Should You Get a Home Energy Audit?

The best way to determine whether you should take a certain action is to understand its pros and cons. After you weigh them against one another, you can then make a sound decision. If you’re thinking about getting a home energy audit, here are seven pros to consider that can help make the decision for you.

1. Pinpoint Combustion Issues

A home energy audit boasts the potential to save lives in homes that use gas or propane as a fuel source. If any type of combustion issue exists, the home energy audit can pinpoint and address the concern simultaneously.

Many types of combustion risks exist in homes using gas or propane as a fuel source. A gas oven that emits too much carbon monoxide can cause death. If you have a back-drafting atmosphere in your home, it’s all the more important to address this risk, which is easily identifiable with a home energy audit.

2. Identify Air Leaks

Whether you realize it or not, your home’s energy centers around satisfying your needs. If you’re too hot, you can easily adjust the AC to keep you cooler. During the cooler months, easily adjusting the furnace can keep you warm and cozy.

Regardless of your temperature preferences, you’re wasting energy if your home has air leaks. A home energy audit makes it possible to identify and seal every single air leak in the home. Whether it’s caulking windows or replacing doors, fixing every air leak will result in favorable outcomes in the future, particularly when it comes to heating and cooling bills.

3. Choose Home Improvement Projects

With a home energy audit, you can easily narrow down which home improvement projects should top your to-do list. By identifying the projects that need to be completed to yield the greatest energy savings, you can then also see which ones provide the best return on investment.

For example, you’re wanting to complete window replacements all around your house to fix air leaks. This type of project has a 74.3% return on vinyl windows and a 69.5% return on wood windows. With this type of return on your investment, it becomes easy to choose a window replacement project over a master suite addition project, especially being that the latter project has only a 48.3% ROI.

4. Take Advantage of Rebates and Incentives

There are multiple types of home energy repairs and projects that come with rebates and incentives. Knowing you can receive compensation for all or part of the project can easily help you prioritize which projects to complete first.

A lot of the rebates and incentives you can take advantage of for home energy projects come in the form of tax credits. You can also check with your local chamber of commerce and community-based service offices to see whether any savings programs exist. Additionally, many of today’s energy-efficient appliance retailers offer special financing options.

Did you know some solar home improvement projects come with full compensation in the form of rebates? That means you can possibly switch to solar heating and cooling while having your entire investment compensated for once the project is complete.

You may have to come up with the initial investment required for purchasing and installing the solar panels to switch to solar heating and cooling, but knowing you’ll be completely compensated provides great peace of mind. A home energy audit provides one of the best ways to determine whether the project is worth the investment.

5. Think About Mother Nature

Have you ever taken a moment to truly reflect on how your behaviors impact the environment? The number of laundry loads you wash and dry each week, the showers you take, and the times you adjust the thermostat all impact the environment in one way or another. As of today, roughly 66% of the world operates on fossil fuels, while 95% of the world’s total energy demand comes from electrical sources.

As fossil fuel continues to burn and fill the air with pollution, global warming continues to increase. This impacts our social and economic realities.

One of the best ways you can give back to nature is by extending a helping hand. You can do this by switching to power sources with the lowest forms of pollution. With a home energy audit, it becomes possible to determine exactly which projects to perform to keep your environmental footprint to a minimum.

6. Put Extra Dollars in Your Pocket

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if you have the most energy-efficient appliances and heating and cooling available in today’s market. If you don’t change your actions, you won’t save any money. A home energy audit can help you realize which behaviors to change.

For example, if a home energy audit determines the lights in the kitchen and living room are constantly on, it means you or someone else in the home is frequently leaving the lights on when they shouldn’t be.

Or the home energy audit might reveal that one of the main reasons the furnace tends to run all night is because someone in the home leaves the window open around the clock. Knowing this type of precise information can greatly help you and others in your home change to behaviors that are more friendly to Mother Nature. Financially, they can help you make decisions that save energy and put more dollars back in your pocket.

7. Improve Overall Comfort

In addition to saving energy and money, one of the most important reasons for getting a home energy audit stems from the ability to improve your overall comfort. Imagine a home that uses thermostats and sensors to learn your heating and cooling preferences. Now, imagine an HVAC unit that uses such gathered data to operate with optimal efficiency while still ensuring optimal comfort.

What Is a Home Energy Audit?

A home energy audit will involve a professional coming to your house to gather data. There are multiple types of tools and special equipment used during this type of audit, making it nearly impossible for you to perform one on your own. This is why it’s vital to have Air Max HVAC conduct one for you.

The goal of a home energy audit is to help homeowners calculate their residential energy consumption. As patterns are pinpointed during the audit, it becomes possible to see where energy waste occurs as well as determine which energy-saving tasks can be performed to stop such energy waste.

If you’re not sure whether to obtain an energy audit, consider the possibility that a house with a high energy cost has heating and cooling problems. These difficulties tend to include such issues as heat loss, ventilation challenges, and indoor air leakage.

By checking your home and paying close attention to windows, doors, and other places in addition to the heating and cooling systems, a professional home energy audit can assist in identifying problems and creating solid fixes. According to energy.gov, solving these problems might lead to annual energy savings of between 10% and 20%.

If you would like to learn more about energy savings and how to save money with heating and cooling projects, Air Max HVAC is available to help. We provide home energy audits and can help you calculate how much you can save by making certain changes in your home. We also offer a full range of heating and cooling services, as well as indoor air quality solutions. Contact us today to set up an appointment.