Today’s homeowners are starting to understand the significance of a home energy audit as global warming starts to take its toll on the environment and as energy prices start increase. In this process, highly-trained auditors conduct a series of tests to identify several ways on how to achieve energy efficiency while making your home safe and comfortable to live in.

A professional energy auditor can recommend several home improvements after conducting a residential energy audit. Home energy editors may suggest homeowners to fix air leaks through weather stripping, replace inadequate insulation and lighting, update heating and cooling equipment, equip homes with smart meters or even replace household appliances.

In order to conduct a comprehensive energy audit and arrive at these recommendations, a home energy auditor needs several tools to gather data, which are used to analyze the energy efficiency of a home. Usually, a professional auditor uses a special fan, called blower door, to determine the air tightness, or the air infiltration rate of a house, by reducing the air pressure inside.

After conducting the blower door test, auditors commonly perform thermography, also known as infrared scanning, to determine air leakage and thermal problems within the house. This energy auditing process involves the use of an infrared video and still cameras to record variations in the temperature of a home’s surface. In this process, residential energy auditors can choose from various infrared sensing systems during on-site inspections, such as spot radiometers, thermal line scanners and thermal imaging cameras that can generate two-dimensional images.

PFT Technique

Aside from these commonly used tests, a home energy auditor can also use the PFT technique, also known as the PerFluorocarbon tracer gas method. It is designed to assess the air-infiltration rate of a house over time. This technique involves the use of an emitter, which releases a tiny amount of perfluorocarbon gas; and a receiver, which absorbs the vapor from the average gas concentration, to quantify air infiltration.

Aside from this technique, companies have come up with innovative systems and made certain upgrades to generally used equipment in home energy audits.

Thermo Hygrometer

If a professional residential energy auditor wants to measure air humidity and temperature, a thermo hygrometer is the right tool for them. Most of the thermo hygrometers available on the market today are equipped with calibration standards to gather accurate measurements. Several firms have made several improvements to this type of energy auditing tool by improving its portability and equipping it with high-tech features, such as new temperature sensors and digital humidity sensors.

 

Infrared Thermometer

Another tool that promises to facilitate a home energy audit is an infrared thermometer. This device is a noncontact-type of home auditing tool that can measure the amount of heat or energy emitted by furnaces and other hot spots inside the house. Several improvements have been made to this instrument. Now, there are portable infrared thermometers that can measure various types of temperatures while allowing energy auditors to carry them anywhere they go.

So if you are looking for a company that adopts some of these innovative tools in conducting home energy audits, you have come to the right place. We at Star Energy Audits guarantee to give you the best residential energy audit services that you deserve. For more inquiries, you may call us at now at 504-383-3261.

Tags: cutting edge tools, Home Energy Audits, infrared thermometer, new orleans, PFT technique, thermo hygrometer

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2011 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Energy Auditor, Home Energy Audit, Save Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.