| A: | The Home Energy Analysis is a customized energy audit designed to help you stop losing energy and start saving money. Analyze your home's energy use and find out how to make your home more energy efficient and comfortable: |
| A: | Our Energy Audits including the Blower Door, the thermal Imaging Camera Scan, and report are $199.00 |
| A: | Because it's in your best interest. We take the "Whole house approach", to making home improvements. What this means is that when you make a change to one part of the home such as replacing windows, siding, adding insulation, weather-stripping etc. Those changes affect the performance of other parts of your home relating to indoor air quality, your furnace and water heater, moisture, and comfort. By performing the tests on the whole house we can make solid recommendations that will make a difference in the issues you're trying to resolve, and reduce the potential for health, safety, or comfort issues to arise as a result. |
| A: | Also known as "phantom loads", ghost loads are the sneaky devices that constantly consume small amounts of electricity 24 hours a day—even when they're not actually doing anything useful.
While each device by itself may not consume much electricity, the combination of all of them within your household may easily consume the equivalent of two or three 60-Watt incandescent light bulbs left on all day and all night.
Over the course of a single year this adds up to over 1 Megawatt-hour—in other words, enough electricity to power an entire energy-efficient house for 2 to 3 months!
What are these mysterious ghost loads? The most common examples are the "power brick" adapters, or power supplies, that charge or operate cell phones, laptop computers, cordless drills, answering machines, radios, inkjet printers, and many other household devices. They're actually small transformers, turning AC electricity from the wall outlet into DC electricity for use by the device.
While any one of these devices may only consume a small amount of power (e.g., 3-20 watts), a dozen or so of them, running simultaneously and continuously, consume a significant amount of electricity. What's worse is that even when you're not charging your cell phone or the battery for your cordless drill, that AC adapter may continue to consume power just because it's plugged into the wall.
Other well-disguised ghost loads are those devices which have the "instant on" feature, such as most modern television sets, VCRs, DVD players, many radios and even many computers. While all of these devices are supposedly turned off, they are actually consuming anywhere from 3 to 20 watts continuously—just to stay ready for you to use them.
The solution to reducing ghost loads - plugs TVs, AC power adapters, etc into a power strip that you can easily turn off when you're not using the device.
How can you decrease the consumption of energy by these parasitic loads? One of the simplest solutions is to simply plug these devices into a power strip which has an off/on switch.
When you are done using the devices and shut them off normally, then just hit the off switch on the power strip. Many people make it part of their nightly routine to shut off these power strips just before they go to bed. For AC power adapters that you use at night, like for charging a cell phone, put those on a separate power strip that you turn off during the day when you take your phone with you.
Simple solutions like these could reduce your ghost electric loads by as much as 80%. In real-dollars terms, this means saving upwards of $120 per year in electricity costs, depending on your local electric utility rates and how dedicated you are to reducing your ghost loads.
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| A: | Thermal imaging uses infrared technology to detect very small differences in temperature. Every material has a unique thermal signature and when moisture, heat, cold, or wood destroying insects are introduced into the structure the thermal signature changes. The changes can be subtle or dramatic but with this incredible thermal image scanning technology the thermal signatures are detectable where they wouldn't be able to be seen with the naked eye. |
| A: | We concentrate on the issues we find to be lacking in performance in your home based off of the testing we perform. Not opinions. Weather they are bad or better than you thought -you'll be able to see that for your self during testing. |
| A: | The typical home energy audit takes between 2-3 hours however depending on the types of issues we find and the questions you have we could take up to four hours. |
| A: | The payback on the cost of a typical home energy audit/assessment we provide can be as soon as improvements are made. With the current rewards available for having an energy audit done on your home they can more than make up the initial cost.
Keep in mind that energy efficient improvements continually pay you back over the life of the home, and this payback increases as energy costs increase. |
| A: | The benefits of an home energy audit for your Wisconsin home are numerous and here are a few of them:
* Actually spending your money on improvements your home needs. Not simply applying a band-aid fix to the issues at hand. Thus saving you guesswork, and money.
* Inspected, tested and documented results specifically pertaining to the issues you're experiencing with your home. Not a laundry list of general items to fix that may or may not solve your energy loss issues.
* Potentially higher selling price for your home due to the additional features you home has and because of the reduced energy consumption - although individual results may vary.
* Infrared pictures of your home are cool! |
| A: | No. We can conduct testing on your home during any time of the year. According to the manufacturer in order for the infrared scan to work best we need at least a ten-degree difference in temperature between the inside and outside of the home. Whether it's the summertime or during the winter. We can perform this part of the test without that large of a temperature difference, but the infrared pictures you'll see won't be as defined. |
| A: | To achieve better results with the ENERGY STAR rated CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs compare and match the amount of Lumens of the bulb you normally buy to the energy efficient bulb you're going to buy to ensure you're getting a bulb that's giving off the same amount of light. Different brands may have different colors of light available which will also have an effect on your regard for the new light bulbs, however without specific labeling we're not aware of an easy way to tell the difference between them from the package other than screwing one in and turning it on. New L.E.D. bulbs are hitting the market and are efficient, but costly. |
| A: | For a typical house, windows can account for 10% to 30% of the heating and cooling bill. Upgrading from single-pane windows to energy-efficient windows can cut this in half or better, so savings of up to 15% of your current bill are reasonable. Depending on where you live, this can amount to $50 to $100 per year. Spread over 20 years, this means $1,000 to $2,000.
But the big thing to keep in mind is that many of these window replacement firms use simple double-pane windows; for just a little more money up front, you can save a lot of energy over the long haul by asking for windows with special low-e coatings and inert gases, such as argon or krypton, which fill the space between the panes of glass. Some manufacturers even offer 'superwindows' with one or two thin plastic films sandwiched between the panes of glass.
These windows can reduce energy loss to one-half as much energy as standard double-pane glass, and one-fourth as much as single-pane glass. In cooling-dominated climates, use windows that reduce solar gains. For the most appropriate window in your climate, purchase windows with the Energy Star label.
Ask the salesperson to tell you the "U-value" of the windows they offer. This is sort of like the miles-per-gallon rating for new cars; an independent agency performs these ratings. In this case, lower is better: the best you can buy today have U-values of around 0.2, while a typical double-pane window is around 0.5.
Note: One thing to keep in mind is that replacing windows is often not justified solely on the basis of energy savings. The cost of replacing windows in existing housing is quite expensive the cost is typically not paid back for 20 to 30 years or more. However, replacing windows will make a substantial difference in the comfort of your home, which could well be worth the cost.
Also, double-paned windows typically add to the value and saleability of your home if you put it on the market. In new construction, the labor costs are equivalent regardless of the quality of window installed, so buy the best you can afford.
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| A: | Only you can decide whether to leave your computer on, or turn it off.
There are reasons for each strategy. The typical computer draws around 100 Watts, or 2.4 kWh/day. Multiply this by your electricity rate per kWh to come up with the cost per day. Leaving a typical computer on all the time would cost about 21¢/day (2.4 kWh * 8.6¢/kWh). This may not seem like much but it adds up to close to $75/year. If you don't have any particular reason to leave your computer on, that money would be needlessly spent.
There are reasons to leave your computer running 24 hours per day. One is if you use it as a web server, or if you use it to receive faxes 24 hrs/day, for your at-home business. If these do not apply to your computer, then it makes sense to turn off your computer when it is not in use.
Don't worry about wear on the computer from turning it on and off repeatedly. This was once a problem in the early days of personal computers, but now your computer undergoes more wear from running constantly than from being turned off when not in use. If you do leave it on, try to have an Energy Star unit. There are aftermarket devices to turn your computer after extended periods of inactivity.
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