Lessons From A HERS: 5 Ways to Improve the Energy Efficiency of Your Home

Improving the energy performance of your home became a priority for many people when they transitioned to remote work in the past year.  Staying home all day placed a spotlight on home energy performance and encouraged many to start do-it-yourself improvements.  I know this was the case for me! 

I recently moved to a new apartment and quickly found the in-efficiencies of an old water boiler that gave me an eye-watering natural gas bill. For that reason, and the importance of reducing carbon emissions to mitigate the climate crisis, I wanted to offer our recommendations for how to improve your home’s energy performance. In this blog, I’ll outline the 5 best places to look for energy efficiency improvements in your home. For raters, we want this article to act as a sort of set of quick tips you can share with friends, family, and neighbors who are trying to make energy efficient improvements to their homes.

As an energy modeling software company, Ekotrope, naturally, believes in working with data and using building science to guide home energy improvements.  For homeowners, we encourage you to learn about the science for yourself we recommend checking out Green Building Advisor (Green Building Advisor). But, that is not for everyone. We recommend working with an accredited HERS Rater who already understands the principles of building science. They will refine these recommendations and model your energy savings (request they use Ekotrope!).  Their skillset is valuable in contextualizing any energy improvement with the impact on indoor air quality, safety, and product and home durability. Find one near you, here.

HERS Raters will assist you in selecting the best improvements and will also know options to help finance your improvements. Often there are utility rebates available for energy efficiency improvements. These can be vital in making the payback for any given improvement cost-effective.  To start the search for these rebates and incentives, visit your utility’s webpage or visit North Carolina State University’s DSIREUSA database. This searchable database is a clearinghouse for incentive programs across the United States and is a one-stop-shop to find rebates for energy efficiency and solar installations.  

Now that you have a HERS Rater and understand the available rebates and incentives, you can start to plan your home energy performance improvement project!

From my experience as a QAD and HERS Rater, you should look at improving these areas of your house for the most impact. 

Lighting

An easy and cost-effective method to immediately reduce your energy consumption is to improve the efficiency of your light bulbs. In the past decade, light bulbs have both increased in their efficiency as well as improved their durability.  We recommend switching all light bulbs to LEDs bulbs - do not worry about replacing functioning lights.  LEDs are both more efficient and more durable than the standard incandescent bulb (think light bulb emoji: 💡). The same goes for compact fluorescents (whirly-gig shaped). Replace them with LEDs. The worries of short-lifespans for LEDs is a concern of the past. A new LED will use a fraction of the energy of CFLs and Incandescents as well as lasting for much longer! There are even aesthetic LEDs that mimic Edison Bulbs and other trendy lightbulb shapes!

Reduce the amount of air that leaks out of your home

Most of the energy that your home consumes is to heat and cool the home. That means, once your home is at a comfortable temperature, any air that leaks out or leaks into your home has to be re-conditioned to that comfortable temperature - which consumes energy.  This energy efficiency improvement will reduce the amount of air leakage in and out of your home and can be done by almost anyone with a few pointers. It will have a big impact on both the energy efficiency and comfort of your home!

Maintain your existing Heating and Cooling Equipment

As we said early, Heating and Cooling is the largest energy user in your home, so it is important to make sure that it is operating efficiently and effectively. There are a couple of ways to do this. First, for forced-air systems change your air filter every 3-months. This keeps your air clean and also helps the equipment stay clean and operating efficiently.  You should also use more effective filters for better air filtration and better energy performance. Look for a filter’s MERV Rating (higher is better and MERV 6 would be a good target). Second, you can have an HVAC technician commission your system to verify it is operating properly. Just like your car, HVAC equipment should be serviced occasionally to ensure proper performance. This will increase the lifespan of your equipment as well as it’s performance. 

Consider replacing your heating, cooling, and hot water systems

Heating, Cooling, Water Heating equipment is getting more efficient each year so replacing yours can have a big improvement in home performance. To reduce your energy usage, energy bills, and carbon emissions (assuming we are moving towards a renewable energy future) the best option for new equipment are heat pumps. Heat Pumps can be used for home heating, cooling, and water heating. Heat Pumps are more efficient than their electric resistance or gas counterparts. While they can be expensive, they are the future of heating, cooling, and water heating. Instead of burning fuel (natural gas, propane, wood, coal, etc) they utilize the refrigeration cycle efficiently heat or cool.  You can learn more about Heat Pumps on our blog, here. Newer to the market are heat pump water heaters. These are also much more efficient than the standard water heaters and will prepare your home for our all-electric future. You can learn more about Heat Pump Water Heaters on our blog, here

Add Insulation

Depending on the scope of your home improvement project, this may or may not be feasible but should definitely be considered. The walls, ceiling, floor of your home create a boundary between the conditioned air inside and the unconditioned outside. These perform a few energy conservation functions but importantly, they keep outside air outside and reduce the amount of heat that is conducted outside. This conductive heat transfer is the same concept that allows a koozie to keep beer cold. Adding insulation to your home is similar to upgrading to a Yeti koozie - keeping your home cool longer in the summer and warm longer in the winter for less energy.  

Those are 5 of the best places to look to improve the performance of your home. We recommend working directly with a HERS Rater and developing an Ekotrope energy model to understand the impact of each improvement as well as guiding you to additional data-driven recommendations. 

For those unfamiliar with the home performance industry, we hope this article was helpful for you in determining which changes have the biggest impact. For raters and other home performance professionals, feel free to share this with family and friends to help share the knowledge and guide homeowners in making better home improvement decisions!

If you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to info@ekotrope.com as our team of engineers would be happy to chat with you about the logistics behind these tips.

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