Although you hear about energy efficient upgrades nearly every day, many homeowners do not even consider making these upgrades. It’s not that they don’t care about saving energy; many homeowners do not trust the claim that the upgrade will actually bring them energy efficiency. They wonder if the promised savings will actually appear, and if these savings will match their expectations. Disbelief is one of the biggest reasons that homeowners choose not to invest in energy efficiency. Luckily, we have some information that just might change this lack of belief.
Last year, 615 Vermonters responded to a survey about what motivates homeowners to invest in energy saving upgrades. The top answer was the ability to trust in the saving’s effectiveness. The survey participants valued a confidence in the estimates of how much energy they would save. This trust ranked higher than access to rebates, and even low project costs.
We know that the truth behind energy efficient promises is a driving force behind homeowners’ decisions—it is very easy to understand why. Predicting, measuring, and verifying your potential energy savings is a complex process. Inexperienced professionals often wrongly predict energy savings. Also, the predicted savings and the actual saving demonstrate that the promised saving does not always predict the outcome, even within respected energy programs.
Variations in home construction, the home’s age, and other building factors influence the actual amount of energy savings. Professionals reason that if the mean savings from a certain retrofit is $1,000 per year, any given home is as likely to save $400 as it is to save $1,600.
Along with the range of actual savings, there is the ever-present “invisibility” problem. Because homeowners can’t see, touch, feel, hear, or smell electricity, it is hard to trust that we can conserve it. We do not know if we are wasting or saving until we read our monthly energy bills. Even then, homeowners are inclined to blame the cold weather and increased need to heat instead of their home’s desperate need for insulation.
Luckily, all energy savings with Dolphin come with a guarantee. We look at each home as an individual and do all that we can to customize maximum energy savings. We work until insulation and air sealing gives your home the ideal environment to conserve energy.
At Dolphin, we do an energy audit to predict how much your house can save. This prediction is always specific to your home exclusively, which increases its accuracy. With Dolphin, we will work with you for your home. We will work until your home is as energy efficient as possible with insulation and air sealing.
You do not need to worry about energy’s “invisibility.” Insulating and air sealing produces results that you can feel even before you read that energy bill. By helping to keep your home warm in the winter and cool in the summer, you can constantly feel insulation’s effects. Work with Dolphin to establish undeniable energy savings in your home.