If your home seems impossible to heat and your utility bills are too high, you’ve got a problem shared by thousands of Illinois homeowners: an energy thief.
Trying to determine where that thief is without the proper tools and experience is like trying to figure out who egged your house last Halloween without an eye witnesses or a clue. You can spend a lot of time and money looking in the wrong places and still not find the answers.
Here’s a (fictitious but ripped from real-life) case to help illustrate the point:
The Case of Don’s Drafty Dwelling
Don was tired of feeling drafts of cold air while trying to relax in his living room. He knew his windows could use an update, so he spent thousands of dollars on new windows and settled down to enjoy a warmer house and lower energy bills. But Don was still cold, and his energy bills were still high.
Determined to have a more comfortable home—and stop the looks his family shot at him from under their layers of wool and down—Don tried again. He knew a lot of heat was lost from poorly insulated basements, so he spent hours stapling layers of itchy insulation all around the rim joists. Later that week, as his kids sat playing a game with chattering teeth, Don knew he had more work to do.
It was nearly December now, so Don spent the next weekend weatherstripping the doors. It wasn’t pretty, but he thought he’d finally found the solution. Later that night, when his wife asked if they had any more blankets for the bed, Don threw his freezing hands into the air in surrender. His house was never going to be warm.
Time to Call the Experts
Fortunately, a friend told Don to call Assured Insulation Solutions. Our whole-house approach quickly determined the real culprit in Don’s heat-loss mystery.
Suspect 1: The Windows
New windows weren’t a bad idea—Don’s house looked better and was better sealed, but they hadn’t solved the problem.Suspect 2: The Basement
This was also a good step toward weatherizing Don’s home, though a more thorough seal would have been achieved with expertly installed insulation.
Suspect 3: The Doors
Don did stop some air leakage here, but these were not the real issues for his home, either.
The True Culprit
In less than two hours, the experts at Assured Insulation Solutions discovered that Don’s attic had no insulation at all. Warm air was constantly rising up and out of his roof as the cold air freely moved in. Don’s furnace was working overtime and burning fuel at a frightening pace, and all its hard work and Don’s was going right out the roof. Once the real culprit was caught and his attic fully insulated and air sealed, Don, his family and his furnace could finally relax. The house was warm, and his utility bills went down at last.
Don’t Try to Solve Your Energy Loss Mysteries Alone
Call the experts at Assured Insulation Solutions first. We’ll get to the root of your energy problems right away with a thorough home energy audit. Our top-to-bottom home performance audit will guide you toward the most effective solutions for a safer, more comfortable home and lower energy bills—all year long.