Problems

On Tuesday Luke from Green Summit came over to do an energy audit on the house. An energy audit is a procedure designed to test a house and see what it's energy deficiencies are. Through a series of tests they can determine the house's efficiency level and tell you where you should concentrate your efforts on making your house more efficient.

I knew already that my house had some deficiencies. The house has a whole house attic fan which is basically a 4' x 4' hole in the ceiling. This enormous hole in the ceiling allows hot air to radiate into the conditioned space. Why these fans became popular in the south is not clear to me. They definitely work against air conditioning, they may have helped in the days before a/c, but I'm not certain.

Our house has no insulation in the attic. So basically a 120 degree mass of hot air sits right on top of the conditioned space which makes the a/c work harder. The a/c unit is in the crawl space. The crawl space is vented and not sealed at all which basically means it is outdoors. Moisture, hot and cold air and dirty air is sucked right into the indoors with this configuration.

Next week I will get the results back from the energy audit and post them here.