What Homeowners Get Wrong About Efficiency

Why Turning The Thermostat Up (Or Down) Isn't Enough

Most homeowners understand the basic ideas of energy efficiency. Simple concepts like turning the thermostat up in the summer, or down in the winter. Take faster hot showers. Turn the lights off when you leave a room. Don't get me wrong, these are all great energy saving tips! But most homeowners stop there. There are a lot more ways to find and reduce energy waste in your home!

Drafty Doors?

Not every upgrade has to be a multi-thousand dollar, contractor at your house for 3 days installing a new heat pump ordeal, although that is a great way to save long-term. But it's wise to start off with cheaper, quicker fixes. Check your windows and doors; are they drafty? Do you feel noticeably colder or warmer when standing near them? If so, you have identified energy leaks! Good news, these are very cheap and easy to fix, and could save you 10% on your utility bills. Simply buy some cheap weatherstripping and install it. You will instantly feel more comfortable, and so will your hard working HVAC equipment. If you're not convinced yet, here's a visual that might help out: a standard door is 36 inches wide. If you have a 1/8 inch gap under your door, that's equivalent to a 2.5 inch hole in your wall. Directly to the outside. That's A LOT of air infiltration.

Pipe Insulation, Do You Have It?

Another "quick fix" is to find any pipes in your home that deliver hot water. Are they insulated? If not, you've identified another energy leak! This one can be two-fold as well, depending on your setup. First, if you have uninsulated hot water pipes, as an example, your hot water is losing heat as it travels through the uninsulated pipes. For every 10 feet of uninsulated piping, you lose 2-4% of the water's heat. This means your energy output will be even lower than it already was, cutting your efficiency back a few percentage points. Secondarily, if these pipes exist in a conditioned space (i.e. a basement that has air conditioning supplied to it), then you're not only losing energy passively from the flow of the fluid, but you're also now actively working against your air conditioning. That heat from the uninsulated pipes is heating the air around the them, which is fed into your air conditioning return, and your AC then must work harder to cool that air back down.

LED Lights

At this point, I imagine most people are aware of and have at least a few LED bulbs in their homes. Best to double-check though, because older bulb types burn significantly more energy than LEDs, and LEDs are cheap enough that swapping them out is no big deal. For a typical 7W LED bulb, the equivalent CFL is about 14W, with halogens at about 40W, and incandescent at 60W. If you happen to find any incandescent bulbs (the ones with a thin metal filament in them), those should be replaced immediately! Another really nice thing about LEDs is that they last far longer than generic bulbs. Some are rated up to 50,000 hours now, or about 10-15 years of use. So not only do you save money on your energy bills, but you also save on replacement bulbs by not needing to buy them.

Water Heater Temperature

Your water heater is likely set to 140 degrees (F) from the factory. The DOE recommends reducing this to 120 degrees (F), as 140F is far too hot to use anyway, so you're already turning the temperature down via a mixing valve. So why bother heating up the water 20 extra degrees? That's pure energy waste. If you have a tankless water heater it probably already has a maximum temperature of 120 degrees, so no need to worry there.

One important note: if someone in your household is an infant, elderly, or immuno-compromised, it's best to skip this one, as legionella bacteria can technically grow at 120 degrees, although it's very unlikely. The DOE notes this on their website, and says it's otherwise fine for everyone else.

Low Flow Shower Heads, Faucet Aerators

You might not have even heard of these ones before. A low flow shower head (often marked with "WaterSense") uses about 2.5gpm (gallons per minute), while conventional shower heads can use 5gpm, upwards of 10gpm. Think about a 10 minute hot shower every day. Using a low flow head will consume 25 gallons of water. An older, 10gpm shower head would consume 100 gallons of water! Not only do these shower heads save on water consumption, which will lower you water bill, but they also save on your electricity or gas bills by heating much less water. And if you're worried about water pressure, fear not! Modern WaterSense technology has improved significantly, so newer shower heads provide just as much pressure while still savings 40% of your water consumption.

Faucet aerators operate similarly, they break apart the heavy flow of a normal faucet into smaller streams, which adds air (hence, "aerator") and helps smooth out the flow of the water, all while consuming less. Same principle here, they save water AND energy.

Attic Insulation

While this may require a contractor and a few thousand dollars, insulating your attic is one of the highest return-on-investment (ROI) recommendations we can make. Hot air rises, so in the winter, if your attic is poorly insulated, you'll create a chimney effect drawing cold air in, and you will lose a significant amount of the heat your HVAC is working hard to produce. Conversely, in the summer, your attic gets very hot, and the cold air your AC is producing heats up quicker, requiring your unit to run more often. This often gets overlooked because, let's face it, you don't go up into your attic often, do you? Next time you do, check to see how much insulation you have between the joists. If there's only a few inches, and a large gap between the top of the joists and the top of the insulation, consider upgrading this. The DOE recommends between 13 and 18 inches of R-38 (or R-49, even better) for the most efficient insulation.

What If I've Already Done These?

But wait, there's more! I won't go into details for the sake of this blog post's length, but there are always more options to make your home more efficient. Replace appliances with Energy Star certified appliances, upgrade your windows, install a heat pump HVAC system (as well as a heat pump water heater), install a smart thermostat, use smart light bulbs and daylighting and/or occupancy sensors, install solar panels, and so on and so on.

We have nearly 100 possible recommendations in our database. Our free virtual energy audit can take as little as 5 minutes to complete, and you will receive energy saving recommendations that are tailored specifically to your home. Ready to save more energy? [See how your home can be more efficient!](https://myenerly.com/)