Analysing home energy assessments with Tim Forcey
Back in early in 2024 I had the king of energy efficiency come visit my home and do an energy assessment. We chatted about everything energy and assessed the best ways to be more energy efficient.
Sam Bendat
Updated: August 20, 2024
I had a home energy assessment completed by energy royalty this past week, Tim Forcey.
I'm going to cover how it went, what happens in an energy assessment, and my thoughts post-assessment. It's a lot to cover, so it's a longer article this week.
Tim and I examined every inch of the home, after spending three and a half hours together and $400 for the consultation, I came out the other end all the wiser.
But now that's its all done, lets assess the assessment!
The results and things to fix
A little context, a home energy assessment is when a trained and qualified pro visits your home and examines all the ways you can improve your home to reach a higher level of energy efficiency. Hopefully reducing your energy bills and carbon emissions as a result.
After examining our home Tim suggested the order of upgrades for our house should be:
Hot Water - replace the ancient gas water heater with an electric heat pump
Gas Heating - switch our gas ducted heating for a non-ducted heat pump solution
Draught proofing - doors, windows and frames. Upgrade insulation for the roof
Solar - get a solar system to power these new electric upgrades!
I'll touch on these upgrades a bit more, but rather than go too deep into each category, I'll go more into the assessment process and why this proposed order.
Welcoming the efficient home king into our home
"This is one of the weirder home visits I've done, " Tim Forcey says as we greet each other at my front door, referencing our phone discussion earlier.
We had briefly discussed the app I'm building and how it can remotely access a home's energy data to calculate the savings and costs of upgrading specific parts of a home for free.
But Tim is no stranger to home energy, with over 1,000 home energy assessments completed, a library of energy articles published, and a long list of accomplishments he is at the forefront of home energy efficiency in Australia.
Most might know him as the founder and neighbourly curator of the Facebook group My Efficient Electric Home, which currently boasts 113,000 members from every corner of the country.
Shortly after welcoming Tim into our home, we got right to business. We set the goals of the visit, and I asked him to treat our home like a standard assessment to get the most typical experience possible.
Why an assessment in the first place
The end goal of an assessment is to finish with a better overview of the home so the homeowner can take action to improve it. With the goal of lowering energy bills to zero or even producing more energy than used!
There are primarily two options for assessments, there is the official scorecard assessments run by the VIC government, which results in a star rating of 1 out of 10 for your home and an assessment scorecard sheet.
There is also the less official but also faster 3.5 hour assessment, done by seasoned pros who know the scorecard assessment back to front but don't need the extra bells and whistles to guide them, also its cheaper!
I opted for the more laid-back approach, which should arrive at the same conclusions.
It's worth noting in the scorecard assessment, the homeowner is sent a two-page report showing them the end result of the assessment. But because I opted in for the less official assessment I had to take my own notes and prod with my own questions to get the maximum benefit of the consultation.
The assessment process and the findings
Overall, the assessment process involves identifying the most energy-critical areas of the home that require the most urgent upgrades. Because our house is so old and has barely been renovated for efficiency, there is a lot of this low-hanging fruit.
When we began Tim showed me his own energy efficiency journey beginning in 2008 for his own home. An energy efficiency pep talk of sorts, which showed how he was able to get his energy bills down to a small fraction of what they once were by gradually upgrading his home over the years.
What we covered and what we need to do
Overall, the assessment process involves identifying the most energy-critical areas of the home that require the most urgent upgrades. Because our house is so old and has barely been renovated for efficiency, there is a lot of this low-hanging fruit.
When we began Tim showed me his own energy efficiency journey beginning in 2008 for his own home. An energy efficiency pep talk of sorts, which showed how he was able to get his energy bills down to a small fraction of what they once were by gradually upgrading his home over the years.
What we covered and what we need to do
The standout upgrade most needed for our home is our gas hot water system, which we discovered was installed in 1996! Following up on this suggestion, Tim showed me a few heat pump brochures, and we discussed rough estimates of cost and installation.
We next investigated and discussed replacing a large gas heating system in the roof space that runs ducted to most of the rooms in the home. For the first time, I could finally get into the roof space with Tim's extended ladder and see it for myself. Tim had two main proposals for replacement: using the same ducted system with a heat pump unit or going for a non-ducted solution and choosing maybe three spots in the home to install three systems.
Next, we covered insulation in our ceiling, which I was surprised to see we even have, but it's so thin it needs an upgrade, as do the gaps in the windows and doors, which are pretty draughty even with my DIY attempt to fix it last year. This upgrade would create a solid air seal for the home so we can use less energy to control the temperature.
Finally, we discussed a solar system and checked out what state the roof is in. Unfortunately, we have a lot of gas pipes on our roof, which could complicate installing a solar system. We briefly talked about solar system sizing and a few installers in the area.
At each stage, we talked a fair bit about the upgrades, why they're important and some options for installers in the Melbourne area.
The proposed order of the upgrades
Although we never reviewed the home's actual energy bills, costs, and charges, I think Tim had an innate sense of where the costs and savings were.
Our gas bill is more expensive than our electricity bill, so the data supports his choices. For our ancient appliances, replacing the gas first is a no-brainer.
Tim and I even talked about the rising gas costs over the next decade, which makes the case for replacing gas even stronger year-on-year.
For some, though, if your gas bills are cheaper than ours or you have newer heating systems, installing solar might be higher on the list, even first.
No single unified solution will help every house get maximum energy efficiency. Naturally, each house is different.
It's also the strongest argument for having someone visit your home. Getting a professional opinion about your most needed upgrades cuts out a lot of the guesswork.
My thoughts on the process
Overall, it was a fun exploration into the efficiency of the home. Already having a keen interest in home energy, I was able to appreciate the process that much more. It's really up to the homeowner to make the most of the experience and advice.
At $400, this is a premium service that some might be unable to afford. However, as Tim and I discussed, there are other services out there for less, but one has to be careful with the quality they pay for. Also, some states have rebates to help subsidise the assessment cost.
The total costs of the upgrades are another large consideration. Although no exact figures were written down and calculated, we did some loose calculations to guess the costs, and they quickly soared past $20,000 in total. I asked about financing options, but admittedly, Tim recognised it's a pretty personal circumstantial question for each homeowner, and it isn't discussed that often.
Tim also offered his services day and night from here on out. If a question or a concern comes up, he'd be happy to help. He also offered to look at quotes we might receive as we contact companies and intstallers for the upgrades. Interestingly, he said only about 1 in 20 homes reach out after the consultation, which could be for a whole list of reasons.
How does SolvingZero fit in
For context, SolvingZero is a free app I am building that provides personalised home energy upgrades to homeowners based on their energy data and usage patterns.
Given the ability to simply hire someone to come over and tell me what to do, it seems like we don't need an app that uses data to calculate energy savings and costs for potential upgrades. But I think, actually, these two services complement each other perfectly.
It doesn't matter which is used first or second. As a free service, SolvingZero can help the homeowner zero in on the costs and savings expected from each upgrade related to energy consumption.
I even plan to expand into calculating all available financing options that would find the best return on your upgrades possible.
But SolvingZero cannot climb into your roof and see how thick your insulation is, check how draughty your doors or windows are, or see what year your ancient gas heater was installed.
The data can help inform the practical process of physically assessing the home, and the practical assessment can use the data to narrow down the impact of the recommendations. It's a great symbiosis where each service can enhance the other!
Before I tackle this new opportunity though I need your help!
I'm looking for homeowners who want to test out SolvingZero in its current form. The app reads your meter data within a few seconds without installing a device or visiting your home, and it's free! If that sounds interesting, email me, and we can get you in!
If you're in Melbourne and want to start with the home assessment, check out Tim's website or My Efficient Electric Home to connect with like-minded people on your energy journey.