The Essential Home Energy Evaluation Checklist

Broken Arrow's climate gives us a wide range of weather to deal with, but with a few simple upgrades, you can make sure your home is ready for whatever comes. A home energy evaluation helps you choose the upgrades that will benefit you most.

Perform a Basic DIY Inspection

Look for leaks — Tiny cracks around doors, windows, plumbing and wiring penetrations, exhaust vents, and other areas waste your heated and cooled air. Test for these by holding a smoke pencil up to potentially leaky areas. If the smoke blows sideways, there's a leak. Caulk and weatherstripping can be used to seal leaks like these.

Inspect your insulation — To block unwanted heat loss and gain, your attic needs at least an R-30 (9-inch) layer of insulation. Adding more to achieve an R-60 layer further improves your home's efficiency.

Check your ducts — Ducts with poorly sealed joints and insufficient insulation drag down your furnace and A/C's efficiency. Sealing the duct joints with mastic and applying duct wrap insulation helps.

Assess your appliances — Appliances more than 10 years old run inefficiently and are at risk for failure. Upgrading to new models will help lower your monthly energy bills.

Consider your lighting — If any of your light fixtures still hold incandescent bulbs, consider upgrading to more efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) or LED lamps.

How a Pro Can Help

During a professional home energy evaluation, your technician will use specialized knowledge and equipment to pinpoint energy wasters you wouldn't be able to find by yourself. With blower door equipment, the technician can depressurize your house to spot small yet significant air leaks. Duct blaster equipment allows your technician to test your ducts for leaks, so they can be sealed for maximum efficiency.

To assess the insulation inside your walls and floors, your technician will scan your home with an infrared camera, which shows where your home is losing or gaining heat. If these areas are short on insulation, adding loose-fill insulation is a convenient solution.

To schedule a home energy evaluation, contact us at Air Assurance in the Broken Arrow area.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in the Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). Credit/Copyright Attribution: “Dusit/Shutterstock”

Air Seal Your Home Against Allergens and Energy Loss

Air Seal Your Home Against Allergens and Energy Loss

If you’ve purchased an efficient air conditioner and installed new, efficient home insulation, you may think that you’ve done enough to prevent energy loss and boost air quality. However, it’s generally necessary for homeowners to air seal the perimeter of the building to keep heated air outside during the summer, which would otherwise compromise energy savings, as well as to prevent pollutants from moving into the home and degrading indoor air quality. To air seal your home and maximize energy savings and air quality, follow this easy guide.

Step one: Find leaks

Aside from a professional energy audit, which employs specialized tools to measure air leakage and find leaks, homeowners can use this comprehensive list of locations that commonly leak to root out problematic areas. Check around:

• An air barrier, generally installed in the attic

• Kneewalls and soffits in the attic

• Protrusions in the attic's building materials to accommodate plumbing, ducts or wiring

• Dropped ceilings

• The chimney or flue

• The access hatch or door to the attic

• Recessed lights

• A whole-house fan

• Protrusions through the building--other than the attic--made to accommodate plumbing, wiring or ducting

• Wall joints

• Basement rim joints and the foundation

• Window frames

• Door frames

• Connections where ceilings and walls meet

Step two: Air seal leaks

A DIY job, sealing air leaks involves choosing the right materials and then correctly applying them. You can seal most air leaks with standard caulk purchased from a home-improvement store. Apply the caulk by following these tips:

• Clean the area first and let it dry.

• Apply the caulk by pulling on the caulking gun’s trigger, holding the gun at a 45-degree angle.

• Force the caulk into the crack or gap, using one continuous motion, and releasing the trigger just before you reach the end of the crack, as the caulk will continue to stream out of the cartridge for a second or two.

• Run a wet finger or rag over the gap to force the caulk deeper, and wipe away any excess.

At Air Assurance Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing, we’re happy to help our neighbors in greater Broken Arrow with air sealing, upgrading insulation or boosting HVAC efficiency. Give us a call today or visit our website for more information.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in the Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). Image courtesy of Shutterstock