Do-It-Yourself Home Energy Audits: 101 Simple Solutions to Lower Energy Costs, Increase Your Home's Efficiency, and Save the Environmen

I was really happy to find a book on doing an energy audit for my home. I picked up the book without truly scanning it as it promised to provide me with '140 simple solutions.' I also expected information how to detect energy leaks around the house. However I was very disappointed with the information. The layout of the book is well done and will be helpful to someone with very little knowledge. Note that an audit is an exam where you look to find what is wrong. That is not really provided here, what is provided is what to do about problems. But even some of the 140 solutions are issues to me. Below are a couple of examples from the book: #30 Turn off the water when brushing your teeth - To me this is common sense, not a home energy audit related task. #70 Turn off lights when not in use - Once again... #95 Replace your home clothes dryer - The author is very pro about getting new appliances since they use less energy and will save money. However, the save money is not always accurate if you have a relatively new appliance and a new one is very expensive. Other information that is important to know is that at least 25 pages of the book focuses on CO2 induced global warming. The author makes it clear that if you have any thoughts that CO2 is not the sole cause of global warming, you are ignorant The book does conclude strongly with some resources to get additional information, however overall from pictures that were taken from websites to a couple interesting format choices, the book does not feel like a full price purchase. Perhaps at a less than $10 rate this would be well worth it.

To start off, I'm fairly well versed in reducing home energy consumption. When my utility company sends out comparisons of our house to others, we almost always beat the "similar efficient homes" benchmark. This book provided very useful information for me. Some of the tips were outright silly. Only use major appliances after 9 PM. For some devices this works, such as a dishwasher. For the vast majority, you simply cannot use this method unless you plan on staying up until really late hours. I'm mainly thinking about cooking or doing the laundry. Thinking back to all I read in the book, I don't think there was one new piece of useful information I can incorporate. Again, this might be because of my knowledge going in, but it doesn't reduce my disappointment. This might be a good book for people at the beginning of improving their home efficiency, but for those of you like me, it is better to look elsewhere.

The book is packed with ideas for improving energy efficiency and living a greener life. Some of the ideas in the Do-It-Yourself Home Energy Audits book are basic, like using an outdoor clothes dryer (hang the clothes to dry) and insulate the pipes. Some are facts I simply didn't know or think about - like using the garbage disposal wastes both water and energy. Weather stripping, unplugging appliances when not in use, turning down the temperature on the water heater, are all things most of us can handle, but more complicated projects will, for some of us, require outside help to complete. That is the value of the book - some of the 140 ideas will entail funding (the author provides information about traditional and non-traditional funding sources), but some ideas cost nothing or are surprisingly inexpensive and easy to incorporate. The ten chapters include -- Increase Your Home's Comfort and Increase your Income, Home Improvements You Can Do Today at No Cost to You, Low-Cost Solutions, Chief Home Energy Expense, Personal and Global Environments, Creating a Personal Energy Plan, How and When to Contract Out Your Green Renovation, Large Renovation Projects, Standards, Conversions and Green References and finally Funding Your Green Home Improvement Projects - all are packed with good ideas to reduce our carbon footprint and save energy. My only complaint is that some of the projects require more of a step-by-step installation guide for the do-it-yourselfer, but that is usually the case in a book covering such a extensive range of subject matter, there just isn't room for everything. The book serves as a great over-view, will save the homeowner money and is well worth the paper it is printed on.