Home Energy Audit...

When we had our inspection done before purchasing our house, our inspector suggested that we have a more thorough energy audit done of the property - we just had that done and learned more than we wanted to know!

We hired a company to come in where a technician spent 4 hours at our house checking things out.

He started by making sure all the doors and windows were shut, turned off the heating system and then attached a vacuum seal to our front door.

With the house sealed he went through and checked every door and window and every air duct. He then scurried around in our attic for an hour and a half. Upon his completion he handed over an 18 page report telling us where we're losing energy. It was bad news for us. We knew our house wasn't efficient and we had some good ideas as to what we would need to change but I had no idea the extent.

For starters - all of our duct work needs to be replaced. It's leaking air like crazy and the typical sealant solution won't work. Dang. On top of that we have two heating systems, one of which is original to our 1987 home and it is running at a 1/3 it's capacity which is using an abnormal amount of energy to run. Our windows aren't bad, but we have a couple that need to be replaced. We have bad circulation in several rooms and doors that need to be sealed. We have walls without insulation and a portion of our attic missing insulation as well. We have interior walls without air barriers in the attic which means we have all sorts of warm or cold air (depending on the season) coming down through the walls...like I said, more information than I wanted to know.

Although I don't like the price tag that is attached to all these not so minor repairs it's helpful to know. We can start with some of the more important repairs and over the course of the next 10 years we just might get it all taken care of! Maybe...

I'm not sure why people would rather buy a new home rather than dump money into an old one!!