Homes can be our most costly lifetime investment and for many of us we live in older homes that are energy inefficient. As if money were of no consequence, most of us ignore the fact that our home appliances and HVAC systems hungrily consume energy and rack up high utility bills and if that weren’t bad enough we carelessly let heat infiltrate and cooling escape in summer months and conversely let heat escape and cold penetrate our abodes during the winter. There is a way to stop this wastefulness and a good first step is hiring a professional to perform a Comprehensive Home Energy Analysis.

For me the natural choice was Butterfly Energy Works. Owner Gary Steps has been an acquaintance of mine for a few years and my family attended an open house at his residence last year. It was there that I experienced first hand what energy independence looks like for a homeowner.

Our family occupies a 105 year old home in an urban neighborhood in St. Louis County. The thought of a professional coming into our home to perform a Comprehensive Home Energy Analysis is both exciting and intimidating – but the time for procrastination was over. After the appointment was scheduled, I became anxious about it, concerned about a bad report or a laundry list of a hundred things to fix on our geriatric home. Will I ever get a chance to just paint the kitchen? Naturally the fact that we had an “energy audit” scheduled soon came up in conversations with our friends and family. We had some interesting questions such as “Will the air force from the blower unit knock over things in your home?” After I confided my trepidation to my mother-in-law she commented “It’s not a test that you are going to fail, relax”. Sage advice possibly, but her comment was unfortunately the root of my angst. Logically, I knew this Comprehensive Home Energy Analysis was not a real test but I strive to live “authentically green” – to talk the green talk and walk the green walk to the best of my ability. Unfortunately, our home whistles like a sailor on windy days, so it was a distinct possibility that it would be rated an energy moocher – not an energy star, a disappointing prospect

There was homework for me to do beforehand - unexpected but not surprising after I saw the assignment. Butterfly Energy Works asked me to fill out a questionnaire regarding my home and go online and get my energy history from the utility companies. They provided step-by-step instruction - it was easy enough. This information allows them to provide a Utility Usage Analysis Report which identifies energy anomalies (unusual trends) and track my home’s energy usage over time to see how improvements I choose to implement make a difference.

In my July article I will bring report on the Comprehensive Home Energy Analysis at my home with pictures and descriptions of my experience and in August I will let you know what they found and the official results.

By Heidi Schoen, Healthy Planet Green Living Editor