House Gets Huge Energy Efficiency Improvement

Challenge

This house was functioning at a very low energy efficiency level. That can lead to a lot of problems, like cold/hot rooms, poor indoor air quality, and (the homeowner’s main concern) high utility bills! The homeowner desperately wanted to find out what he could be do to improve his house’s efficiency levels and started looking for a company to help him do it. That’s when he called Complete Home Solutions. 

Solution

The first step in finding out how to improve a house is to give it an in depth energy audit. As a part of our audit, we perform a blower door test (basically a test that allows us to see how much air is leaking out of your house. This revealed the house to be leaking an extreme amount of air. To fix this, we made a lot of improvements including: weatherstripping, air sealing the attic, adding insulation to the attic, etc. But, the improvement that may have had the biggest impact was air sealing the rim and band joists in the basement. This area was allowing an enormous amount of air to leak. After finishing our work, we perform a second blower door test to compare results. The house improved by 45% in regard to air leakage. The homeowner can now expect a drastic change in his utility bills and general comfort. Another great job completed by Complete Home Solutions!

We used spray foam to air seal the and and rim joists in the basement area.

Spray foam acts as both an air sealer and an insulator, making it perfect for blocking air leaks the way that we did in this picture.

This is what we call an "attic tent." We usually install these in the attic hatch opening so that the attic is still accessible but not leaking air.

Here is the loose-fill cellulose insulation that we blew in the attic. This type of insulation is denser than most and has a great R-value, making it super effective for weatherization purposes.