Conducting an energy audit of your home, tips for saving energy

Choose a topic

• Heating and cooling
• Saving water and water heaters
• Appliances
• Lighting
• Cooking

Heating and cooling

• Check the seals around windows and doors for air leaks and adjust or replace as necessary. A good time to do this is on a cold day when the wind is blowing where a draft is a sign of a misadjusted window, door or a faulty seal.
• Inspect the insulation in your attic and other accessible areas of the home periodically. If the need arrises to reinsulate, follow the recommended R-Values for your home. Consult the building inspectors office for guidance about insulation.
• Consider sheeting windows in the winter to provide additional insulation against the cold.
• Adjust your thermostat, for each degree you change your thermostat you save approximately 3 percent on your heating or cooling costs. Set your thermostat as low as is comfortable in the winter and as high as is comfortable in the summer.
• Clean or replace heating and cooling filters as recommended in your systems operating instructions. Inspect and replace them more frequently if they get dirty quickly. Dirty filters reduce system efficiency and reduce the filters ability to clean the air circulating in your home.
• Clean air registers, baseboard heaters, and radiators as needed. Make sure they're not blocked by furniture, carpeting, or drapes.
• If you have hot water radiators, bleed trapped air once or twice a season or as recommended in the operating instructions provided by your dealer.
• Use ventilating fans when necessary but turn them off when they are not needed. Depending on the rating of the fan, they can exhaust a houseful of warmed or cooled air in as little as one hour.
• During the heating season, keep drapes and blinds on your south-facing windows open during the day to allow sunlight and heat to enter your home. Close drapes at night to help reduce heat loss.
• Close drapes and blinds on windows facing the sun during the cooling season to prevent the sun from heating your home.
• Close off unoccupied rooms and reduce heat and airflow to these rooms. Inspect these rooms periodically.
• Install programmable thermostats to automatically set your comfort level for periods when you are home, or awake, and revert to energy saving settings when the house is not occupied. Depending on your system, you may have individual room controls to heat and cool the rooms as you use them.
• Have your heating and cooling systems serviced once a year to ensure peak operational efficiency.
• Clean and inspect your dryer vent to make sure the outside vent cover operates correctly. If this vent remains open when the dryer is not in use, it can funnel air back in to the house and reduce energy efficiency.
• Use space heaters cautiously and never leave them unattended. Space heaters may not be as efficient as using your heating system. If you do use a space heater, make sure it is opearting properly and that it is kept clean. Lint and dust build-up not only reduces efficiency but can also create a fire hazard.

Saving water and water-heating energy

• Consider on-demand water heaters that heat water only as you need it. Most water heaters have large tanks of 40 gallons or more. These tanks of water are heated continuously even when water is not in use. If you will be gone for an extended time, consider shutting your water heater off.
• Install low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators.
• Insulate long runs of hot-water supply pipe, especially sections that pass through unheated spaces.
• Repair or replace leaky faucets. The drips add up fast and represent dollars going down the drain. A hot water faucet that leaks one drop per second wastes more than 2,300 gallons of hot water per year.
• Lower the water heater thermostat to 120°F. Water reaching your tap at 120°F., will be safe enough to avoid scalds, and will save you money.
• Consider wrapping your water heater with an insulating blanket. Consult the instructions provided with your heater to make sure it is safe to do so.

Appliances

• Wash with cold water whenever possible.
• Wash and dry full loads to maximize efficiency.
• Don't overload dryers. Overloaded dryers do not dry as well and may cause clothes to wrinkld ane require ironing. Overloaded washers and dryers also cause clothes to wear out more quickly.
• Hang drying clothes requires no energy at all!
• Front-loading washers are usually more efficient than top-loaders.
• Always adjust the water level to fit load size. Overloaded washers don't clean clothes as effectively and they may need to be rewashed.
• Clean the lint filter after each drying cycle to maintain dryer efficiency. This also reduces fire-hazzards due to the accumulation of lint.
• Test the tightness of the door seal on refrigerators and freezers. If the seal doesn't tightly hold a dollar bill when the door is closed, it's probably time to adjust or replace the gasket.
• Replace old refrigerators. Older refrigerators cost up to 75 percent more to operate than a new super-efficient model.
• Follow the instructions for your refrigerator freezer to maximize efficency.
• Follow the cleaning instructions for your refrigerator. If it has exposed coils on the back, cleaning them periodically will save energy.
• Use power saving settings on computers and printers for machines that are left on full time. Look for Energy Star compliant products.

Lighting

• Take special consideration when planning lighting for the elderly. As our eyes age we require more light to see well. The American Association for Retired People (AARP) has a good lighting guide of considerations for the elderly.
• Light only the areas you need and use the lowest wattage bulb to do the job. When buying bulbs, compare brands to find those with the highest lumens rating for a similar wattage. Higher lumen rating means you get more light for the amount of energy used.
• Use energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs-especially in fixtures that operate more than two hours a day. They cost more initially but use 75 percent less electricity and last about ten times longer than incandescent bulbs.
• Open shades and blinds to take advantage of natural light when practical (see heating and cooling tips above).
• Consider adding a skylight, but shop for one that does not cause heating and cooling problems.
• Long-life bulbs emit less light than standard incandescent bulbs of the same wattage. Use long-life bulbs only in hard-to-reach places.
• Keep light fixtures and bulbs clean to gain the most illumination for your energy dollars. Disconnect the power source before cleaning and do not clean bulbs when the light is on!
• Check for LED Christmas lighting options to save electricity.

Cooking

• Use your oven instead of your cook top to cut cooking costs. Surface units heat continuously, but an insulated oven normally heats one-third of the time that it is in use.
• Resist the temptation to peek. Cooking temperatures can drop as much as 50º every time the oven door is opened, causing the oven to reheat.
• Use the oven's self-cleaning cycle only for big cleaning jobs. Start the cycle while the oven is still hot from baking.
• Use small appliances such as crockpots, electric frying pans, toaster ovens, and microwave ovens to save when cooking.