LITTLE ROCK — Matthew Pickston thinks of himself as a detective.
But instead of searching for clues to crimes, he looks for the causes of problems such as chilly rooms.
Pickston is a home energy auditor, a professional who scours houses for problems that can harm structures, drive up energy bills and make the occupants uncomfortable.
Energy auditors look at a house as a system. They consider how all the parts work together to affect a home’s energy efficiency and search for solutions to the more puzzling problems.
Pickston, a Pro Energy Consultants franchisee, does his sleuthing with the aid of an infrared camera, a chemical-smoke stick and a healthy curiosity.
After interviewing the homeowners about problems they’d noticed, he started his investigation by depressurizing the house using a blower door, a powerful exhaust fan that fits into an exterior door frame. As air was sucked out of the house, outside air came rushing in to replace it through all the little cracks and openings in the home’s exterior. It was as though a 10-mph wind were hitting all the outside surfaces of the house, he explained.
Then, room by room, he cased the house. He examined each space with his infrared camera, which displayed temperature differences in vivid color. A blue area with feathered edges indicated a flow of cold air, which he could verify by holding the smoke stick near the source to see where and how fast the smoke traveled.
Many of the tests showed the results he expected, such as windows that were colder than the adjacent walls and air that flowed through unblocked chimneys. But some results surprised him.
A frigid first-floor office posed another challenge. Pickston could attribute part of the problem to the fireplace’s open damper, and he also suspected cold air was entering gaps in the chimney structure. But it wasn’t until he got to the basement that he spotted the biggest source of the problem: The heating duct to the room was disconnected.
Many of the things he found were fairly common, such as ceiling light fixtures that were allowing heat into the attic, air leaks along baseboards and around window frames, and gaps around pipes that extended through exterior walls, the basement ceiling or the attic floor.
He also pointed out a common trouble spot: the rim joist, the place where the house’s framing meets the foundation. Often, the rim joist isn’t sealed or insulated properly, allowing heat to escape, he said. He suggested cutting pieces of rigid foam insulation to fit the empty spaces and then caulking around the edges for a tight air seal.
The goal in an energy audit isn’t to create a completely airtight house, Pickston said. That’s difficult when you’re retrofitting an existing house, he noted, and bringing in some outside air is beneficial.
Rather, the intention is to help homeowners set priorities so they can make the improvements that will most effectively reduce their energy use.
HomeStyle, Pages 39 on 02/26/2011