Top 6 Ways To ​Get the Most Out of Your Energy Audit

Energy audits are useful ways to uncover why a bedroom is always hot in the summer or why your energy bills are so high, but there is a hidden trove of useful information homeowners can uncover during their home energy audit that isn’t widely known.  If you are wondering how much does it cost to have an energy audit and what do we do during an audit, here are the top 6 ways to get the most out of your energy audit from an experience Phoenix energy auditor.

1. Ask about your thermostat settings
Your energy auditor gets to see hundred of energy bills every year for homeowners with lifestyles all over the board.  If you feel your energy bill is too high 1 quick thing you can do to lower your bill during an energy audit is to simply ask your auditor about whether you’re on the best rate plan for your lifestyle and whether there are better, more cost-effective alternatives for you. Often times there are hidden savings to be had a no cost to you by simply switching rate plans or installing a smart thermostat that automatically raises itself when you leave the house. 

2. Follow the energy auditor
There’s no better way to learn than to be with the energy auditor and see how they do what they do.  No, it's not being intrusive and we actually like when homeowners are with us because we get to talk about what we love doing. Being involved in an energy audit will help you better understand why we are recommending certain upgrades and the causes of high energy bills, hot rooms or dust. You can even feel where and how much air is leaking around outlets, windows and doors, pocket doors and exhaust fans.  Our energy auditors look at solving your home's hot rooms and high energy bills as a fun puzzle.  We perform a bunch of tests on the home which paints a clear picture of what are causing any issues and what is not at fault.  It's not guessing or a visual inspection, which is why we attract more technical auditors than sales minded auditors.

3. Prepare 12 months of energy bills for them
For an energy audit to become as successful as it can get, the auditors in place require all the relevant information about your home that they can get and 12 months of energy bills is optimal for an auditor to paint a vivid picture of your home and find what home improvement solutions suits it best.  

4. Ask about other recommendations they have that they do not sell
If there’s one thing in this world we can assure you of, it’s that asking never hurts! You can find out about other recommendations and improvements the auditor can suggest simply by asking. Your questions could trigger the auditor to recall a home improvement solution that he/she didn’t think about because it's not included in a typical energy audit. 

5. Ask to use the IR camera while the blower door is running
You might think it’s strange for us to recommend you to have the blower door is running when the IR camera is being used. However, there is a good reason for this and it is that the IR camera alone only shows heat gain and the differences in temperature in a specific area but, when the blower is also running it allows the IR camera to also detect air leakage pathways and the source of the leakage. This is a great visual tool to show leakage pathways that are more than just a number. 

​6. Ask what the energy model doesn’t cover
Unfortunately, our modeling software is not able to model all of our recommendations like adding a return, jump-ducts or airflow balancing. This means that while you will still enjoy the benefits of the improvements, the model won’t be able to predict how much you are saving.  This is where your energy auditor's experience comes into play to help find the right efficiency package for your needs.