Energy Conservation Solutions

Insulating your home is one the most cost-effective ways to make your home more energy efficient and comfortable. Insulation products are rated by effective resistance to heat flow. This is referred to as resistance value or "R-value". Higher R-value translates to lower heating and cooling bills and improved temperature consistency in the home. Most homes and buildings in north Georgia are built before the 1990 and are poorly insulated-if at all. Current Georgia building code today require minimum levels of insulation.

Storm windows are often a much lower cost approach to address leaky single pane windows in older homes. Our sister company has installed lots of storm windows in the Atlanta area - particularly in the in-town areas where historical associations make window replacement difficult and expensive. Larson manufactures a wide variety of high quality storm products. Their lower end product lines are available in Lowe's but our sister company that implements the improvements have access to all of their products including Premiere Series Low E storm windows, Low E Comfort Seal Insider Series windows, and Secure Pro Security storm windows.

At Energy Consulting Services, our goal is to identify ways to improve comfort levels and decrease power and gas consumption in the home. One of the many improvements that we often recommend is crawl space encapsulation. Crawl space encapsulation makes for a clean crawlspace environment for HVAC and ductwork to operate. This improves air quality, makes it hard for bugs and critters to enter the home, and keeps the floors from being cold in winter months. Crawl space encapsulation is entails sealing your crawl space off from outside air and humidity including sealing off vents to the exterior using a high quality vapor barrier and closed cell spray foam.

Air sealing is generally considered low hanging fruit since the cost to address the leaky areas is usually small and the return on investment is very fast. Air sealing generally involves sealing off leaky areas with caulk, backer board, expanding foam, insulating gaskets, weatherstripping, and can light covers. If you're on a budget and your home or building tested as leaky, air sealing (along with lighting improvements) are usually the first improvements to implement. Keeping the heat or air conditioning inside the structure improves comfort level and decreases the load on the HVAC system(s), which in turn reduces costs.

At Energy Consulting Services, we strive to help homeowners and business owners maximize energy efficiency and comfort. Spray foam is widely regarded as the best form of insulation on the market today. Encapsulating your attic or crawlspace in spray foam provides an excellent alternative to traditional fiberglass insulation. In an attic space, spray foam is applied directly to your roofline instead of the attic floor. This brings the attic space into the building envelope, which means that the attic will no longer get hot or cold.