Home Energy Assessment
Summit Construction uses cutting edge diagnostic equipment and principals of building science to improve the energy efficiency, comfort, and health of your home.
Energy prices are soaring, and seem to be at the mercy events beyond our personal control. You could save significant amounts on your home energy bill by having an unbiased energy professional inspect your home, performing a comprehensive energy assessment.
Not only would you be saving money immediately, but additional benefits could include:
- Improved indoor comfort, reduce drafts, uniform heating
- Removal of indoor pollutants, carbon monoxide, mold, etc
- Better health
- Increased durability of house, eliminate ice dams, moisture damage, etc.
- Better stewardship of our natural resources
- Increased national security by reducing dependence on foreign energy
Our highest priority is always the health and safety of our customers. Because of that, we start our home assessments with a safety check of your existing heating equipment. Modifications to your home over the years might create a hazardous situation for your heating equipment. We will ensure that these combustion appliances are working safely before and after any other work is performed.
Then, we begin the energy audit process by performing a blower door test. This exaggerates the air leakage into your home so that the leaks can be identified and fixed. A healthy home has a specific air exchange rate that does not waste excessive energy and provides adequate ventilation to remove indoor air pollutants and moisture. Any air sealing will be done in an appropriate manner that does not create new problems.
The final part of the assessment is to inspect current levels of insulation and appliance efficiency. We will also educate the homeowner on the principals of energy efficiency and give free advice on things you can do yourself.
Once all the data is collected, we run an extensive software program to calculate the heat loss and efficiency of various components of the house and generate a report that breaks down potential improvements by their economic rate of return and payback period. Here is a partial example of what you might see in our comprehensive report:
| Improvement Name | Cost ($) | Annual Savings($) | ROR($) | Payback (yrs) |
| Air Sealing | 300 | 124 | 41 | 2.4 |
| Insulate Attic | 1,500 | 766 | 51 | 1.9 |
| Insulate Walls | 4,000 | 817 | 20.5 | 4.9 |
| Replacement Windows | 12,000 | 122 | 1 | 98 |
| Replace Furnace |
By analyzing the cost and benefits of each improvement, you can see which projects make sense to do and which ones do not. Many times the most cost effective fixes are the least expensive ones. We will help to simplify your decision and guide you to a comprehensive strategy that takes into consideration all of your future home improvement goals.
Some home improvement companies make claims about their product’s energy savings that are misleading. They use their own internal energy audit check list as a way to generate sales leads. In some cases these companies generate audits skewed towards their own overpriced or unneeded products and services. Summit Construction is an independent third party that uses energy assessment standards that are audited by the Building Performance Institute (BPI), so you can have confidence in our recommendations. You can also see testimonials from other satisfied Summit Construction customers.
Spend a little money figuring out the right things to do before wasting lots of money on things that might produce minimal results.
Summit Construction is available to contract and/or oversee any of the recommended work.
ENERGY STAR finance programs are available for improvement projects.