By Roger Munro

“If every house in the United States were to improve using Energy Star home sealing you could shut down 90 power plants.” — Steve Thomas of “This Old House.”

Odds have it that you are reading this edition of The Observer in a conventionally built home and you think your energy bills are too high. But what can you do about it?

Thirty years ago an energy auditor in Portland asked me, “Why are you willing to live with an 8-inch hole in the wall of your house?” My reply was, “I’m not,” but the 8-inch-hole was the sum of all the small cracks my older house had around windows, doors, pipes, foundation, wires, and even bricks.

He showed me where heat exited my home in winter and hot air entered in summer was. He also showed me other places where I could cut my energy bill forever for just few dollars. I did the three things he suggested, and immediately reduced my energy bill and increased my comfort.

This was 30 years ago. Energy was cheap, and “Go Green” had to do with lawns. Climate control meant a winter vacation to warmer climates. Today, energy costs continue to go up. “Going Green” now means reducing energy consumption to lower your energy bills. Climate control means trying to slow climate change impacts by burning less fossil fuel.

The purpose of an energy audit is to examine, test, and determine where to make improvements that make economic sense using formulas like “simple payback,” rate-of-return, and savings-to-investment ratio.

Most energy auditors do two types of audits. The simplest, a “walk thru,” takes up to two hours, and involves visual inspection of all energy-consuming devices like refrigerators and heat sources, measuring insulation, checking the building’s inside envelope, and visually inspecting the exterior. The auditor’s written report tells the homeowner where the home is losing energy. It recommends ways to cut energy consumption to cut energy bills. The auditor will also recommend the least costly, highest-payback actions—like caulking, adding insulation, or getting storm windows.

The second type of audit includes these same checks and inspections. Then a large fan is placed in a doorway to suck the air out of the house. This allows the auditor to measure how many cubic feet of air per minute are moving through the house. Small numbers are good, big ones are bad. Then the auditors uses a smoke device to pinpoint areas of leakage. Readings measure exhaust gases from gas appliances — this measures the efficiency of the appliance. As with the walk thru, a written inspection report recommends how to reduce energy use.

Allegheny Power is working with the Maryland Energy Administration to provide stimulus moneys subsidize the cost of audits to homeowners. Allegheny Power asked the state of West Virginia to participate in the program, but the Manchin administration declined. (You might want to contact West Virginia politicians to ask them: Did they decline the offer because, as “This Old House’s” Steve Thomas says, energy efficiency could shut down unnecessary power plants? For now, West Virginia homeowners must pay in full for an audit. A full audit can cost about $390, and a walk thru costs about $200. But your payoff starts with your next utility bill.

Roger Munro and Doug Alexander are partners in Go Green Energy Group, an energy auditing firm certified by the Building Product Institute. For information, www.gogreenenergygroup.com.