Improving your home’s energy efficiency is incredibly important. It is the single most important, cost-effective thing you can do to cut your electric and gas bills.
It helps save the planet, too. But how to get it done? I look out at my home, built in 1950, and I know it leaks air conditioning like a sieve. I’ve done an energy audit, so I know what I need to do, but it is still an intimidating process to go through.
Fortunately, folks like me will have an opportunity to see what works and how it works in a PBS show to be broadcast this week. Alison Haugh, a native Las Vegas, explained that her mother’s house in McNeal Estates, near Charleston Boulevard and Rancho Drive, was built 50 years ago.
I can attest to the fact that older Las Vegas homes were built to last, but energy use wasn’t a huge factor for those mid-century builders. Alison said the energy-efficiency retrofit at her mom’s place shaved 25 percent of her utility bills.
Alison works as a professional energy auditor with Home Energy Licensed Professionals, but the steps that contractors took on the demonstration house were neither unusual nor cost-prohibitive.
“This is what a real person would do,” she said. “This is not like a government program.”
Still, Alison encourages homeowners to go through local programs such as Home Free Nevada to make sure that they take advantage of all the rebates and financial incentives out there. The difference can mean real green – as in money.
In honor of Earth Day, Nevada Building Performance Professional’s TV show “The Energy Detectives”will air at 10 p.m. on Thursday, April 19 on Vegas PBS Channel 10.1, with a repeat airing on Sunday, April 22 at 7 p.m .and several more through the month on PBS cable channels.
In the show, auditors and contractors with Efficiency First, a group of different companies working for energy conservation, analyze and retrofit the home. The homeowner has seen her energy bills increase steadily until they are no longer affordable. When all is done, the homeowner ends up with her lowest energy bills ever.