Home inspections are often just one of many tasks to ‘tick’ off the list when buying or building your home, but this doesn’t need to be the case. A professional Home Inspector should be considered an ally – helping to protect you from unfortunate and often costly surprises that your home holds beneath its many surfaces.

When choosing a home inspection company, you should choose one that goes above and beyond their requirements; rooting out any potential problems and providing top notch service and expertise in providing solutions to those problems. One way this can be done is with an energy assessment. An energy audit is a test that qualified personnel will run on your home to detect how well your home uses its essential systems and consumes energy. It will evaluate how this consumption can be improved, and if you hire the right energy assessor, you will get help identifying which home renovations to pursue in order to benefit from the current home renovation rebates available in the province.

What to Expect

An energy audit will look at ways your home consumes electricity and evaluate if it can be improved. One important aspect of an energy audit is evaluating how well your home is insulated and sealed, providing insight into your heating and cooling costs. Choosing a Certified Energy Advisor is paramount for getting the best results. With new laws coming into place regarding energy ratings on new homes and homes being sold, it’s going to become increasing more important to choose energy advisors who have the experience and knowledge needed to get your home the best rating possible, and the knowledge of how to enact it. But even if you don’t plan on selling your home in the future, gaining insight on how to decrease energy consumption, and thereby increase savings, can be worth it in and of itself. and the decreased cost of electric usage are not only great for the environment but the home itself. Plus, if you do choose to perform any upgrades or renovations to your home to improve its energy effectiveness you’ll be benefitting from the available rebates as well.

How to Choose

With all the benefits of a quality home inspection and energy audit, it’s important to choose an inspection company that has a proven track record of excellence and has the proper certifications to make sure your home gets the care it deserves. Hiring an inspector should be a process similar to hiring a realtor, choosing the best one for your needs, and who can get you the best results. Making sure the home inspector and energy advisor has a solid background in contracting and construction is a good start, along with a solid background and licensing in home inspection and energy assessments. When looking at who to hire for an energy audit, it’s important to look at their experience and their certification. With many different standards coming and going over the last decade, it’s important to look to companies on the forefront of this wave, with knowledge of upcoming standards, current regulations, and the ability to make them work for you.

And Go!

To recap, when it’s time to hire, research is essential. Seek out companies with knowledge, legitimate certifications, and history in the industry (both of home inspections and of energy assessments). As standards are always evolving, it’s also important to find a company that is well versed and informed on the proper procedures and current trends – so make sure you’re having candid conversations with your potential inspector.