I Needed A House Detective

Home inspections, as any inspector will tell you, are a good part detective work. Quite often during an inspection a client will ask a question about a particular concern. My response is that once I look through the house and put the pieces together, I should be able to better answer their question.

One fairly unique service I provide in my state of Connecticut is home energy audits. The field of home energy assessments is really in its infancy. It's true energy audits have been in existence for many, many years, but there has been little demand. That is until the last few years. Because the industry is relatively new, what constitutes and energy audit is relatively undefined or more accurately unregulated. There are standards that are in existence from a few energy trade organizations, RESNET being the oldest and the newer kid on the block BPI.  

I liken the energy auditing business to the home inspection industry before licensing. Any company could basically call what it did a home inspection. With licensing came a requirement for education and more importantly a set of standards which define the scope of the work to be performed. This gave the consumer a basic expectation of the service and some protection against shoddy operators.

I believe the most important facet of home inspection is the independent assessment. The inspector has no vested interest in the sale. His or her information is not colored by the possibility of gaining further work.

This is not the case with much of the "energy audits" being performed in the state of Connecticut. Many are performed by insulation, window and HVAC companies to name a few. I have listened to consumers tell me how in almost every case when a one of these companies has done an energy assessment on their home, the cure to their energy woes is that companies particular product.

And quite often they miss the main problem all together.

This is where home energy audits performed by home inspectors such as myself excel. There is no vested interested in selling product, but most importantly there is a level of training and expertise not found in any other industry that better fits this service.

I recently performed a home energy assessment for a couple on their new 1952 ranch style home. They had moved in sometime in January. In February they began to notice the heating system would not warm the house to the temperature set on the thermostat on very cold days. Also they felt even on more moderate days the boiler ran a long time.

They installed new insulation in the attic and walls. Still the boiler ran and ran and the house would not get warm.

During my energy inspection I discovered that the house has a heat pump. VERY strange considering the home already has a heating system. The most significant discovery was with the heating system itself.

It had been piped incorrectly from day one. That's since 1952!

You see back then many plumbers piped forced water heating systems in a steam pipe configuration. They used a large feed pipe and looped the radiators off the large pipe. Works great for steam, not so much for forced water.

I pointed this out to my client, who immediately understood the concept. The man was ecstatic.

He says to me,

"I needed a house detective."

"Just doing my job sir", I said with a big smile.

James Quarello
Connecticut Home Inspector
2010 - 2011 SNEC-ASHI President
NRSB #8SS0022
JRV Home Inspection Services, LLC

To find out more about our other high tech services we offer in Connecticut click on the links below:

Serving the Connecticut Counties of Fairfield, Hartford, Middlesex, New Haven, Southern Litchfield and Western New London.