How Energy Efficient is Your Home?

We talk a lot about energy-efficient windows because they really do help to keep your home more comfortable, and they also help to keep your utility bill down. Without energy-efficient windows your heater or air conditioner has to work overtime to keep your home the designated temperature that you have set on your thermostat.But, energy-efficient windows aren’t the only thing that can help to keep your utility bill down. There are many different changes that you can make in your home to help make it more energy efficient.How Do I Make My Home More Energy Efficient?To make your home more energy efficient, first you have to assess what is making your home not energy efficient. Make sense? You can’t make something better until you find out what’s wrong.The best way to find out what needs to be taken care of is to have an energy audit done on your home. In most places, the local utility company has a person that will come out and do an audit for your, or at the very least they can refer you to a professional that can.If you prefer to do this on your own, there are tools out there that can help. For example, energystar.gov has a tool called the Home Energy Yardstick that you can use to measure your energy usage and how you can improve it.How Does the Home Energy Yardstick Work?Directly from energystar.gov, here is how the Home Energy Yardstick works:“The Home Energy Yardstick is a basic performance-based home assessment that looks at the actual energy use of your home (based on your last 12 months of utility bills) compared to that of similar homes. To ensure that homes across the country can be properly compared, the Yardstick uses a statistical algorithm to take into account the effects of local weather, home size, and number of occupants on your home's energy use. A home that scores a '10' on the Yardstick scale used less energy over the last 12 months and performed well compared to its peers; while a home that scores a '1' used more energy and performed poorly compared to its peers. You can increase your Yardstick score by improving the energy efficiency of the features and/or equipment of your home or by making changes in the way you operate your home to use less energy. You can revisit the Yardstick each month (when your bills arrive) to see the impacts of the energy efficient improvements you make to your home or changes in the way you operate it.”Per the website, this tool is not meant to replace an actual home energy audit, but is a great place to start if you want to make your home more energy efficient.