Skip to main content
#
The Trentini Team
my account
site map
contact
cart
our twitterour facebook page
Evansville  Real Estate - Homes For Sale | Indiana Realtors - Agents
Search Evansville & Newburgh, Indiana Properties
Featured Listings
Evansville Real Estate - Homes for Sale | Indiana REALTOR®
Newburgh Real Estate - Homes for Sale | Indiana REALTOR®
Relocating to Southwest Indiana?
Buying and Selling Southwest Indiana Homes
About The Trentini Team - F.C. Tucker Emge REALTORS® - Southwest Indiana REALTOR®

Real Estate Blog
Latest Posts
Categories

 Real Estate Blog 
Tuesday, September 06 2011
Address the energy efficiency issues weighing down your utility bills, with help from an energy audit.

Homes are supposed to breathe. But some inhale excessively from the outdoors and exhale too much from inside. The result: Drafty rooms, high utility bills, dirty and leaky ducts, and a bigger-than-necessary carbon footprint. If you think your home could be more energy efficient but aren’t sure where its leaks live, an energy audit can diagnose your energy issues and help you decide which to tackle.

Audits identify a mixture of major and minor air leaks. So if you’re budget-minded, you might opt for inexpensive fixes like adding caulk or insulation at leak points and installing weather-stripping. If you’re embarking on a remodel, you can make bigger investments, such as adding insulation.

The question is whether to hire a pro or conduct a free do-it-yourself audit guided by online tips. There are pros and cons to either approach.

Paying for a pro

Professional audits aren’t cheap: They run from $150 (visual) to $400-$600 or more (diagnostic). But the information they reveal can help you make targeted repairs that lower energy bills by 5% to 30% annually, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. With energy bills averaging about $2,200 annually, according to Energy Star, following an auditor’s recommendations could save you up to $660 within a year.

Paying for an audit may not make sense if you have a newly-constructed home, which likely follows the most up-to-date building codes. Energy audits should also take a back seat to urgent home issues that compromise safety, such as old or faulty electrical or structural issues, like roof or foundation problems. So if you own a fixer-upper, it’s worth addressing safety issues before optimizing energy issues.

DIY audits

A do-it-yourself audit may help you make an educated guess about how airtight your home is—or isn’t—and point you toward fixes. A typical DIY test: Hold up a lit candle to windows, doors, and electrical outlets to see if a draft blows the flame.

But be aware that when you fix a problem you uncover yourself, you could err. For instance, you might pay for new windows when you need to insulate existing window frames instead. You could also over-seal your home, creating indoor air quality issues (dirty air, mold) that compromise your health.

Services of a professional audit

Pro audits give you access to high-tech tools that pinpoint the exact location of duct leaks; exactly how airtight your home is (and should be according to local code); gas leaks; and which direction drafts are blowing. Draft direction can alert an auditor that your attic is greedily sucking up your warm air, for instance. They also ferret out drafts between insulated and less-insulated (garage, basement/crawlspace, attic) portions of a home and assess the performance of heating and cooling systems.

Two types of professional audit

A visual inspection (like a home inspection, but focused narrowly on energy issues) might be sufficient if you have semi-finished or exposed spaces (unfinished basements, exposed ducts, crawlspaces, and attics). A diagnostic inspection includes visual work, but also employs tools and devices to pinpoint air leaks.

  • Blower door tests use high-powered fans to depressurize a home so that a technician can measure draft levels.
  • Thermal or infrared scanning measures surface temperature variations along walls to spot exact locations of air leaks or insulation lapses.
  • Smoke puffers release a form of “dust” during a blower door test to reveal the direction drafts are blowing.
  • Duct blasters inject and measure air pressure, air flow, and leakage in ducts.
  • Gas leak detection devices help assess indoor air quality.

These technologies provide far more specific information about a home’s issues than a typical DIY audit.

Common energy issues

A technician should be able to tell you how much total air leakage exists in your home (10 sq. ft. is like having a door open all the time), where it comes from, and how best to address it, says Robert Stockmann, of Pinnacle Home Inspections in Bellingham, Wash. The most common issues he finds are:

  • Ducts in uninsulated areas (crawlspaces, attics, unfinished basements), which need cleaning, insulation, re-sealing
  • Moisture in crawl spaces and basements
  • Air that’s entering or exiting the home via range hoods, attic trap doors, and poorly sealed doors

Hire an auditor, smartly

Energy audit is a loose term these days, so when hiring an auditor, ask questions. Make sure the auditor doesn’t work for a window company; has a professional affiliation with or training from an auditing organization such as RESNET or the Building Performance Institute; and can provide a written report. If you need diagnostic advice, ask if the auditor can use tools that assess what’s going on behind walls and inside ducts. Your local utility company may offer audits or be able to recommend auditors.

Because an audit is a precursor to further spending for repairs, if your DIY audit indicates you need extensive, expensive, or hard-to-do repairs, consider a paid audit as a kind of second opinion. Likewise, any paid audit that indicates you need only minor fixes may seem unnecessary—but if you consider that small fixes may keep you from overspending on major ones, the money may be worth it.

Jane Hodges has written about real estate for publications including MSNBC.com, Seattle Magazine, and The Seattle Times. In 2007, she won a Bivins Fellowship from the National Association of Real Estate Editors to pursue a book on women and real estate. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, CBS’s BNET, and Fortune. She lives in Seattle in a 1966 raised rancher with an excellent retro granite fireplace. Latest home project: Remodeling a basement bathroom.



Read more: http://www.houselogic.com/articles/professional-energy-audits-the-costs-and-benefits/#ixzz1VlvZ1kK2
Posted by: Rolando Trentini AT 08:00 am   |  Permalink   |  0 Comments  |  Email
Friday, January 14 2011

Reporting from the 2011 International Builders Show, Erica Christoffer for HouseLogic

What do home buyers want today and in the future? The answer: smaller, more energy-efficient homes.

The average size of a new single-family home in 2010 was 2,377 sq. ft., down from 2,438 sq. ft. in 2009 and down from the peak of 2,520 sq. ft. in 2007 and 2008, according to U.S. Census Bureau data presented yesterday at the International Builders’ Show in Orlando by Rose Quint, assistant vice president of survey research for NAHB.

And the trend will only continue, Quint said, with the 2015 new home size currently projected at 2,150 sq. ft. with fewer bathrooms and smaller garages.

It’s hard to say whether home sizes will decline to 1970 levels of 1,500 square feet. But Quint says she believes smaller sizes are here to stay based on demographics. The U.S. population was 310 million as of April 2010. That’s expected to rise to 322 million in 2015 and up to 422 million by 2050. The population is also getting older and more diverse. In 2010, 25% were over the age of 55, which is expected to grow to 31% by 3050.

This rising segment of older home owners who won’t want to care for a huge space, Quint said, and then you have Generation Y buyers who are very energy conscious. “People are coming to realize, ‘Let’s buy what we need,’” said Quint.

The Census Bureau data matches NAHB’s findings that builders expect to build smaller homes with more green features in the next five years. Low-energy windows, water-efficient features, engineered-wood beams, joints, or trusses, and Energy-Star ratings for whole home are expected to be more prevalent.

Builders also expect an increase in living room size as well as more planning for universal design features with homes more easily adaptable for future improvements.

Jill Waage, executive editor with Better Homes and Gardens, also presented her magazine’s 2011 consumer preferences survey, which was taken the first week of December. According to Waage, the top three improvement priorities home owners want were a laundry room, additional storage, and a home office.

“The connection to outdoor living space is also really important,” Waage says.

Other trends included in the Better Homes and Gardens study: built-ins, media space for flat screen TVs and gaming systems, and areas wired for technology. Buyers also want combined kitchen, family room, and living room open space. Universal design features, she said, will be incorporated in much more subtle ways.



Read more: http://www.houselogic.com/news/articles/homes-are-getting-smaller-more-energy-efficient/#ixzz1B1aOTnWN
Posted by: Rolando Trentini AT 09:41 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Digg
LinkedIn
Delicious
StumbleUpon
Add to favorites

The Trentini Team
F.C. Tucker EMGE REALTORS®
7820 Eagle Crest Bvd., Suite 200
Evansville, IN 47715
Office: (812) 479-0801
Cell: (812) 499-9234
Email: Rolando@RolandoTrentini.com


Accredited Buyer Representative

Equal Housing Opportunity

Multiple Listing Service?

REALTOR®

 

Pro Step Marketing

PRIVACY POLICY
The Trentini Team is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. Neither The Trentini Team nor the team associates will sell, share, or rent this confidential information to others. Your privacy is the primary issue for The Trentini Team. 

CONTACT POLICY
By submitting personal information such as name, address, phone number, email address and/or additional data, the real estate client/prospect consents that The Trentini Team or their authorized representative may contact client/prospect by phone, U.S. Postal System, or e-mail whether or not client/prospect is participating in a state, federal or other "do not contact" program of any type.
 
 
Copyright© 2007 The Trentini Team, REALTOR®, All Rights Reserved.