July 30, 2015
You’ve probably switched from hot to iced coffee for the summer months and, similarly, your home systems have made the switch from heating to cooling mode! No matter what temperature you’re trying to keep the air inside your house, boosting efficiency is important. Many of the same principles to home energy efficiency apply year-round.
Summer is a great time to evaluate the efficiency of your home. Hot temperatures outside here in Monmouth and Ocean Counties and cool temps inside present a perfect opportunity for conducting a home energy audit. After the audit, you’ll want to improve efficiency and comfort with some relatively simple solutions.
What is an Energy Audit?
A home energy audit is all about identifying inefficiencies in your heating and cooling systems – ways that energy and money are leaking out of the home. Professional auditors look at your home’s “building envelope,” which you can think of as the container that surrounds all the living spaces. Walls, ceilings, doors, windows, attics, and floors all present opportunities for hot or cold air to escape.
Our team at Tom Rostron will uncover the gaps in your home’s building envelope with a machine called a blower door. This is a large fan that attaches to an exterior door and, by pulling air out of the house and, measures the amount of wasted air that flows back in the home through small cracks in the building envelope.
Key Services to Boost your Home’s Efficiency
Once we’ve identified the leaks, we’ll fix them for you with a professional combination of air sealing and insulation. This combination of services will have an immediate boost on your cooling system (and your heating system, when the New Jersey winter rolls around). You’ll notice the difference in terms of both comfort and money. Comfort increases, and monthly energy bills decrease.
A quick note on insulation: we get a lot of people asking why they would add insulation in the summer. Doesn’t that make the home hotter? Think of it like that iced coffee we mentioned earlier. Cold liquid stays cold longer if you wrap an insulating layer (like a sleeve) around it. The same is true of cool, conditioned air in your home. With efficient insulation, you’ll keep the living spaces at a comfortable temperature and spend less time running the AC.
