What you are doing with a blower door test and Canada’s ecoACTION(formerly Energuide) computerized assessment (an excellent program being constantly improved since its beginnings in 1982-3) is only part of a complete energy audit or a better term would be “energy use audit and economic analysis of options”.
The Canadian program lacks in that:
(1) it does not do a combustion efficiency test of gas or oil heating equipment or test HP/AC’s for efficiency. These are usually the largest energy users in our house but they are not being assessed!!! SAD!! SAD!!
(2) an economic analysis of savings from retrofit measures or heating equipment/domestic hot water heater changes/improvements is not part of the audit. I have an energy consultation first thing Tuesday morning on a large house that I inspected last year. An audit was done but when the owner asked the auditor about heating equipment changes, etc, the auditor dummied up and could not answer any questions but he did spout what he was trained to say (“work on air leakage”) and what he was not supposed to say (“Change the windows”…there are about 65 in this house- a $35-45,000 cost!!!)
(3) Infrared (which you have) is usually not included in residential audits. It would be a useful tool to enhance a full audit by finding heating/cooling duct deficiencies (when they are routed outside the building’s thermal shell), find moisture in insulation, and determine gaps/extent/quality of insulation systems. IR scans by themselves are not energy audits and anyone advertising this are essentially lying to their customers!!!
I agree with what you are saying. My biggest problem with the ecoEnergy program is the training, as it lacks the building science aspect of it. Advisors are trained how to test the “house as a system”, however as you stated above(furnace effiecieny, A/C, etc.) are almost entirely forgotten about. I was fortunate enough before my training to have a significant background in building science. In my experience with the energy audits, I find most people are happier with the knowledge they gained from talking to me than the report at the end. I believe building science should be a critical first step in the training program.
As for the advisor telling the homeowner to change windows, I run across this on a daily basis. I have seen reports where a basement(rock foundation) was insulated to R10, and the advisor told the h/o to tear it down and insulate it to R23 “because the book said to”. I’m not putting down the program, because it is helping alot of homeowners. I just think advisors are relying too much on the software program (which in itself has its issues) rather than good 'ol knowledge and a bit of common sense.
I have performed home efficiency evaluations using IR. Most people confuse this with an energy audit, which as you noted, IS NOT. It would be a valuable asset o the EcoEnergy program, but I can’t see that happening anytime soon. NRCan is constantly changing the EcoEnergy program, so I guess we can consider it a work in progress.
I have found that my combination of building science, infrared, energy auditing, WETT training, and now home inspections have given me a wealth of knowledge. They all seem to intertwine themselves together nicely. I also owe alot of people for teaching me alot of things through their experience. To me, that is priceless.
My goal: to be ranked among the best, then some. Education, education, education.
Find out the best…call them! There are very few really knowledgeable residential energy consultants with field experience in this country. A lot with classroom, book/web training, government training/research, government program experience but you need just about all the forementioned and… time to become an expert.
Looked at your web sites but didn’t see any mention of blower door/air leakage testing. Is any being offered in your area and do the audit programs you referred to accept data from blower door tests?
I have as guy who does the blower door testing if we need him. I also have a Green Contractor, a “true” green contractor (AJStones.com) who I can reffer if someone wants Resnet rated. I use CMC energy which will accept blower door readings. I have not had the use for one yet. Just another piece of equpt. that i do not want to buy now. It is easier to farm that out due to the the minimal demand around here.
Have a good look at a blower door. In buildings built before 1975-80, between 20 and 40%+ of a heating/cooling bill is uncontrolled infiltration/exfiltration. You can’t really give much of an economic payback analysis until you know a baseline value for air leakage and let the program estimate what the potential for reduction/savings are. Our national audit program requires every auditor have a blower door. It is a research fact that, in general, US buildings are much looser than Canadian.
Of all the audits I have looked at, only one or two had low returns/savings for air leakage. To get the customer to understand something he can’t see (air leakage; insulation and new doors/windows he can see), IMO, he must see numbers/charts for it to start to register. Most, and I mean most, people believe that most of the air leakage in a house is through windows and doors and that’s reinforced by the window industry…but…not!!! Only 10-15-20% of air leakage is windows and doors!!! Where is the other 80-90%?? Our energy rebate/grant program will only pay $30 towards a new window, no matter how big or small. But it will pay$1500 for wall insulation and $500-600 for attic insulation. It’s a shame that the new Conservative gov has reduced drastically the amount paid for airsealing…they probably don’t understand what they can’t see either…requires conceptual thinking…typical!! Small minds can’t grasp great ideas!!!
FYI: The first/oldest blower door (well, window) that I read about was put together by Texas Power and Light in 1968 to look at reducing cooling costs by reducing air leakage. It was set up in a window.