Our ENERGY AUDIT is a comprehensive evaluation of your home, your first step to getting things tight and cozy while reducing your greenhouse gas emissions, shrinking your carbon footprint and helping the planet by slowing global warming.
Learn where you’re losing your heat in winter and your coolness in summer. Energy auditing will help us find your energy loses from air leaks, inadequate or sagging insulation, an inefficient heating or cooling unit or older leaky windows or doors.
An Energy Audit includes a Blower Door depressurization to 50 pascals of pressure difference between inside and out, creating what amounts to a 20 mph breeze blowing in from all sides, enabling easy detection of sources of winter heat loss and summer heat gain. If there is enough difference between inside and outside temperatures, we can also use an infrared camera to detect thermal bridges. A major method of making an energy tight enclosure is to reduce the leakage rate as much as possible while retaining plenty of controlled fresh air ventilation.
Our Written Energy Report will include options on many energy saving measures that we can take, how much they will cost and what your payback periods will be for the various recommended upgrades.
AIR SEAL for maximum energy efficiency and savings. You will save your heat in winter and your coolness in summer by reducing air leakage as much as you can. Along with a healthy supply of controlled fresh air ventilation, air sealing can be good for your health and your home. You can avoid the possibility of mold and mildew formation on your walls from air leaks and inadequate insulation.
Sixty percent of heat loss in winter can come from a poorly sealed, drafty house. If we compare air leakage between a standard American house and an energy-efficient Passive House, we see that the Passive House is 90% more efficient at 0.6 air changes per hour at 50 pascals of pressure than the standard American house.
INSULATE tight! After air-sealing you need to insulate to optimum levels in your walls, your attic, even your basement and around your windows and doors.
There are many types of insulation that can be used in different parts of the house depending on the problems found, accessibility and the type of construction. Besides fiberglass batts which are often poorly installed with many air gaps, greatly reducing its R value, there is dense packed cellulose, a far better insulation for reducing air infiltration, mineral wool in batts and panels which have higher R-values and are vapor open and there are foam boards and sprayed polyurethane. But polyurethane can only be sprayed into open walls.
If you’re thinking about renovations or additions we can help you get started in designing and building something that will get close to the energy saving features of a well-designed zero net energy house or even a Passive House with optimal insulation, with proper orientation of structure and windows for best energy-saving performance.
VENTILATE right! Allergy or asthma problems? Concerned about viruses? Fresh air ventilation via an energy efficient, filtered air to air heat exchanger can give you a steady, controlled supply of fresh air year-round. You will be protecting your walls, ceilings, windows and doors from condensation in winter that could lead to mold in a house that is not adequately ventilated. A well-designed and well balanced air to air heat exchanger, otherwise known as an Energy Recovery Ventilator, will do the job with a minimum of energy loss.
Many people feel that ventilation should be natural rather than controlled. If homeowners depend on natural infiltration or exhaust only fans in kitchens and bathrooms, pollutants, allergens, and CO2 can build up in your house by pulling in inadequate amounts of air through basement cracks, rim joists, windows, doors, electrical outlets, in other words from routes that may bring in pollutants along with your air. But with controlled, balanced ventilation, stale inside air is exchanged for fresh outside air while holding onto 70% or more of the heat from the exhausting air. Healthy, filtered ventilation will keep down CO2, viruses, allergens and other pollutants in your home. And it can boost your mental acuity as well.
HEATING & COOLING your house with a high efficiency heat pump or mini splits are the most energy-efficient heating and cooling technologies available, far more efficient than a gas or oil furnace or boiler or even a wood furnace or boiler or a conventional air conditioner.
Although ground source heat pumps can be more efficient and therefore less expensive to run, an air source heat pump can be considerably cheaper to install. If you have an older fossil fuel heating unit, you can save money, radically reduce your greenhouse gas emissions and help save our planet.
If you’re presently spending money on an older generation air conditioner for summer cooling, that very same heat pump or mini-split can cool you in summer less expensively than that standard air conditioner.
WINDOWS & DOORS can be tightened with weatherstripping or replaced with more efficient models that were designed for efficient zero net energy and passive houses and buildings. Energy efficient windows and doors are engineered to let in more heat where you want it in winter and less heat where you don’t want it in summer.
For instance in summer, west facing windows can bring in a lot of unwanted heat so a lower solar heat gain coefficient can help there while for south facing windows, a high solar heat gain coefficient should be used to admit more heat with winter sunlight. Resistance to wind infiltration, low U value, high R value and noise protection are other important features that can make windows energy efficient and comfortable in winter and summer.
There are many features to a good, energy-efficient window and there are a number of manufacturers that can produce such windows. I can help you find the best for less.
With doors, good gasketing and even multiple points of latching can radically reduce drafts.
SUPPORTING INFO
Ventilation:
Evidence from Scientific Literature about Improved Academic Performance https://www.epa.gov/iaq-schools/evidence-scientific-literature-about-improved-academic-performance
How Does Indoor Air Quality Impact Student Health and Academic Performance? https://www.epa.gov/iaq-schools/how-does-indoor-air-quality-impact-student-health-and-academic-performance
Poor Air Quality Affects Cognitive Performance in the Office, Study Finds https://www.verywellmind.com/poor-air-quality-affects-cognitive-performance-in-the-office-study-finds-5202011
Research: Stale Office Air Is Making You Less Productive https://hbr.org/2017/03/research-stale-office-air-is-making-you-less-productive
The effects of bedroom air quality on sleep and next-day performance https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ina.12254
Ventilation Rates and Office Work Performance https://iaqscience.lbl.gov/building-ventilation-rates-and-office-work-performance
ABOUT
Energy Auditor and Home Performance Contractor
Experience in air sealing, insulating, heat and energy recovery ventilating, replacing windows and doors, renovating and rebuilding houses and lofts. Specializing in energy auditing.
Certifications:
BPI Building Analyst Professional and BPI Envelope Professional
Certifications:
PHIUS Certified Builder
Passive House Institute US
Service Area
Testimonials
In March 2022 Peter came to our home and did a complete and detailed Energy Audit. He arrived on time with all the equipment necessary and spent a number of hours going through the house, the attic, the basement and crawl spaces. As we went through the house he was very helpful in pointing out where we could make improvements.
Subsequent to his visit he sent me a written 36 page report which included photos of heat loss and various options and costs involved in resolving air leaks throughout the house.
I would highly recommend his service to anyone interested in reducing their energy costs.
Sincerely, Steve W, Milford, NY
Hi Peter!
I would like to thank you for the excellent and thorough work that you did in completing an energy audit on our home. You provided extensive documentation with specific recommendations, and you have made yourself available to answer questions at all points during the process, which was very helpful to me. In particular, I appreciate the enthusiasm that you show toward your work. It really seems like you enjoy helping people to understand how air and heat flow through a home. Thank you for your professionalism, and please feel free to share my name as a reference. Sincerely, Naomi G., Laurens, NY
Hi Peter, I’ve just read your report. It’s remarkably thorough. I appreciate the detailed explanations, room by room, the hows and whys. I’ve looked over your proposal and again appreciate the detail. Thank you so much for doing such a great job. D. H., Cooperstown, NY
Hi, Peter, Your report is very comprehensive and full of helpful information. I very much appreciate all the work and time you put into it, and your findings will be very helpful in pointing us in the direction for lowering our heating costs and making our house more efficient. ER, Ithaca, NY
Shortly after I bought my 100-year old home, I wanted to have a thorough energy audit. I emailed a number of energy audit companies and Peter was the first to reply and offered me a very competitive price. He was extremely flexible in setting up an appointment for the audit that fit my schedule.
For the audit, Peter spent several hours in our home doing a blower door test and using an infrared camera to take pictures of areas with poor insulation and heat loss. I received a thorough written report several weeks later which had very specific recommendations for improving insulation and reducing heat loss. I feel like I ‘know’ my house much better now and have a much better idea of how I can save lots of money on my energy bills.
This is great, thank you so much!
Thanks alot for the report, Peter, that’s most helpful. Happy cruising (part of your job)
This is great, thank you so much!
Thank you so much for all your help. i am a happy man! Have a great day.
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