By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Thousands of Bowling Green homes are letting cool air escape in the summer and heat seep out in the winter.
So Columbia Gas is giving every homeowner, landlord and renter a chance to keep the air in their houses and money in their pockets.
Bowling Green residents are being offered home energy audits for $20 by Columbia Gas, to identify how homes can be made more energy efficient. And if the residents agree to weatherization upgrades, the most they will pay per home is $300.
“It’s because of Bowling Green’s interest in energy efficiency,” Jill McGinn, of Columbia Gas, explained last week to the Bowling Green Kiwanis Club. “Everyone in Bowling Green is eligible.”
The subsidies through the program will pay for up to $4,000 in home improvements, but the residents will pay a fraction of that.
“The most any Bowling Green resident will pay is $300,” McGinn said. “Those are some pretty huge and substantial savings.”
The energy audits take about three hours to complete. An added bonus, McGinn said, is that experts also look for safety problems. McGinn knows all about that, since when she had an energy audit done on her home, it found a gas leak in her basement.
“Safety is Columbia Gas’ first priority,” she said. The audits often discover leaks at gas line joints or at the appliance hook ups.
The next priority is energy efficiency. The homes likely to benefit the most from the audits are those built before 1975, many which use more than 1,000 cubic feet of gas annually. Those homes are often found with very inefficient furnaces, and insulation that has settled over the years and no longer fills up space between the walls.
“We run into a lot of houses that have no insulation whatsoever,” McGinn said of some of the older homes.
Bowling Green resident Neocles Leontis is a believer in the audits as a way to say energy and money.
“It’s a way to keep more of our money in our pockets and in our community,” he said.
Leontis thought he was being smart years ago by replacing windows in his century old home. But the energy audit showed the air inside his home escaping through cracks in the basement and around windows.
Many homes need thousands of dollars in upgrades to make them energy efficient, McGinn said. But Columbia Gas realizes those type of expenses just aren’t possible for most homeowners. So that’s the reason behind $300 being the most that any resident will have to pay.
“Most people have $300 they can spend to save money,” she said.
The upgrades should result in energy savings that will benefit the household for decades to come.
The process is simple. To get a home energy audit, just:
- Call 1-877-644-6674 to schedule the audit.
- Meet with a home energy advisor, who will conduct a thorough in-home inspection to see where you can save energy.
- Review the audit results with the advisor, who will tell you where energy waste is occurring in your home, and recommend how to make improvements.
- Choose a participating contractor to install upgrades. Specific contractors from the Bowling Green area who meet Better Business Bureau standards are being identified to do the work.
- Bowling Green customers are then responsible for the first $300 of all recommended insulation and air sealing upgrades. The remaining costs (with the exception of a furnace upgrade) are fully covered by the Neighborhood Home Energy Audit program.
- Homeowners are also eligible to receive a $1,000 instant rebate on the purchase of a high efficiency gas furnace or boiler, if recommended by the home energy audit.
- Residents may receive a free programmable thermostat and high-performance, energy efficient showerheads.
To maintain high standards, 10 percent of the participating homes will be rechecked after a period. “We want to make sure the contractors are doing what we want,” McGinn said.
McGinn explained that many Bowling Green residents have been supporting this type of program. “If you’re a Columbia Gas customer, you are paying a few cents a month,” for this program.
Bowling Green’s reputation for clean energy led to it being selected for the energy audit project. “Bowling Green is so on the cusp with the windmills and the solar,” McGinn said.
And that goes along with Columbia Gas goals, she added. “Columbia Gas is interested in reducing its carbon footprint.”
