Home Performance Evaluations: What They Are and How to Know When You Need One

Have you noticed your energy bills steadily creeping higher and higher year after year? With Texas summers already giving most homeowners substantial cooling costs, the last thing you want is unnecessary energy loss making your utilities even higher.

The trouble is that pinpointing sources of wasted energy can be tricky without the correct expertise and equipment. That’s where a professional home performance evaluation comes into play.

What Is a Home Performance Evaluation?

You may have heard this term by a few other names, like a home energy audit, a home energy assessment, or a home energy checkup. No matter the name, the function is the same. A home performance evaluation helps you understand how your home is using and losing energy and how to reduce energy losses.

What Happens During a Home Performance Evaluation?

While you can perform some aspects of this evaluation yourself, the Department of Energy recommends involving a professional technician. This energy auditor will use specialized equipment like infrared cameras and perform activities such as:

• examining all aspects of your HVAC system (including the ductwork);
• inspecting your insulation;
• checking for air leaks throughout your home;
• and performing a blower door test.

Along with taking your current heating, cooling, and humidity challenges into consideration, the auditor will examine your yearly energy bills to help them know what issues to look for. You can also expect your auditor to ask you questions about your daily routine around the house, such as your average thermostat setting, which rooms are most often in use, etc.

Based on all of the information and tests, your energy auditor will show you the sources of energy waste in your home. From there, they will help you prioritize which energy-wasters to address first to save the most money, and they’ll provide suggestions for repairs or upgrades to solve those problems.

Do I Need a Home Performance Evaluation?

There are several reasons to get a home performance evaluation. Here are just a few our energy auditors typically encounter.

• You would like to add a renewable energy system to your home and want your home to be as energy-efficient as possible first.
• Your home has high energy bills compared to others in your neighborhood of a similar size.
• Your energy bills keep going up year after year.
• Your energy bills are out of proportion with your usage.
• Your HVAC system struggles to keep your home comfortable year-round.
• Your home has problems with drafts, humidity, or excess dust.

At Tom's Mechanical, Inc., we are proud to offer not just standard home performance evaluations, but OptiHome. OptiHome is an exclusive service that allows us to combine the latest in diagnostic tools and tests with our decades of HVAC experience in Arlington, Texas. During our home energy audits, our certified and trained Home Performance Specialists conduct a 26-point inspection to ensure that your HVAC system is performing as safely and efficiently as possible.

Schedule your home performance evaluation with Tom's Mechanical, Inc. today: (972) 388-3669.