We had an energy audit done on our house – have you heard of those? It’s free in a good number of states, you just call your power company and ask about it (may have to google it otherwise). What a great thing to do. They come in and walk through your house and tell you where you are losing money, and how to fix it. And then they tell you what all the power company, state and federal rebates are if you decide to make your house more efficient.
So not only is it free, but it saves you money. And then they give you stuff. He left us some parts to put on our faucets so that we don’t waste as much money. He offered to put them on, but we could do it ourselves so we did. We haven’t noticed a difference yet, so there you go. Cool savings right there. We haven’t put the shower head on yet, but we probably will at least try it.
In our case, our guy noticed there was something seriously wrong with our furnace. We knew our furnace was fairly old, and kinda hacked together, but it seemed to work well. Turns out it is spewing lots of carbon monoxide into our house, which might explain some of the things that Brian and I have been talking about with our behavior changes. Energy audit indeed! Yikes!
So we had a furnace guy in yesterday who was really neat (I swear to god it was a Monty Python. It had to have been. He rides motorcycles with cats for god’s sake. He had this voice that projected so beautifully – he should look into being a voice talent if nothing else). He tightened some things and cleaned some stuff out, and told us that our furnace has never, ever been serviced. Uh…..
He said that our furnace will now be much more efficient (we could tell instantly) and that he wishes we had called him in the fall so he could have saved us more money over winter. There’s another guy coming on Monday to deal with the carbon monoxide problem, so right now we are clutching our carbon monoxide tester in our bedroom and hoping furiously that a $39 piece of plastic actually works in case the carbon monoxide decides to pool.
In any event, all that was spawned by trying to make our house more efficient and less taxing on the environment. Also cheaper. Recommend having it done, very very highly.