Central Energy Savers

The most notable thing we found testing this house was that sewer gas flooded in when we did the blower door test.  The floor drain trap had been routed into the sump pump hole so that the trap was always empty, allowing gas to enter the house from the sewer.  The owner had the sump pump replaced immediately after our visit, and the problem was fixed.

This all-electric house had recently had a new heat pump installed, but the heating bills were quite high.  We determined that the emergency "strip" heat had been coming on at a higher temperature than it should, and referred the owner to an HVAC professional.

The house was 17% more airtight than the standard, so we recommended adding a heat-recovery ventilation system.

This home proved a real challenge to model, since it had four gambrel roofs of differing sizes and two separate basements, each with its own furnace and water heater!  Although the heating and cooling equipment was quite old, the heating bills were unusually low due to extremely frugal use of the thermostat, which is great, but it left little room for improvement!  In fact, one of the furnaces had not been used at all in the previous winter, and the temperature in that part of the house was below 60˚F.

This house had a very low heating index because the owners got most of their heat from wood which they obtained for free.  The house was in excellent shape for the most part, so we were unable to recommend many improvements to save energy.

However, there were serious water problems in the crawlspace due to poor drainage away from the foundation.  We found insulation batts standing in puddles of water in the crawlspace (see photos).  The attic insulation was also very haphazard and needed to be evened out.

This house had unusually high electrical consumption year-round (even during temperate weather), indicating lights or appliances left running.  We were unable to find the culprit, however if the air handler were left running all the time (instead of just when the heat pump is on), this could account for the high bills.  We offered to investigate further, however the homeowner was not interested.

This house was in good shape overall, but it was significantly lacking in ventilation and had many moisture sources (including an untrained puppy), so we strongly recommended adding controlled ventilation while sealing air leaks.  There was nearly twice as much air leakage as necessary, most of it from the hatches between the finished attic and the kneewall areas.  The window frames also leaked quite a bit, and we were pleased to be able to recommend new windows (or repairing the old ones) as a cost-effective measure.

This rural home uses propane in the high-efficiency furnace and upstairs space heater, but electricity to heat water year-round.  We recommended a heat-pump water heater to dehumidify the basement while heating water more efficiently.  We also recommended replacing the failing air conditioner with a dual-fuel heat pump (that is, working in conjunction with the existing furnace) and fixing some ducting problems that were causing the upstairs to be insufficiently heated, requiring them to use the inefficient propane space heater.