Advanced Home Energy Earns Esteemed 2013 Angie’s List Super Service Award

Advanced Home Energy has earned the service industry’s coveted Angie’s List Super Service Award, reflecting an exemplary year of service provided to members of the consumer review service in 2013.

“We are proud and honored by this award,” said Advanced Home Energy co-founder and president, Ori Skloot. “Providing high-quality service has been a major focus for us this year. Knowing that our customers are happy with our work is the greatest motivation we could ask for.”

“Only about 5 percent of the companies Advanced Home Energy competes with in the San Francisco Bay Area are able to earn our Super Service Award,” said Angie’s List Founder Angie Hicks. “It’s a mark of consistently great customer service.”

Angie’s List Super Service Award 2013 winners have met strict eligibility requirements, which include an “A” rating in overall grade, recent grade, and review period grade; the company must be in good standing with Angie’s List, have a fully complete profile, pass a background check and abide by Angie’s List operational guidelines.

Service company ratings are updated daily on Angie’s List. Companies are graded on an A through F scale in areas ranging from price to professionalism to punctuality. Members can find the 2013 Super Service Award logo next to company names in search results on AngiesList.com.

The Future of Home Performance

Home performance connects directly to two other emerging movements: going green and sustainability. Sustainability movements take the concept of looking at a house a system even broader by looking at how communities, cities and societies are structured. Home performance provides an important pillar for sustainability movements as buildings are the number area of energy use in America. By making buildings more efficient, more sustainable cities and communities becomes easier. Going green has become popular in areas from the food industry to transportation. Again home performance is crucial to the concept of green building and new technological advances are leading to innovative concepts like using your home’s solar panels to directly charge your Prius’ battery.

Improvements in standards such as LEED continue to provide a means to measure efficiency and sustainability and also award home and building owners with a rating they can be proud of. Created in the mid-1990s by the USGBC along with the American Society of Testing and Materials, the LEED standards have improved and evolved over the years. Currently LEED focuses on six aspects of building:

1.Sustainable Sites
2.Water Efficiency
3.Energy and Atmosphere
4.Materials and Resources
5.Indoor Environmental Quality
6.Innovation and Design Process
Moving into the future home performance will keep evolving as new innovative concepts are applied to homes and buildings. Further advances in solar continually decrease the cost of solar photovoltaic. The advent of geothermal energy makes energy efficiency in homes in some regions even more interesting. Realtors are seeing energy efficient homes sell for higher prices than homes that are inefficient in the same area. By also taking into account indoor air quality and health aspects, home performance provides important information to homeowners seeking to make smart choices in the homes they buy and renovate. With the price of fossil fuel based energy on the raise for the future, home performance offers solutions for individuals seeking to reduce their utility bills, make their home more comfortable and safe for their families.

Chimneys, Flues, and Vents for You

In this article, I will attempt to explain, in simple terms, the basics of gas appliances, with a focus on their flues and the importance of a correctly designed flue.
Your gas appliances are, usually, your: oven/stovetop, water heater, furnace, and possibly your clothes dryer. There are many different types of each of these appliances but if we go to the bare bones of it, your gas appliances need air to burn gas to create heat, and as a result of that combustion also release as byproducts: water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, Nitrogen Oxides, Sulfur Dioxide, and Particulates.(1) These byproducts need to exit the appliance and your home for it to continue to work properly and for you and your family to stay healthy and safe.

Ways to Celebrate Earth Day 2013 #15: Visit a Park

Our local and national parks are by far the best carbon storage we have. Do you remember when we talked about the benefits of trees yesterday? We mentioned that an acre of trees is capable of absorbing the equivilent carbon produced by driving your car 26,000 miles, about 2.6 tons of carbon.

There are approximately 33 million acres of forest in the state of California, enough to offset 1.5 million passenger cars each year. If you want to think about that in economic terms, to buy carbon offsets equivilent to what our parks already do, it would cost about $1.1 billion.

Not that you need any reason to visit your local park other than it is a lovely day!

Ways to Celebrate Earth Day 2013 #14: Plant a Tree

5 Reasons Planting a Tree Benefits the Earth

Trees absorb CO2, removing and storing the carbon while releasing the oxygen back into the air. In one year, an acre of mature trees absorbs the amount of CO2 produced when you drive your car 26,000 miles.
Trees provide oxygen. While removing CO2 from the atmosphere, one acre of mature trees can provide enough oxygen for 18 people in one year.
Trees help cool urban landscapes. By shading our homes and streets, breaking up urban “heat islands” and releasing water vapor into the air through their leaves by up to 10°F. Think of the impact on your air conditioning bills.
Shade from trees slows water evaporation from landscaped areas like lawns. Most newly planted trees need only fifteen gallons of water a week, while lawns can use upwards of 100 gallons.
Trees prevent erosion and water pollution. Their roots hold down soil and act as a filter for pollutants.

Advanced Home Energy Featured in Greentech Media Article

Greentech Media asked Advanced Home Energy president and co-founder, Ori Skloot, to weigh in on the challenges facing California’s home efficiency programs.

Ambitious goals were set for the Energy Upgrade California program during its inception. Now, 3 years in, skeptics and advocates are taking a hard look at the costs and challenges of retrofitting 100,000 California homes.

While Advanced Home Energy remains committed to Energy Upgrade California mission to help Bay Area residents save energy with measures like new furnace upgrades, energy saving windows, and insulation, there have been challenges along the way.

“Working through the program can take up to 25 percent of our time on a project,” said Skloot. “There’s a high cost to that. And so for some contractors, it’s much easier to go for the lower-hanging fruit rather than doing the harder work.”