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Assess Your Home

Getting a handle on your home's energy use is an important first step to improving efficiency. You can do a simple assessment yourself using our on-line tools, or have a professional energy auditor perform a more thorough audit. Then, use ENERGY STAR resources to get guidance on home improvement projects to enhance energy efficiency, lower utility bills, and increase comfort.

Start with our Home Energy Yardstick

If you have five minutes and your last 12 months of utility bills, use the Home Energy Yardstick to compare your home's energy use to similar homes across the country and see how your home measures up. Then, use our Home Energy Advisor to get recommendations for energy-saving home improvements for typical homes in your area.

What's Your Score - Compare your household's energy use to others across the country and get recommendations for improvement

What you need to know to get started

  • Your energy use and costs for the last year: You'll need your last 12 months of utility bills OR a 12-month summary statement from your utility company.
  • Energy sources for your home: natural gas, electricity, fuel oil, propane, coal, wood and/or kerosene?
  • The square footage of your home.

Your Home

More information

Your Fuel Types

In addition to electricity, which fuel type(s) does your home use? Select no more than 2.

Your Energy Use

Would you like to use annual or monthly billing information to enter your household's energy use? More information

When entering your billing information include the cost of fuel, delivery fees, taxes and all other fees. Entering information monthly will result in a better estimate of cost savings.

Select the Start Date for the year covered:
More information

It takes approximately 30 days to update the Home Energy Yardstick with the latest weather data. Therefore, the Yardstick cannot calculate scores for the 12 month billing cycle that ends with the current or previous month. If you are using your most recent utility bill to enter your energy use into the Yardstick, select the previous month and year as the start date. For example: if the current month and year is September 2009, your input for the 12 month billing cycle should start in August 2008 (ending July 2009).

Enter Totals for the year:

Electricity More information

Dollars is an optional field and does not affect score calculation.
Natural Gas  
Fuel Oil
Propane
Kerosene
Coal
Wood

Enter your monthly energy use and cost information using your utility bills.

Note: Fuel Oil, Propane, Kerosene, Wood and Coal are often not billed monthly. Therefore, only fill in as many rows as you have bill statements.

Billing
Period		 Electricity Natural Gas Fuel Oil Propane Kerosene Coal Wood
Use (kWh)
Max 70,000 		Cost (USD) Use
Max 7,000 		Cost (USD) gal
Max 7,000 		Cost (USD) gal
Max 7,000 		Cost (USD) gal
Max 7,000 		Cost (USD) pounds (lbs) Cost (USD) cords Cost (USD)
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Residential natural gas use is typically measured in therms or CCF (hundred cubic feet). One therm is approximately equal to 1 CCF of natural gas. Sometimes it is measured in dekatherms (dkt). To convert dkt to CCF multiply by 9.7561.

Would you like to include the Home Energy Yardstick on your website? Click here for instructions PDF (196KB) or contact Ted Leopkey to find out how!

Need an Expert?

To get specific recommendations for improving the efficiency of your home, contact a professional home energy auditor who can use a specialized equipment to find the energy problems in your home and recommend customized solutions. Start by contacting your local utility to see if they offer free or discounted energy audits to their customers. If not, consider hiring a home energy professional, such as a certified Home Energy Rater or Building Performance Analyst.

Home Performance with ENERGY STAR

Over 50 sponsors across the country now offer a whole-house approach to improving efficiency and comfort through Home Performance with ENERGY STAR. A participating Home Performance contractor can evaluate your home using state-of-the-art equipment, recommend comprehensive improvements that will yield the best results, and help you to get the work done.