House energy audit calculator

A free article on Home Improvement

The energy auditors have made it easier to calculate the energy consumption of a house by making a calculator specialized to do these estimates. The purpose of this calculator is to enable you to see where energy is being lost due to heat escaping from your house. The calculator requires information which you probably know off the top of your head such as the number of rooms, whether you would describe them as small, medium or large, single or double glazing etc.

If you do not know, you may need to check how thick the insulation is in your attic, and ask a builder if you have solid or cavity walls. The calculator will then tell you how much each area of your house is costing per year due to heat loss. For example it will say walls 500 pounds , windows 200 pounds, roof 85 pounds etc. It will also tell you how much each area would cost if you installed effective insulation, so you can see exactly how much energy and cost you would save.

This calculator helps you see what changes can be made to your house to reduce its heat loss. Reducing your heat loss will also save you money. Using less energy will mean that less new energy sources such as windmills or nuclear power stations will be required, keeping the world a nicer, safer place.

To use the calculator, you simply have to enter details about your house, making a selection from the pull down menus or entering a number in the boxes.

When you have entered your details into the calculator, it predicts what your annual energy bills should be. You can compare this with your actual annual fuel bills. (For an old house your fuel bill will be about 10% more than this prediction, and for new houses 20% more. This extra amount is for your other electrical appliances, which are a greater proportion in new houses, since heat loss is less.) Even if the prediction is different from your actual fuel bills, it still gives you a good indication of the proportion of heat loss in each area of the house.

The inaccuracies are based on the use of general figures and because the calculator is set on certain parameters it can give errors because your house can or can not fit these settings. Also another factor is the room temperature variation: unless you have a constant central heating in all the rooms your temperature will vary in different times of day and also from room to room. So this is very unpredictable too.

Predicting drafts can be also very unpredictable and you can never know unless you have a house pressure test done. And even so the drafts depend on the blowing of the wind (how hard, in which direction etc.) and even how many times the doors and windows are opened during one particular day. If you took the temperature in lots of different places in a room it would vary a lot from floor to ceiling, interior to exterior walls and how close you were to doors and windows. If radiators are placed under windows the room is more evenly heated, but more heat goes out the windows. If a radiator is on an interior wall, the area near the window will be colder, but this in turn means that less heat is lost.

Information about the Author: Energydoctors.org - Our Home Energy Audits provide the most cost effective predictive maintenance available. Home Energy Audits, Save Energy in your home with Energy Audit help from the Energy Doctors: www.Energydoctors.org Home Improvement Articles: http://www.article-buzz.com

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