Paid $400 for a home energy audit, got told to just open my windows

I spent $400 last spring on a professional home energy audit in Portland. The guy walked around with a thermal camera for 20 minutes and told me my old windows are the problem. His solution was to open them on warm days instead of using AC. I followed his advice for three months and my summer electric bill went up $60 a month from the humidity. Has anyone else had an energy audit that gave useless advice?

3 comments

3 Comments

grace_knight7024d ago

Huh, that's infuriating. Honestly, it feels like half the "professional" advice out there is just someone charging you to tell you something you already knew. It's like when you call your internet provider about a slow connection and they tell you to restart the router. Or when you buy a fancy new kitchen gadget and the only recipe it makes is mediocre scrambled eggs. The whole "open your windows" thing in Portland especially is ridiculous, we all know the humidity here is brutal in the summer. Sounds like that guy just wanted to get in and out with your $400 without actually solving anything. At least you got your money's worth in a life lesson about how a lot of these "experts" are just guessing.

hannahw3024d ago

and your bill went UP $60 a month??? omg i would be so mad. that's the opposite of what an audit is supposed to do. i live in seattle so i get the humidity thing, it's like opening your windows just lets all that muggy air in and then your ac has to work even harder. honestly sounds like that guy just wanted a quick $400 and didn't actually care about your house. thermal cameras are cool but only if you actually know what to do with the data lol.

charlienelson23d ago

That whole thing is just part of a bigger pattern I've noticed everywhere these days. Seems like every service or fix you pay for, from car repairs to computer help, is just someone doing the bare minimum and hoping you don't know any better. They throw around fancy terms like "thermal imaging" or "system analysis" to make you feel like you're getting something special, but really it's just a show. It's like paying a plumber $100 to tell you to jiggle the handle on your toilet. Half the time, these "experts" don't even have the real tools or knowledge for the job, they just act confident and hope you don't call them on it. Makes you wonder how many other things in life are just people charging you for common sense dressed up like a big secret.