,” she explains. Sands notes the most common places for air leakage are attic hatches, dormers, vent stacks and wherever there are angles in the home.

Some houses, usually the old farmhouses, have leaks as big as a two-foot by three- foot hole. Sands explains the blower door machine gives a rating and configures the leaks into a visual, like the size of a hole.

The infrared camera is another important instrument used. “This piece of equipment costs more than my first car,” says Sands. “With it, I can tell where there is insulation and where there is not.” This hand-held device is held up to ceilings, doors, angles and scans the surface to detect leaks and a contrast in temperatures. The leaks show up in black and the tem-perature of the surface is recorded.

Let’s say Sands finds leaks — what to do? “I am not going to tell someone to tear

down walls, but if someone is remodeling, let’s say the kitchen, then it might be a good idea to add insulation to the walls,” she said, and then explains that depending on how the attic in a home is configur- ed, it’s possible to blow the insulation in from there.

Don’t forget the small stuff

She agrees with Cline and Lanoie that there are some inexpensive fixes. Covering electric outlets is one of them.

Insulated outlet covers are foam covers that are placed over the outlets and under the outlet and switch plates. “You can’t insulate the outlet boxes, but you can cover the outlets with the foam and pre- vent air from coming into the house,” she says. “It is the silly little things that help. I did all the switches in my house and all I paid was $10.”

The Kill-A-Watt device measures how much electricity each appliance, each lamp, each electronic device uses in the home. Sands explained that you plug an appliance into this hand-held device and then plug the Kill-A-Watt into the wall to measure how much electricity is being used. Sands can perform this test, or the

Kill-A-Watt is available at most libraries and can be checked out just like a book.

Lanoie and Sands have also produced a short video explaining the auditing process. The video shows Sands coming into Lanoie’s house and performing the blower

door test and using the infrared camera to measure air flow and spot leaks in the home. Sands hopes the video will soon be available for viewing on Valley Vision.

The government and big businesses are there to help, too. Big box and appliance stores sell ENERGY STAR products. The government offers tax credits on these products and the manufacturers offer some rebates. Lanoie suggests checking out www.dsireusa. org. This website, Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy, is a comprehensive source for state and federal guidelines. The site shows an inter- active map — just click on New Hampshire or Maine to see what’s avail- able.

Other resources include New Hampshire utility companies and Tri County Cap, both of which offer assistance for income eligible households, for weatherization programs and for some who have higher than average utility bills. The utility companies have energy calculators on their websites, which help consumers figure out how much energy they are using and if there is room for improvement.

Knowledge is power. The more house- holds are educated about energy use and their own comfort factor, the more likely it is that they will be able to make decisions after an audit. Sands says, “It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll change your behavior. There is the comfort factor, too, but the first important step is knowledge.”