Punching the Clock: Turning up the heat
During the formidable upstate winter season, it can be quite a challenge to stave off frostbite without jacking up thermostats or making the transformation into a mountain of blankets and comforters. With this in mind, I met up with Stacy Gage from Blueox, to conduct a comprehensive home energy audit on a Gibbon Road residence for this week’s edition of Punching the Clock. The home energy audit is a free service provided by Blueox to make sure homeowners are aware of the money they may be wasting on their heating and electric bills.
“So many homes need to have energy audits done because they are wasting so much money,” Gage told me. Homeowners don’t need to be Blueox costumers and Gage could not stress enough how the service is free. “Not many companies like ours supply this service,” he told me. What could Blueox possibly hope to gain from saving people money on their energy bills, I wondered. The pay back is in the long term Gage explained – homeowners’ appreciation for all the money they save because of the audits, sometimes wins them over as costumers from competitors. Other times the improvements which can be made are services Blueox provides, though not always. But more than anything, showing up at people’s homes and actively seeking ways to save them money, expounds the image of Blueox as a costumer friendly organization.
I was running a little late and by the time I arrived at Gibbon Road, Gage had already finished taking the dwelling’s dimensions. The next step in the hunt for maximum energy thriftiness, was to peruse the interior of the home, hounding out Energy Star efficient appliances. “We don’t sell them ourselves, but they will save homeowners a good deal of money,” Gage told me while proficiently inspecting a microwave’s Energy Star label.
After completing a thorough sweep of the kitchen, we headed downstairs for a much more involved diagnostic of the home’s furnace and water heating systems. It turned out we were in luck because the home had an oil burning furnace and electric water heating. In other homes heated with gas, Gage’s job is a wee bit more involved as he has to traverse the domicile while manning a device called a sniffer, which detects any gas in the air. He also has to manually follow the piping, performing a soup test on suspect junctions, to identify the leak locations. “In cases were I find a leak, I have to call the gas company and get them to shut it down until it can be fixed,” he told me, a process which can be time consuming indeed.
When we got to the basement, Gage took note of a number of different things before we moved on to the furnace. The basement floor was made of concrete, which Gage told me was good because concrete acts as a good vapor barrier and stops water from rising up into the home. But Gage did note how the ceiling lacked any substantial insulation, allowing cold air in the basement to seep up through the floor boards.
In order to test if the furnace is drafting right as well as the level of carbon dioxide, Gage had to drill a hole into the piping. Gage pointed out to me how someone had actually drilled a hole before him, but had done so above the furnace air vent so any reading that was taken would have been inaccurate. After the furnace checked out, Gage plugged up the holes (not only had the previous hole been drilled in the wrong place, it had not been sealed) and we moved on to the thermal imaging.
For the thermal testing, Gage and I set up a collapsible decompressor in the main floor’s door frame. Once the decompressor got going, he gave me a handheld thermal imaging camara. The camera runs through different shades of gray indicating the air temperature. Bright spots indicate hot air while darker areas are indicative of cold regions. The camera allows Gage to identify air infiltration and spot areas in the house which lack proper insolation.
The owner of the home we were investigating had a particular interest in her office space, which she claimed was especially drafty due to the large number of windows in the room. When we got to the office, she was in for a bit of a surprise. The room was indeed letting in a lot of cold air, but not through the windows as she had reckoned. Instead the cold was pouring into the room via a space between the room’s entranceway and the ceiling opposite the windows. “There’s almost no insulation in the roof,” Gage sternly explained to us as the camera’s viewing screen transcended into an opaque abyss.
The next logical step was for Gage to shimmy up into the attic to check out just how bad the insulation really was. Often times, Gage calls before arriving to make sure the residents has cleared an access point to the attic. Unfortunately Gage had not done so this time and the access point in a closet was clogged with hunting gear. We had to move into the garage to find another access point for Gage to crawl into. “In the summertime, going into the attic is like being in an oven – it is not fun all,” he told me as he tried in vain to find a way to climb through the attic. His efforts failing, Gage informed the homeowner he would have to return another time after the closet had been cleared to complete the attic portion of the audit.
I left Gibbon Road with my head held highly knowing I had done my part to help an honest woman save more than few dimes on her heating bill – though to be honest it is possible Gage may just have been able to carry on without me.
“So many homes need to have energy audits done because they are wasting so much money,” Gage told me. Homeowners don’t need to be Blueox costumers and Gage could not stress enough how the service is free. “Not many companies like ours supply this service,” he told me. What could Blueox possibly hope to gain from saving people money on their energy bills, I wondered. The pay back is in the long term Gage explained – homeowners’ appreciation for all the money they save because of the audits, sometimes wins them over as costumers from competitors. Other times the improvements which can be made are services Blueox provides, though not always. But more than anything, showing up at people’s homes and actively seeking ways to save them money, expounds the image of Blueox as a costumer friendly organization.
I was running a little late and by the time I arrived at Gibbon Road, Gage had already finished taking the dwelling’s dimensions. The next step in the hunt for maximum energy thriftiness, was to peruse the interior of the home, hounding out Energy Star efficient appliances. “We don’t sell them ourselves, but they will save homeowners a good deal of money,” Gage told me while proficiently inspecting a microwave’s Energy Star label.
After completing a thorough sweep of the kitchen, we headed downstairs for a much more involved diagnostic of the home’s furnace and water heating systems. It turned out we were in luck because the home had an oil burning furnace and electric water heating. In other homes heated with gas, Gage’s job is a wee bit more involved as he has to traverse the domicile while manning a device called a sniffer, which detects any gas in the air. He also has to manually follow the piping, performing a soup test on suspect junctions, to identify the leak locations. “In cases were I find a leak, I have to call the gas company and get them to shut it down until it can be fixed,” he told me, a process which can be time consuming indeed.
When we got to the basement, Gage took note of a number of different things before we moved on to the furnace. The basement floor was made of concrete, which Gage told me was good because concrete acts as a good vapor barrier and stops water from rising up into the home. But Gage did note how the ceiling lacked any substantial insulation, allowing cold air in the basement to seep up through the floor boards.
In order to test if the furnace is drafting right as well as the level of carbon dioxide, Gage had to drill a hole into the piping. Gage pointed out to me how someone had actually drilled a hole before him, but had done so above the furnace air vent so any reading that was taken would have been inaccurate. After the furnace checked out, Gage plugged up the holes (not only had the previous hole been drilled in the wrong place, it had not been sealed) and we moved on to the thermal imaging.
For the thermal testing, Gage and I set up a collapsible decompressor in the main floor’s door frame. Once the decompressor got going, he gave me a handheld thermal imaging camara. The camera runs through different shades of gray indicating the air temperature. Bright spots indicate hot air while darker areas are indicative of cold regions. The camera allows Gage to identify air infiltration and spot areas in the house which lack proper insolation.
The owner of the home we were investigating had a particular interest in her office space, which she claimed was especially drafty due to the large number of windows in the room. When we got to the office, she was in for a bit of a surprise. The room was indeed letting in a lot of cold air, but not through the windows as she had reckoned. Instead the cold was pouring into the room via a space between the room’s entranceway and the ceiling opposite the windows. “There’s almost no insulation in the roof,” Gage sternly explained to us as the camera’s viewing screen transcended into an opaque abyss.
The next logical step was for Gage to shimmy up into the attic to check out just how bad the insulation really was. Often times, Gage calls before arriving to make sure the residents has cleared an access point to the attic. Unfortunately Gage had not done so this time and the access point in a closet was clogged with hunting gear. We had to move into the garage to find another access point for Gage to crawl into. “In the summertime, going into the attic is like being in an oven – it is not fun all,” he told me as he tried in vain to find a way to climb through the attic. His efforts failing, Gage informed the homeowner he would have to return another time after the closet had been cleared to complete the attic portion of the audit.
I left Gibbon Road with my head held highly knowing I had done my part to help an honest woman save more than few dimes on her heating bill – though to be honest it is possible Gage may just have been able to carry on without me.
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