With the expenses of energy tied with the goal to cut our carbon footprint, homeowners should seriously consider looking into checking their property for energy loss. There are some places in a property that can waste energy that you might not think about, and in some cases it doesn’t cost an arm and leg to solve the problem.  Even if some jobs do cost quite a lot upfront, you will feel the benefits in the years to come, making improvements to the efficiency of your home a long term strategy, is beneficial financially as well as environmentally.

You should begin by identifying the source of the energy losses. The bulk of commercial buildings energy is used in the following areas: heating, air conditioning, ventilation and lighting. Concentrating on these main areas will contribute to vast savings and a good impact environmentally. Savings can be also be made in other places too. One easy way to help would be to only use hot water when it is truly needed.  Other way would be to use more efficient office equipment.

Once you have found the sources of leakage, you should see if there are any obvious losses, as a lot of the losses are very evident from the outside of the house. You may have a heating systems that keeps the building at room temperature even when it is empty, dripping hot water spigots the will not close efficiently, or you may leave lights on past knock off time. Making these small changes can help to make significant savings. 

After implementing these simple changes, look to maximise your savings with other significant changes. One option could be to find a test equipment hire company to rent a thermal imaging camera. This specialised piece of equipment can find specific areas which are leaking heat; they do this by giving a temperature reading through the colours which are shown on the screen. Reds, oranges and yellows show where the heat is coming from. This gives you a very helpful guideline as to where to fix building leaks. Some of the types of leaks, such as losing temperature through a loose door, are easy to see, others are pretty much impossible to find without using a thermal camera. These leaks can occur inside as well outside the building. Some windows with gaps and building subsidence can be major sources of heat loss. Other significant wastes of energy are faulty ducts or misdirected airflows inside the building. Thermal imaging cameras are perfect for detecting these types of energy loss. Fixing them once they are found is usually relatively easy, with a huge impact on your energy usage.

This article was written by Michael Turner, who is currently doing online research & development on behalf of Inlec, who are test equipment hire specialists.