Energy Audit

I went to a class the other week on energy conservation. I learned quite a bit that I didn't know and was able to apply that knowledge to our lives. Some things I didn't know:

It's not safe to run an oil heater (space heater) from an extension cord.

Most heat is lost through the ceiling, not through windows (this probably depends, but typically).

Pulling a refrigerator just a few more inches from the wall can make it much more efficient (depending on where the coils are).

If you use compact fluorescent bulbs, they should be somewhere you leave the light on for at least 15 minutes at a time, otherwise normal light bulbs are more cost effective (example: closet).

You should use a nice surge protector (over $20-30) to have it be effective, the cheap ones won't protect your things.

If you heat your house with propane, natural gas, oil, kerosene or wood you should have a CO detector installed.

For attending the free class I received a bag full of all sorts of good stuff; foam insulating tape, a shower head, light bulbs, caulk and a caulking gun, spray foam, etc. I also received a home energy audit, where they guy who teaches the class comes to your house for 2 hours and checks everything out. He made sure our fridge was at the correct temperature, that our water heater was set at 120, he also used an infra red camera to look all over. This showed where there was insulation, where there wasn't and showed where there were leaks letting cold air in.
But the coolest thing he did was hook up this blower fan to our front door:

It creates a negative pressure, so you can walk around the house and feel where and how much air is getting through places like cracks and window pulleys (this was by far where the biggest leaks were in the main house). Honestly for a house built in 1923, it performed better than I thought it would.


It was amazing to feel how much air could get in with the fan going. He could see how much pressure was there, and how much leaking should be happening (houses need to breathe a little bit) and our leaks were equivalent to an entire wall being open, if you added up all the little holes. We did all this with the addition closed off, with it open it was crazy how much air is being lost. The addition was done very poorly, perhaps some of you remember when it was 96 degrees in our house? He said it was so bad there was no way to easily make it sealed, so we just keep that part of the house shut off.
He also installed new weather stripping around our front door for us, gave us and installed a really nice CO monitor and gave us all the stuff to fix our problem spots. It was pretty sweet and I think we both learned a lot about our house.
Thank you Benton County, you are awesome!