Home Energy Audits by Bike

2017-01-16

A home energy audit is an assessment of how much energy your home consumes to help you determine what actions you should take to reduce your energy use.

Since the goal of an energy audit is to reduce your energy consumption, what better way to perform an audit than using a bicycle, the most energy-efficient means of transportation?

The challenge is how to carry all the required gear. A comprehensive audit requires a significant amount of equipment, including a large blower door fan to pressurize the home to find air leaks and ladder to inspect the attic.

Here's how John Fassler does it. John performs home energy audits in Fort Collins, Colorado, for the energy management firm CleaRESULT. He uses a Bikes At Work 64AW bicycle trailer to transport all the equipment he needs to perform home energy audits at his clients' homes.

John wrote:

I do comprehensive energy audits on residential homes. The audit includes a blower door test, combustion safety testing and full visual inspection of attics and crawl spaces. The travel distance to each home is 1-8 miles. For longer distances I get a good workout as a bonus. Currently I've got done 20 audits in a row by bike and hope to extend the streak although we have a couple of rare rainy days coming up so I might be challenged a bit. I should be able to through a plastic tarp over the trailer pretty easily so rain won't be an excuse.

People love it when I pull up on the bike. I've heard a lot of different comments. Most commonly people say that it shows I'm committed to energy savings. I've also had a customer say he no longer has an excuse for not riding his bike to work. The feedback has all been really positive. Maybe I can convince CLEAResult to purchase another trailer so that our other auditors can do bike audits.

Thanks, John, for doing such great work, and for sending the photo!

Categories: Customers