How Inspectors Assess the Energy Efficiency of Vancouver Homes

One of the most important elements of a home that contributes both to long term financial stability and environmental sustainability is a home’s energy efficiency. Having an energy efficient home can help save you money and help save the environment but is energy efficiency something that home inspectors look for when inspecting a home? In today’s blog we will be looking at how inspectors assess the energy efficiency of Vancouver homes.

What is Energy Efficiency

What does Energy Efficiency mean? It essentially comes down to using less energy to do the same job. Examples of this include things like using energy efficient appliances to accomplish the same goals but with less energy consumption. Understanding a home’s energy consumption is important for budgetary reasons, i.e. understanding how much it costs to run the home. It is also important as there are energy efficiency programs in Vancouver that can be taken advantage of should a home have enough energy efficient elements. Examples of these programs are the Greener Homes Grant, The CleanBC Better Homes Energy Savings Program and the CleanBC Better homes and Home Renovation Program.

How Inspectors assess Energy Efficiency

There are a lot of different elements in a Vancouver home that an inspector will check for energy efficiency. To get a comprehensive picture of how energy efficient a home is inspectors may check the integrity of the walls, windows and doors, the quality and coverage of a home’s insulation, how recently the furnace has been installed, how often the home’s HVAC System has been maintained, the age of a home’s appliances, whether the home’s appliances have energy efficiency stickers on them and whether a home is making use of energy efficient bulbs in their lighting.

They may also make use of thermal imaging cameras to look for areas where there may be heat loss in home or where moisture is getting in. Following the inspection an inspector may have recommendations for the homeowner to improve the homes energy efficiency, these recommendations can include suggestions like upgrading old appliances to newer more energy efficient models, replacing weather stripping on doors and windows, making sure that a home is properly sealed, making sure that a home is properly insulated, and possibly upgrading the home’s HVAC system.

We hope we have been able to shed some light on how Inspectors assess the energy efficiency of a Vancouver home. If you have any questions about home inspections please feel free to contact us.

The Inspectors is a group of very experienced home inspectors who bring reliability and integrity to the practice of home inspection. These inspectors follow closely the established standards of the Canadian National Association of Certified Home Inspectors.

If you have any questions about this article or would like to talk to us about home inspection, we encourage you to call us at (778) 788-5301.