Home Performance

At Custom-Air, Inc. we have homes and energy bills we need to pay. We took those homes and experimented with the idea of Home Performance and how we could pass this along to our customers. Heating and cooling, whether refrigerated air or swamp cooler, is the number one culprit of high electric and gas bills. We thought it was time to do all we could with the whole house, not just the mechanical, to save energy.

Attics that are poorly ventilated cause major heat loads. This area of your home can climb as high as 200° fahrenheit. The heat load this causes is putting a strain on the systems that condition the air. We used a radiant barrier, fans and insulation to get rid of the hot air and now we are only 10° above the ambient temperature.

In one of our homes we calculated that there is more square footage in the attic then in the living space. With vaulted ceilings there is more cubic feet of air and it expands, is superheated and penetrates down into the home through leaky areas like electrical outlets, light fixtures, etc. Another strategy was to upgrade the attic ventilation and get rid of the superheated air. Turbines and electrical fans on a thermostat did the job nicely! We estimated that it resulted in a 35% to 45% reduction in air conditioning cost after all this was installed. We removed the heat at it’s source. Winter of course the idea is to keep cold air out, by insulating, covering the fans and installing the barrier the natural gas prices dropped 30% to 35%.

Sure, twice a year you have to put on/take off the fan covers and pay for the initial installation, but think of the return on investment! The easiest part of all this is picking up the phone and calling us for a free initial Home Performance consultation. Or you can go to our Contact Us page.