How to Keep Your Home Energy Efficient As You Spend More Time Inside due to COVID-19 Quarantine

These are tricky times indeed, but we will persevere and get through this worldwide pandemic. While it’s easy to put off spending money on energy efficiency improvements in your home, this is a very good time to finally address these concerns. As you spend more time inside the home due to quarantine, your energy costs are sure to increase. Additionally, the hot Georgia summer is soon upon us. To make up for the extra hours of energy consumption in your home, consider how you can maximize efficiency by implementing efficiency improvements and behavioral modifications in order to reduce energy consumption and maximize comfort levels in your home.

The Energy Audit process

The first step to maximizing efficiency in the home is identifying what improvements should be made that have the biggest impact for the lowest cost. In a normal circumstance, the first step is to have a professional home performance company such as Energy Consulting Services (ECS) perform a home energy audit on your home. This is a deep diagnostic process that will determine exactly where your money is best spent and what specific improvements should be made to maximize efficiency and comfort in the home. Here’s an example of a real ECS energy audit report here: ECS audit report

Since we’re in the midst of a quarantine, our audit crews are only performing audits on vacant homes so this is likely not viable until the quarantine lifts. Therefore, we’d recommend addressing only the obvious low hanging fruit that you can DIY such as:

1. Upgrade all lightbulbs to LED’s.
2. Install weather stripping around leaky doors including knee wall doors. (this can be trickier than it sounds)
3. If you have a basement or crawlspace, apply clear silicone caulk along bottom and tops of baseboards.
4. Make sure fireplace flue vents are working properly and fully closed.
5. Run HVAC system on low temperature and pull back insulation at plenum and ductwork joints and feel for leakage. Then turn system off and apply liberal coating of mastic at leaky joints before reinstalling insulation.
6. Install smart thermostat such as NEST or Ecobee. (not hard for homeowner to install for most systems but there are exceptions – especially with heat pump or duel fuel heat pump systems)
7. Install low flow aerators on each sink and low flow showerheads in each shower.

Behavioral Modifications

We’re spending more time in the home than ever right now so there are multiple behavioral modifications you can make to reduce power and water consumption. Here are a few simple suggestions:

1. Turn off your lights when you are not in the room! For homes with all LED’s, the impact to the power bill will not be much but is still best not to be in the habit of wasting energy.
2. Don’t run dishwasher and washer/dryer until full.
3. Utilize smart thermostats to ensure you are not paying to heat or cool the home when you are not there. If you have two story home and bedrooms are upstairs, make sure to have downstairs system programmed to default to moderate temperature when you are sleeping at night and visa versa in the day.
4. Use fans in the summer as much as possible – particularly in the hot Georgia summers. 78 degrees can feel like 74 degrees with an overhead fan running and this allows you to run AC less therefore reducing power consumption and bill.

Big Ticket Weatherization Improvements

Once the quarantine lifts and you are able to have a proper energy audit performed on your home to determine the best strategy forward, some of the recommended improvements may be higher cost improvements. Here are some examples:

1. HVAC upgrade is sometimes needed and can have a terrific impact on both comfort levels and energy consumption. Heating and cooling costs represent >40% of energy costs in the average north Georgia home so maintaining an efficient HVAC unit is paramount to having a comfortable and efficient home.
2. Attic insulation is incredibly important in the north Georgia climate since it impacts both heating and cooling costs. Spray foam encapsulation is very impactful particularly if there is an HVAC unit and ductwork in the attic since the unit then works in moderate temperature environment. The only downside to foam is that it is expensive.
3. Subfloor insulation has a big impact in the winter months. If you have a crawlspace with HVAC and ductwork in it, encapsulating that crawlspace has big positive impact on cooling costs and also on improving air quality in the home.
4. Windows are a big deal especially if going from old leaky single pane windows to high efficiency low E double pane windows filled with argon gas. The only problem is that windows are very expensive with a slow ROI. However, windows do help with resale value which often does make this improvement worthwhile. Sometimes, high qualify low E storm windows are a nice lower cost alternative.
5. Replacing water heater with high efficiency unit. Water heaters use approximately 17% of energy consumption in the home so having an efficient unit is an important part of maximizing efficiency in the home.
6. Sealing ductwork is critical and not always that costly. However, we run across a lot of 30yr old leaky filthy ductwork systems that simply need to be replaced. This usually costs 2-3k so this improvement is not cheap. However, having clean sealed ductwork is a very important part of maximizing efficiency and air quality in the home.

Funding mechanisms

All of these improvements cost money and lots of people (like myself) don’t have lots of liquidity so there are options and ways to get it done even if the bank account is skinny. Home equity loans are one approach read more about how home equity loans work. Aside from this, many banks will do small unsecured loans for improvements <7k providing you have good credit. Just let us know and we are happy to point you in the right direction.