Home & Garden...

We want an official audit of the energy efficiency of our house so we signed up for a free audit by National Grid (the utility formerly known as Keyspan).

I plugged in all the relevant information about our house into National Grid's Home Energy Analyzer. The results are posted above. I don't know if this is a real result or if it's just a Magic 8-ball type of thing that generates similar results for everyone. Regardless, the 3 repairs listed that would generate the most savings are:

• "Controlling air leakage" which we are preparing to do along with all the insulation work.

• "Replace the heating system" which we are not about to do (we installed radiant heating and an efficient central heating/cooling system a few years ago)

• "Install a programmable thermostat" which my husband did about 8 months ago.

So we're doing pretty well. The Audit is scheduled for September 3rd. I'm concerned that we'll "get what we paid for" with a free audit but I plan to review it with some experts who do this for a living and we'll let you know how it rates.

Oddly, improving insulation barely makes the list. Next I'll do the R-value calculations to see how much we can expect to save by doing the insulation work.

Stay tuned.