What is Building Science?

Good energy audits are based on building science and the premise that homes should be safe, healthy, comfortable, durable, and efficient.  Simply put, building science is building a house according to the laws of physics - and we all know you can't fool Mother Nature!

After all, homes — probably the biggest investment most of us will ever make — are one of the few things we purchase that don't come with an instruction manual. Is a home comfortable? Reasonably energy efficient? Safe and healthy? These are all considerations that a homeowner will either take for granted (we would assume, after all, that the air inside a home wouldn't be a potential health hazard), or simply neglect.

These are the considerations addressed by our energy auditors, while taking into account the interconnectedness of homes and the relationships between each of the home's components and how they work together. In accord with this holistic, house-as-a-system approach, an energy auditor will assess, and then develop a plan to address, any of these potential problems within a home.

A home energy audit is based upon 5 pillars of home performance:

1) Safety: Assessing the safety of a home is an important part (maybe the most important) of an energy auditor's job. Backdrafting appliances that may be sending carbon monoxide into the home, air that may be filled with pollutants from the crawl space and potential moisture and mold issues are all  safety issues that our energy auditors are trained to address.

2) Health: Indoor air quality is listed by the EPA as one of the top environmental threats to human health. Our job is to ensure that your home's indoor air quality is not a threat to you or your family's health.

3) Comfort: Our home is our refuge. It should be comfortable. Drafty rooms, cold spots, unpleasant humidity and heat in the summer, poor quality lighting or incandescent lighting that creates unnecessary excess heat in the summer, are all avoidable unpleasantries. We can help solve these problems.

4) Durability: Imperfections within a building, in addition to causing discomfort and raising health concerns, can also have long term repercussions for the life of the house. In central North Carolina, moisture problems are a major concern and cause both rot and mold.  Our energy audits will help find the issues, the causes and give you solutions to solve the problems. 

5) Efficiency: Last but not least, energy audits help ensure that a home is cost effective to live in. If a mechanic told you that a few simple improvements could drastically improve the fuel efficiency of your car, that's something most of us would jump on. That's what an energy auditor does for your house.

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