Making your home more energy efficient has real advantages for you and your monthly finances. Even slight efficiency gains will have an effect on the price you pay monthly for your energy. The more aggressively you make efficiency gains, the more money you should ultimately be able to save. These are savings that arise month after month, year after year, and so the sooner you get to work to improve home energy efficiency, the better!
Benefits of Home Energy Efficiency
Making your home more energy efficient comes with major financial benefits, and it helps minimize individual carbon footprints. Every homeowner should consider making improvements to see these savings – especially those preparing to sell their home. Greater energy efficiency is a strong selling point, and this commonly has a bearing on the ultimate resale value of more efficient properties.
5 Tips To Improve Home Energy Efficiency
Improving Insulation
By reducing waste through good insulation, homeowners can help keep more of the heat they generate indoors. This means that heating (and cooling) the home require less energy, and are therefore cheaper processes both now and forever. The main culprits for heat loss are the windows, doors and the roof of your home – essentially, anywhere that heat can feasibly escape from the building. By up-rating each of these elements, it can be possible to eradicate this problem altogether. You may also want to check into cavity wall insulation.
Update Windows
Double or even triple glazed windows help with both energy efficiency and soundproofing. These are now industry standard, but older homes may still have single glazed windows. Single glazed windows are much more likely to leak heat, and will be less energy efficient as a result. In this sense, single glazed windows are more expensive to own, because they lead to more significant energy costs on a monthly basis.
Energy Efficient Doors
Similarly, some doors are more energy efficient than others. External doors are the main concern to improve home energy efficiency, and it is worth opting for a solid or an insulated door to begin with. Improvements can also be made in the seals and joints around the door, which can be better insulated to prevent heat from escaping.
Both door and window installation and up-rating can be handled as a DIY project. You don’t need to do much in order to make improvements in these areas, and even those with modest household expertise should be able to pull it off.
Energy Efficient Roof and Attic
When it comes to improvements in the attic and on your roof, it makes more sense to call in a professional. Messing with the structure of your family home can have a potentially devastating impact and climbing on rooftops can be dangerous.
Expertise in this roofing services is essential to avoid damaging your home. In some cases, it may be a simple case of just laying insulation in the attic to help preserve heat. However, it may be necessary to install a new type of roof, or to relay the tiling, in order to make your home more inherently energy efficient. This can require time and up-front investment, but is likely to make the single biggest contribution to savings on your energy bills where this work is required.
Home Energy Audit
A comprehensive home energy audit done on your house can help you objectively determine where the leaks may be occurring. Learning if your home is energy efficient and what the areas are that need improvement helps you to go greener and reduce expenses.
Derek Pace of Pro Energy Consultants set up a time that was convenient for me and came out and conducted my home energy audit. Now, the thing that made me most confident in Pro Energy services is that they are an unbiased, third party working for the home owner and NOT SELLING any products! I knew before he got started that he wasn’t going to hit me up to buy a new furnace or put in new windows or any sales pressure whatsoever because they only sell the audit itself. Knowing that, really makes the audit a much more valuable service because they are just working to provide you with information on your home. I recommend this.
He began the home energy audit by setting up a false door with a fan attached that pressurizes the home and helps give an electronic diagnostic of the home’s air barrier. He then proceeded with his infrared thermal imaging scanner throughout my house to determine areas of leakage and below standard insulation. I received a Pro Energy Action Plan. Each recommendation that was made to improve the energy efficiency of my home was in priority order. I had 10 things on my list and almost all of them could be done by my handy husband. There was really simple fixes that I didn’t even know about, like installing foam gaskets on all outlets!
These 5 tips should help you improve home energy efficiency and lower your utility bills. Have you undertaken any projects to make your home greener? Which of these ways to improve home energy efficiency did you find most useful. Share your feedback on social media @familyfocusblog!
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CelloMom says
Putting in a solar attic fan has allowed us to go without air conditioning: it makes a huge difference (and increases the lifetime of your roof, too). Paid for itself the very first summer.
Even if you’re not ready for the expense of a large retro-fit, simply turning your thermostat closer (and closer) to the outside temperature can save you a bundle, and can decrease the carbon footprint of your house substantially.
Scarlet says
Great tips CelloMom. I have actually been wanting a solar attic fan. Thanks for sharing your experience with it!
Dan says
Up here in Alaska we know all about energy efficiency, although we are focused on keeping warm more than cool. Definitely call in a professional to take a look at your roof. They should be able to assess the insulation value fairly easily and make recommendations for improvement. Improving insulation in your attic/roof can make a HUGE impact to comfort and energy use.