Home Energy Retrofit, San Francisco Bay Area

Home Energy Retrofit

Your Bay Area source for upgrading your house's energy performance as well as lowering your costs and carbon footprint.

We are proponents of the "home as a system" approach to making safe, healthy and efficient places to live where mold and air contaminents are controlled by smart ventilation. We are into energy efficiency, great interior air quality (IAQ) and efficient uses of natural resources. We believe in buildings that are built to last and properly maintaining them.

The Obama Administration's energy policy, California's energy policy as well as Affordable Comfort, the Rocky Mountain Institute and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, the national Energy Labs, Home Energy magazine and Fine Homebuilding are our inspiration. This is nothing new for us. We built our first house designed for maximum energy efficiency in 1993. One of our favorite energy efficiency technologies is 5000 years old.

We love LEED, Energy Star, the Green Point Rating System, Passivhaus standards, and the American Lung association's healthy house guidelines. We'd be happy to incorporate any of these principles into your home retrofit. We are inspired by those who began working on making houses more energy efficient in the 1970s and never gave it up, even when it went out of vogue. We are in this endeavor for the long haul. Our background is in custom home remodeling and energy testing, lighting retrofits as well as education.

We understand that you probably don't have a huge amount of money to throw at becoming energy self sufficient right now. We would like to help you on a multiphase plan to get you to a higher degree of energy and resource efficiency at your own pace with a program customized to your particular situation.

We can start the process by doing an energy audit of your home with a trained auditer who will use an infrared (IR) video camera to "see" where heat is leaving or entering your home. The auditer will inspect all the energy using equipment such as HVAC and ducts and perform a blower door test to find the air leaks.

We will give you an assessment of your home's energy performance. If you like, we can repair/upgrade any problems with the thermal envelope to stop air and heat from escaping. We can replace any windows or doors that warrant it. We can have our electrical/lighting contractor trade partner replace, change-out or repair any problems identified on the audit. If need be, we can have our HVAC trade partner seal ducts and tune up heating and cooling systems.

If your HVAC system is at the end of its service life we can perform a Manual J (ACCA) test and model your home's energy needs with EnergyPro software so we will know exactly the right size system you need.

We'd be happy to contract painting your roof a low emissivity color and planting shade trees. If you'd like to change out old appliances for Energy Star units we'll do that too. Like to install an energy management system or hydronic radiant heating with a high efficiency water heater? We can do that too.

After all the high return on investment measures are completed we can contract with trade partners to install PV electric panels on your roof. This is the icing on the cake in energy retrofits.

While most of these home energy improvements are in the crawlspace, attic or mechanical closet of you home, you may need design services to go beyond the unseen. We can help you with Architectural services with our LEED AP accredited Architect.

Home Energy Retrofit is here to assist you in bringing your home up to a higher energy efficiency standard. We are here now, licensed, bonded, insured and experienced with multiple building technologies ready to serve you.

George Matthews, Owner, HomeEnergyRetrofit.com
California Contractor's License #673461

Infrared Home Energy Testing

Infrared energy testing is a technology that holds great promise in cutting our energy usage in buildings as well as a variety of other industrial applications.

Infrared cameras have been used for perhaps decades to affix vivid color images to variations in heat. Recently their price has come down just as the Obama administration's energy policy is ramping up. Less than two years ago an infrared video camera cost at least $20,000. Now, one can buy a high quality unit for less than $10,000 and a cheaper chinese camera for just under $6000. Prices from there are said to be coming down soon. This is similar to the way compact fluorescent lamps went from $18 to 20 down to around $3 today at a big box retailer. This is the beauty of a technology and economics and production.

Infrared video cameras can virtually look through walls and see missing insulation, air leaks, plumbing leaks, structural components and the variation of temperatures across a wall or ceiling area. This now allows us to test rather than guess where energy is leaking from our houses and buildings.

Now, instead of guessing that our windows or our insulation is bad we can actually see where air and heat are escaping out buildings. We can also see hot wires or fuses in electrical systems, hot bearings in electric motors or a pool of water under a flat roof. This is a huge step as now we can see our wasted energy dollars in vivid color.

To figure out a course of action in a green building retrofit one must know where the problems lay. To do otherwise is to guess and probably waste money on expensive fixes that don't address the key problem.

Geoconserve remodeling and construction is now offering infrared home energy testing to the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

We can come to your home and scan the entire structure of the house and see what is going on underneath the sheetrock. My question to potential home buyers and real estate agents is this, do you think it is a good idea to buy a old house without taking a look underneath the surface? To homeowners, wouldn't you like to know exactly where energy is leaking out of your bay area house so that you can address the problem directly?

Maybe it is time for a green home energy retrofit. Getting an infrared energy audit of your house is the first step.