UTILITY CONSUMPTION

Tracking your energy and water usage is the first step towards understanding the way your utility systems perform and improving home efficiency. Here are a few tips to build an assessment of the way your home functions:

• Contact your utility company for past bills to build a usage history
• Compare & track your energy usage to neighbors using the Energy Star Yardstick
• Visit www.wegowise.com to track all of your utility usage at one location.  This tool will “score” your efficiency and help you make more informed decisions when it comes to updating your home
• Purchase a home energy monitor to track your up-to the minute usage

In our northern climate, most of our home energy use is usually dedicated to heating our homes - Determine your Home Heating Index (HHI), the number of BTUs per square foot per heating degree day, and compare values against other homes.  According to the Minnesota Climatology Working Group, the average heating degree days for our area is 7,847. Once you’ve had a chance to gather & analyze utility information on your home, the next step is to get an energy audit to identify potential issues affecting the efficiency of your home.