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Data collection about your home In order to help your home, we have to get to know your home. And the best way to do that is to start with those who know it the best - YOU! We will discuss your home with you. Find out about obvious things like the cold spots and the hot spots. But then we will look into things that might not be so obvious. What is that musty smell telling you? Why does that pilot light keep going out? How come the wallpaper peels only in the downstairs bathroom? These are a few issues that will tell you a lot about how your home wastes energy. We also need to know physical things about your home. How many windows are there and do they get sunlight all day long? Not just how many square feet is your house but how many CUBIC feet is your house? Where is the water pooling? How is the attic built? All of these and more are important to how your home uses energy.
Testing and evaluation of your home The most common test for home energy is the blower door test. This determines how leaky your house is by pulling air out of the house and measuring just how much air is leaking back in to replace that air. A similar test is a duct depressurization test. This is a blower door test for forced air duct systems. Because duct systems have warmer air and are pressurized, it isn’t uncommon to find that 35% of air leakage is through the duct system. Infrared imaging can be done with both the blower door and duct depressurization tests to identify just where the leaks exist. It also shows the condition of insulation in the walls. Is the insulation wet, missing, installed poorly or has it simply fallen down? Infrared imaging can provide great insight into these issues. The most important test for your home is for indoor air quality. You will probably do things to make your house less leaky but this raises the risk of build up of noxious fumes. We need to inspect combustion appliances and other sources of those fumes and correct them for the safety of you and those you love.
Modeling of your home Heat transfer is the study of how heat, which moves like a fluid, is transferred from place to place. We would like to know how heat transfers into and out of your house. Using well established mathematical relationships for heat transfer, we will model your house with REM/RateTM, the residential modeling software recognized by the EPAs Energy Star program. Once that model is built we can see the affects of changes like more attic insulation. How much will that cost and how much will is save? How long will it take to pay back the cost of installation?
Prepare specifications for your home So what do you do with this information? When you talk with contractors they will try to slant the job in their favor by citing the advantages of their way of doing it. A good specification allows you to compare apples and apples, not apples and oranges. It allows you to know exactly what you are buying without getting ripped off.
Supervise contractors working on your home Once the contractors star working on your home you want to be sure that the job is getting done the right way. We can help with this. We will review the work with the contractor before they start and inspect work along the way. We will be your eyes and ears to make sure that you are getting what we both want, improved energy efficiency AND FINANCIAL EFFICIENCY!
Assist you with tax, loan and rebate paperwork for your home Home energy is a field that has spawned many programs for financial assistance and tax credits. Some are on the federal level, some are on the state level and some are through various manufacturers and private organizations. We will help you identify these programs and even assist you with the paperwork. |
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WHAT WE DO |
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Phone: 215-793-9783 Fax: 215-793-9784 E-mail: dougsmithman@gmail.com |
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Old Chinese proverb: No single raindrop considers itself responsible for the flood. |
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Green living begins at home
215-793-9783
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