Your home should be comfortable, efficient, and safe.
Your home probably needs an energy audit. Older homes and even brand-new homes can benefit from an energy audit. Reach out to HEAT to request an energy audit. Audits are as low as $199 for APS and SRP customers who qualify.
Why have an energy audit?
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Energy Efficiency
Is your monthly electric bill too high? This is often a sign of an inefficient home. An energy audit can show you how to reduce high energy bills including providing simple do-it-yourself tricks.
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Indoor Air Quality
Do you have a lot of dust in your home? This often means that you have leaks from your attic into your home. An energy audit can identify the leaky points in your home.
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Comfort
Do you have that one room that is impossible to cool down? Or maybe you have one end of the house that is too cold. An energy audit can identify the solution to these issues.
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Peace of Mind
During a home energy audit, your energy auditor will conduct a thorough analysis of your home. Your energy auditor will pressure test your ducts, test for carbon monoxide leaks in your home, inspect your attic's insulation and much more.
Gallery of home energy horrors
Here are some examples of efficiency problems that we found during energy audits. Disconnected or crushed ducts and misaligned or missing insulation can cause abnormally hot or cold rooms or even a dusty home. Even if your home is brand new, it is still possible to have these issues. In many cases, homeowners have been able to go back to their builder to have the issues corrected. Call us today to schedule your energy audit!
Missing insulation
Clogged dryer vent
Heat entering the living room
Two problems caused this return duct to literally cave in on itself. First, the duct was way too small for the home, which was remodeled and increased in size. Unfortunately, the HVAC contractor didn't upsize the duct to fit the bigger air conditioner.
Digital image of a kitchen ceiling. The next image is taken with a thermal infrared camera.
A thermal infrared image of the same kitchen ceiling reveals what the naked eye cannot, and what the skin cannot ignore: There is no insulation over this part of the kitchen.
The disconnected supply duct is venting a massive amount of conditioned air into the attic. Reconnect the duct and seal properly using approved mastic.
The evaporator coil, which is brand-new yet damaged, is clearly visible.
HEAT specializes in inspecting and auditing newly built homes for energy efficiency. In this brand-new home, which is still under warranty, a number of problems were found, including this choked supply duct, which was responsible for a hot bedroom.
If insulation is to be effective, it must make full contact with the surface it is insulating. If it isn't, it's misaligned. This fiberglass batt insulation is sticking up off the attic floor in several places. Just 5 percent misalignment can reduce the R-value by 52 percent. The R-value of these batts is R-30, but it is only performing at about R-10.
Oops! The HVAC contractor literally sawed through an important framing member while installing a jumper duct in this new home, which was still under construction. The technician who sawed the truss said he couldn't find another place to put the jumper duct.
Visual-light image of a kitchen ceiling. The following image shows how poorly installed the insulation is.
The insulation in this home is installed exceptionally poorly, with 80 percent of the ceiling exposed to the brutal heat of the attic during a Phoenix summer. The home inspector completely overlooked this issue because, from the attic, the insulation "looked fine." This is why it is so important to also have an energy audit done during the inspection period of buying a home.
The supply mixing box in this attic was held together only by foil tape -- no fasteners, screws or mastic was used to secure and seal the box. The result is predictable. The box tore loose from the plenum, and about a ton and a half of the 4-ton system's air simply vented into the attic. In fact, this attic was a bit more comfortable than the inside of the house.
This image shows the exhaust duct at the back of a clothes dryer. This duct is crushed so badly that no air can escape. The homeowner complained that the dryer would overheat the clothes to the point of barely being touchable; but the clothes were still damp after an hour. A dryer pulls air from the surrounding space, heats it, runs it through tumbling clothes, and exhausts it, thereby carrying moisture-laden air out of the home. If it's crushed, it can't work. The results are costly, inconvenient, and sometimes deadly. Americans suffer some 2,900 dryer fires each year, most of them due to crushed ducts or lint buildup.
This attic has cellulose insulation, which has an R-value of about 3.6 per inch. This section of attic, with 3.5 inches of cellulose, is insulated to about R-12.6. This is far, far less than the standard R-38 to R-44.
This 1930s-built home has vermiculite insulation in the attic. Vermiculite from this era has a 70 percent chance of containing asbestos. It is recommended that the attic insulation be completely removed following EPA guidelines on removal of vermiculite ("remove existing"), unless the vermiculite is tested and found to contain no asbestos.
This is a heat pump air handler in the attic. Note the severe bends in the larger duct at the top of the photo. This kind of U-turn is akin to bending a garden hose until the water stops flowing.
Completely missing insulation in a brand-new home in Eastmark. Luckily for the home buyer, the house was still under warranty, so the builder was responsible for fixing the issue.
The refrigerant line set, which weighs dozens of pounds. was simply laid on top of the supply duct, severely reducing its airflow.
This is another brand-new home, still under warranty. The light bits are pieces of insulation. The paper-bag colored area is bare drywall. This home was simply missing insulation over about 500 square feet.
Ducts should come straight off the plenums if they are to deliver the right amount of air. This duct, in a brand-new home in Hastings Farms, was pulled sideways, kinking it and causing the two bedrooms it served to be hot in the summer.
The HVAC technician in this newly built home forgot to fully assemble the air handler. The result is a massive blast of cool air into the attic.
What Our Clients Say
Meet Jason
Jason Owsley has been conducting energy audits around the Greater Phoenix Valley for over a decade. Jason is the CEO of Home Energy Auditing & Thermography. He is a BPI-certified energy auditor and trainer/proctor as well as an ITC-certified Level II thermographer and NCI residential air-balancing certified.