Angie: The Angie’s List campus on the near-Eastside of Indianapolis consists of a variety of old, unique buildings. My desk is in the Marble Building, which was previously home to a marble-countertop business. Just like any older building, it has its pros and cons. After moving in a few months ago, we’re more comfortable here, but the noise from the updates took some getting used to.
The Blue House, home of the Angie’s List publication department, is also a unique old building. Built in the 1890’s, it has a lot of charm, but with that charm comes an unfortunate energy inefficiency: the House’s energy bills have hit $700 in some months. Tristan Schmid has more.
Tristan: Last year, Angie’s List magazine celebrated Earth Day with our first “Green Issue,” featuring stories about how you can be environmentally friendly and still live comfortably. This year, we follow that with our second “Green Issue,” in which we focus on efficient building and renovation practices.
As we researched this topic, we realized there are some simple things we could do to become more ecologically friendly here in the Blue House. Sure, we recycle our office paper, use programmable thermostats, and set our computer monitors to automatically turn off when we’re away. But we decided to go a step further and turn the Blue House into a “green house.” We’ve replaced our plastic dishware with the reusable kind, improved our recycling system, replaced all 60 of our incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents, and we’re considering the installation of a composting toilet as well! We even hired Thermo-Scan, a Carmel, Indiana-based building-inspection firm highly rated on Angie’s List, to examine the Blue House and tell us why it’s so inefficient.
Sue (out of frame) to Eric and Liz: Meet the energy-audit person who can tell you how much cold air is seeping into your windows.
Eric: I already know how much: a lot!
Sue: This room gets cold, particularly these guys against the windows and the wall.
Tristan: Thermo-Scan Inspections performs inspections nationwide, and has rated more than 10,000 Energy Star homes in the last decade. They’ve also won the Energy Star achievement award two years in a row.
Allison Senninger, our inspector, gave us a full report on the Blue House’s energy efficiency, along with some great tips on how to save energy — and, consequently, money!
Sue: Has the energy-audit business been jumping recently?
Allison: We are getting a lot of calls. We get a lot of reference from utilities. With the cold weather and the prices going up, a lot of people are calling the utilities looking for ways they can save on their bills, and then they refer them to us.
Allison: These pipes are wrapped – that’s a very minor thing we’d recommend. This insulation is good, but that insulation probably should be replaced.
Tristan: Thermo-Scan and other energy auditing companies work with homeowners to determine a building’s energy efficiency. They do this by taking various measurements of the house, inspecting heating and cooling systems, and using tools like infrared thermal scanners and blower doors to find problem areas.
Allison: Typically when we do an existing home, there is a specific problem that we’re called in for, like they can’t keep their upstairs cool in the summer or their downstairs warm in the winter.
Tristan: It took Allison a few hours to inspect the 3100-square-feet of the Blue House, though I’m sure it would’ve taken less time had a small Angie’s List mob not been following her and asking questions (we are reporters, after all!)
A few days after the inspection, Allison emailed us a detailed report, which included descriptions of problems she found, as well as images from the thermal scans (this one shows that the seemingly ancient window above my desk, and the wall next to it, aren’t much warmer than the outside winter temperature — NOT good!)
Allison also provided a detailed “improvement analysis report,” which showed we could cut our heating and cooling costs nearly in half by taking various steps — some quite simple — towards energy efficiency.
The audit gave the Blue House a score on the Home Energy Rating System Index, a system established by the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) in which a home that uses no net purchased energy scores an index of 0. The typical existing American home has a rating of 150; the Blue House failed the audit with a miserable 192.
The most glaring problems with our house are the windows and insulation. The Blue House doesn’t have adequate insulation in many of the walls, and parts of the attic have no insulation at all, buffered from the outside weather only by the uninsulated roof.
Allison: Any wall that’s adjacent to an attic space like this, the backside of the wall should be insulated – there’s nothing in here.
Tristan: Allison recommended we have new, more environmentally friendly insulation installed in the attic, walls, and basement.
Allison: We still see, in new construction, a lot of fiberglass. (There’s) a new glass product (that) isn’t itchy: it’s white and feels more like cotton. There’s also cellulose, which is recycled newspaper. It’s treated, but it’s the most environmental thing. We also see a lot of spray foam. That has a very high R-value per inch when it’s sprayed on, plus it also acts as an air sealer. If you sprayed that along the walls or rim down here, you would reduce air infiltration and add insulation R-value.
Tristan: Allison also said that the windows, which were found to be the main source of air infiltration, should be repaired and have new storm windows installed, or be replaced completely.
It was also recommended that we replace our old, inefficient boiler with a gas furnace, or better yet, a heat pump.
Though some of Thermo-Scan’s recommendations would be quite costly up front or take considerable time, many of the recommended steps we take in the Thermo-Scan report will likely pay themselves off over the long haul.
So if you’re paying more than you think you should for your home’s heating and cooling, you might want to have an energy audit performed on your home. Many energy utility companies offer free or discounted audits, so contact your local utilities to find out if this is possible in your area. If your utilities don’t offer discounts, expect to pay between $250 for an expert inspection with a blower-door test on a small home, on up to $750 for a larger home with air sealing and weatherization.
Even if you do have to pay, the investment will be well worth it if you find a well-rated energy auditor on Angie’s List and implement some of their recommendations
Until next time, this is Tristan. Thanks for taking the time to list-en!
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