As I wrote about in the post How Home Energy Inefficiencies Are Like Household Debt, I had a plan a few months back to check out an infrared camera from the library and do a home energy audit.* Well, I did it. The results come down mostly to six pictures, but more on that in a minute.
First, why would anyone care to spend the time to do or hire someone to do a home energy audit? I would say the answer mostly comes down to saving money. There’s also a little sprinkle of not sucking at life that I’d add in for good measure: being wasteful is a big problem in my view.
Heating and cooling your home accounts for around 45% of your overall energy costs. If you can identify air leaks in your home, the Department of Energy estimates your potential energy savings can range from 5% to 30% per year. Doing some quick math on the low end of that estimate, saving 5% using my $250 average monthly electricity bill as an example would yield me a savings of about $150 per year. Forever.
As I’m sure you mathed in your head, a $150 annual savings, when invested earning a 7% yield, gives you $2,072 after a decade. Not bad for an hour of legwork to help identify the issues… If my house had been a little draftier and we used the 30% per year savings, that decade would have netted me $12,434. If you lived in that house for 50 years, that’s a $365,000 savings!
So now that you’re convinced, here’s an introduction to the tool I used and a simple methodology.
The FLIR Thermal Camera
As planned, I checked out a thermal camera, made by FLIR, at the local library. It came in a hard case with all of the necessary components to hook it up to either an Android or Apple phone (or tablet), and a user’s guide. I downloaded the FLIR app, plugged in the camera, and was up and running in all of about five minutes.
My plan of attack was pretty simple: walk around the house with the camera and take photos. I used the camera to seek out areas with big temperature gradients. I also looked at a few spots I thought might be especially problematic. After climbing through the attic, I walked through each room until I had gone all the way to the basement. I then went out to survey our garage and its attic. Finally, I walked around and surveyed the whole exterior of the house.
It was a hot day (90F+), and our comfy 72F interior helped provide a great gradient against that backdrop. So what did I find?
The Results
Attic Panel
I’ll start with the first photo in the slideshow. This is the access panel leading to the attic over the house. Pretty easy to see the warmth emanating through the edges of the panel there. A little bit of weather sealant around the edges coupled with some additional insulation glued to the attic-side of the panel will probably alleviate that.
Front Door
This looks to be the biggest offender of the bunch. The door skirt on the bottom might as well not be on the door. And look at those sidelights on either side of the door—terrible! I intend on replacing the entire entry door within the next few years, so I won’t do anything drastic. However, in the meantime I’ll do my best to correct the fit of the door skirt to help stave off the worst of the energy loss.
Fireplace
Our gas fireplace is yet another offender. The damper above that’s supposed to seal off the outside air is obviously not doing so hot. The best solution to this would be to replace the damper, but that’d probably be pretty expensive. Instead, I’m going to look into a chimney balloon to stick inside the chimney and see how that does at sealing it up when the fireplace isn’t in use (like all summer).
Kitchen Can Lights
The previous owner of our house installed these recessed lights as part of an addition. As with many things, I’ve found, they often did things on the cheap. Instead of opting to spend a couple more dollars for lights that could directly contact insulation or some alternative means of properly insulating the little kitchen bump out—we now have this. It sucks, too, because these lights have not been used once other than to demonstrate that they work. As I’m sure you guessed, I still swapped out the old incandescent bulbs with LEDs. 🙂
I intend to remove these old cans and replace them with sealed, IC-rated (meaning they can directly contact insulation) recessed lights. Since I’m eventually going to blow insulation into the attic, I might have that correspond with the light replacement so I can fill the area above with insulation while I’m at it!
Laundry Room Ceiling
Our laundry room sits underneath our garage attic. Obviously the ceiling is allowing for quite a bit of energy leakage. Luckily I can climb into the attic and add insulation to remedy the situation.
Living Room Ceiling
What this photo actually reveals is that the exhaust fan duct from our powder room (which runs through the living room ceiling) has a faulty flap on the outside of the house. When you turn on the fan, the flap is supposed to open to allow the air to escape outside. When the fan is off, the lack of positive pressure is supposed to let the flap close and seal. I’ll have to investigate what’s causing the blockage on the exterior wall and fix it. Hopefully it’s a quick, easy fix.
Final Thoughts
As you might recall from the post How Home Energy Inefficiencies Are Like Household Debt, it’s most advantageous to pay off highest interest debt first. In your house, that means replacing energy hog appliances, sealing up air leaks in your exterior, and adding insulation where appropriate. It’s why I immediately unplugged the 1950s era refrigerator that came with our house right when we moved in.
What does this mean for you and your own house? If you’re interested in nerding out and can borrow one from your local library like me, give the thermal camera a try. You might be surprised by your results…
Speaking of, what surprised me the most in this audit? A few things come to mind, namely (1) our fireplace is a big energy leaker, and (2) that our original 1977 windows seem to seal as well as they do.**
Now that I’ve added a few more items to my to-do list, I’ll roll up my sleeves and get to it. Wish me luck!
*I was going to say “do an amateur home energy audit,” but I actually expect this to save me lots of money over the long term. Maybe it’d be more apt to say “do a professional home energy audit!”
**Part of that could be the presence of storm windows outside of these old windows.
Great machine! It really opens up a whole lot of information about heating/air conditioning efficiencies in a home.