The Energy Star Yardstick: A Useful Tool To See How Your Home Measures Up

Various factors affect heating and cooling costs for an Ohio home, and the Energy Star Yardstick tool can help you effectively lock in savings. There are countless combinations of equipment, insulation levels, weather stripping, ductwork and air infiltration, all of which effect efficiency—or not.

Knowing how well your particular home’s tightness and efficiency compare to others in your area is difficult to judge. The Yardstick tool can help you find out how efficient your home is as a whole, but not so you can keep up with the Joneses—it will help you to follow energy-efficient practices, while reducing energy bills.

Find out how your home fares
The Home Energy Star Yardstick “What’s Your Score? program uses a data bank that takes your local area, climate and housing particulars into account to determine your home’s overall energy consumption.

The site is completely private, asks no personal questions and requires only a few pieces of information.  A zip code is required, along with your heating and cooling methods and costs. Other details needed are the number of people living in the home and electrical and fuel usage for the past year. Once on the site, enter the information that you’ve gathered and click to find out how efficient your home is in comparison to your neighbors.

Learn how to improve your score
Once the information is processed, you’ll know how your home rates. But the program doesn’t stop there. The site will then provide detailed information that shows you how you can get an even higher score. You can look at the information and determine the steps you need to take in order to improve your home’s energy efficiency.

Get your score on Energy Star’s program and find out how you can save energy. Once again, it’s completely private and requires no personal information. If we can help you with answers to any of your heating and cooling questions, contact us at WeatherKing Heating & Air Conditioning. We’re always happy to help you keep costs down and make your home as comfortable as possible.

Our goal at WeatherKing is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.