Are you looking to hire a Bend Home Energy Assessor to obtain a required Bend Home Energy Score but not sure what the assessor will do when they come to your home? Do you want to know how long it will take and what the assessor will be looking at? This blog should help answer those questions.
A Bend Home Energy Assessor is an authorized professional who is licensed, bonded, and insured to perform Home Energy Scores in Bend, Oregon. Home Energy Scores are a way to evaluate the energy consumption of a home and provide recommendations for improvements. The scoring is done using an online Home Energy Scoring Tool developed by the Department of Energy, which considers various data points collected by the assessor.
When a Bend Home Energy Assessor comes to your home, they will gather data to input into the Home Energy Scoring Tool. This “asset” data includes measuring the conditioned area of your home, measuring ceiling height, identifying the direction your home is facing, counting the number of bedrooms, identifying the number of stories, examining air tightness, identifying attic construction, measuring attic insulation, identifying floor construction, measuring floor insulation, identifying wall construction, measuring wall insulation, measuring window and skylight area, identifying window frames, identifying window panes, identifying window glazing, identifying heating and cooling system type and efficiency, identifying duct location, identifying duct insulation, identifying duct sealing, identifying water heating type, and identifying and recording solar systems. These data points are crucial in determining your home’s energy consumption and generating a Home Energy Score. Here is a link to the Home Energy Score Data Collection Form that assessors in Bend follow.
The data collection process typically takes about an hour to an hour and a half for typical-sized homes. Larger homes over 3,000 or 4,000 square feet may take longer because those homes have more to measure including air space and windows, plus they are often more architecturally complex with different ceiling heights, more complex systems, and more attic types. The assessor will likely view all rooms in the house and try to limit the need to crawl around in your attic or crawl space, as key features can usually be identified from the attic hatch or opening. If the assessor is unable to access a feature, code from the time of construction can often be used as a default estimate for the unknown.
The assessor will not look at light fixtures, kitchen appliances, thermostats, home electronics, or utility bills, as these tend to vary with the occupant and are estimated by the scoring software based on the average user. Standardizing these owner behavior features allows buyers of homes to make useful comparisons of a home’s long-lived “assets”. This is like the way buyers of cars compare the MPG rating of a car but not the driving behavior.
Once the data is collected, the Bend Home Energy Assessor may input it into the Home Energy Scoring Tool offsite to limit the time needed at your home. The tool will then produce a Home Energy Score for your home, along with recommended improvements to reduce energy costs.
Hopefully this article gives some insight into what a Home Energy Assessor does. If you have questions, feel free comment below or contact us. A Quality Measurement has performed over 4,000 scores and is here to help.