It’s vacation time!

If you have plans to travel this summer, ensure your home will be in good shape when you go. The sun is out and you should be too, but keeping your home safe and energy costs down is important. Here are a few tips:

• Use a programmable thermostat.  Depending on where you live, programmable thermostats can help regulate the temperature and humidity in your home.  When programming it, remember you don’t need to cool your home as much when you are away and no one is home.
• Check your insulation.  Believe it or not, having enough insulation and duct work that works properly can help reduce your energy costs.  Let us explain, watch this short video.
• Leave a light on, but only if it’s a CFL or LED.  It’s good to leave a light on or two maintain the appearance of being home.   Save money and energy by using CFL’s or LED’s.  Changing your lightbulbs is an easy thing to do.  More facts about lightbulbs can be found here.
• If no one’s using hot water, turn it off.  If you plan on being gone for a while, think twice about leaving your electric water heater on.  Turning it off at the breaker will help you reduce energy costs.  Your water heater might even have a vacation setting too.

Have a safe trip!

 

Photo from MrJack  on http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sonnenaufgang_Frankreich.JPG

Is Your Air Conditioner Feeling the Heat?

Visiting family last month in the south brought home the importance of comfort.  After all, it was vacation and we were visiting a wonderful home able to accommodate a few families coming together.  It was a relatively new home too, clearly built to entertain, with large open spaces and expansive porches.   While it was great to relax on those porches, the afternoon sun often caused us to retreat inside for some cool air.  The air conditioners seemed to run the whole time we were there and I’d bet that was the case for much of the summer.

Always thinking about how efficiently a house works, I have to say there were a few rooms that always seemed to be on the warm side.  They were second story rooms above the garage with small closed off side attics.   The air conditioner had to work particularly hard to keep these spaces cool and the rooms really didn’t cool off until the sun went down.

Built to code, spacious and beautiful with all the bells and whistles, this home only fell short in one area:   performance.  For me this translates into more than just a loss in energy efficiency but also a lack of comfort.

I can’t stress enough the benefits and values from a comprehensive home assessment, even for new homes.  In fact, next time I visit I might bring along a blower door and infrared camera to conduct my own assessment.  Then I would be able to provide the family with some real solutions for their home performance.  After all, it’s the least I can do considering how well they fed me!

Thanks,

Jason