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Home Energy Audit - HERS Index

• What is an Energy Audit?

• When your car is sick, it tells you via a Service Engine Soon light. You house has no such light. If your home has never had an energy audit, even if it's new, an audit will help you understand where your home is using and or wasting energy and how best to spend or upgrade. Not every upgrade or energy projects will be worth the money. In the long run you may end up tossing good money at things that do little to improve your overall situation.




• What is a HERS Rating?

• A home energy rating involves an analysis of a home’s construction plans and onsite inspections. Based on the home’s plans, the Home Energy Rater uses an energy efficiency software package to perform an energy analysis of the home’s design. This analysis yields a projected, pre-construction HERS Index. Upon completion of the plan review, the rater will work with the builder to identify the energy efficiency improvements needed to ensure the house will meet ENERGY STAR performance guidelines. The rater then conducts onsite inspections, typically including a blower door test (to test the leakiness of the house) and a duct test (to test the leakiness of the ducts). Results of these tests, along with inputs derived from the plan review, are used to generate the HERS Index score for the home.




• The HERS Index

• The HERS Index is a scoring system established by the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) in which a home built to the specifications of the HERS Reference Home (based on the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code) scores a HERS Index of 100, while a net zero energy home scores a HERS Index of 0. The lower a home’s HERS Index, the more energy efficient it is in comparison to the HERS Reference Home. Each 1-point decrease in the HERS Index corresponds to a 1% reduction in energy consumption compared to the HERS Reference Home. Thus a home with a HERS Index of 85 is 15% more energy efficient than the HERS Reference Home and a home with a HERS Index of 80 is 20% more energy efficient.
  

  Indexes greater than 100 is bad, this means your home consumes more energy. In this case this home consumes 33% more energy than a properly build home.

  An index of 100 is equal to the base home, this is a home built to the 2005 Department of Energy guidelines.

  An index of less than 100 is good, the lower the better. A home that uses Zero energy would receive a score or "0".