After buying a home, some homeowners prefer improving their home’s energy efficiency, buy home insurance, and get a home warranty. All of these three are vital for a comfortable life. However, before you purchase an American residential home warranty, you need to do an energy audit first. This article explains the importance of energy audits.
What’s An Energy Audit?
An energy audit also referred to as an energy assessment, gives you a breakdown of how your systems consume energy and whether they’re functioning properly and conserving it. Energy auditors pinpoint areas of concern and make suggestions on how best you can improve them. It’s only after knowing how your systems and appliances consume energy that you can identify the ones to get a warranty for.
Why Energy Audits Are Excellent For All Homes Regardless Of Their Ages And Sizes
Every home has its own set of energy challenges regardless of whether it’s old, refurbished, new, one-story, or a two-story. Energy audits can help you identify problems that you may not know. From energy audits, you can get to know why your house still feels cold, even with the heaters on, why there’s condensation on the inner part of your windows, why your energy bills are so high, and why your family members keep on getting sick. Auditors are like myth busters who give verified answers to unseen home energy problems.
How Energy Audits Uncover The Whole House System
Your home functions like a system. Many of its aspects are interconnected, though it has separate floors and rooms. When all devices are working well, energy efficiency will be high. Apart from that, durability, comfort, safety, and health will also be at their optimum.
The energy consumption of homes varies and changes from one season to another, depending on the number of people living in the house. Therefore, if you’re thinking of purchasing a home warranty, it would be better to audit your home system’s energy consumption. That depends on the age of your home. If it’s old, you may need a complete overhaul. And if it’s new, you may only need maintenance of some small elements. These can only be determined if an energy audit is undertaken.
So, if you know the outdated appliances and those that need repairs, you’ll select the appropriate warranty plan that can cover their maintenance costs. The energy audit may also help you determine whether you’ll acquire a service contract covering pre-existing conditions.
Who Conducts Energy Audits?
Energy audits are carried out by licensed auditors who assess your home and give energy-saving recommendations. However, if you don’t have money to contract an auditor, you can use an audit checklist for auditing yourself. You can find that checklist from the Department of Energy’s website.
If you choose to hire a licensed professional, you need to know that he may carry out audits differently from other contractors. Audits differ depending on the person conducting them and the type of audit being conducted.
Basic energy audits are inexpensive and take a shorter period, while in-depth energy audits are more expensive and take longer. Basic audits also don’t require specialized equipment like in-depth audits. However, a thorough audit is the best option because it gives you the correct picture of the house’s energy consumption.
Thorough audits use diagnostic equipment to detect areas without insulation, air leaks, and malfunctioning, and inefficient equipment. During an in-depth audit, auditors will interview you about what you’ve noticed in your home lately and ask you about your concerns. They’ll also run diagnostic tests such as duct air leakages and run infrared scans to identify inconspicuous areas with problems.
Additionally, they also check for signs of moisture and mold on insulation equipment and provide proper recommendations. Once the inspection is done, you can call your warranty contractors to help you identify what to cover and what not to cover. Based on the audit carried out, it’ll be easier to know that type of plan to select from a warranty company.
Why An Energy Audit Is Vital For All The Occupants In Your House
Each of your family members needs to know the results of an energy audit report. That’s because it’ll help them understand what to do in case of a problem. They can also give their recommendations on how to improve the home systems and appliances. Furthermore, they may help you decide on the best warranty plan to select and prevent you from making vague assumptions.
The home energy score was invented to help homeowners be sure about their energy consumption and take the appropriate steps towards making it efficient.
Conclusion
An energy audit can be a great way of identifying unforeseeable issues within your home. It isn’t easy to know areas that may leak, have molds, or cause potential electrical problems. However, through a professional auditor, you can identify such areas and take the appropriate warranty to cover such issues.
