That’s one leaky-ass house. (Photo courtesy of Essess.)
Forty percent of energy in the United States is used to heat buildings and homes. Only some of that goes to actually sparing your whiny ass from getting up and putting on a sweater, though. The rest — billions of dollars worth — just leaks out your windows and doors. But a new company could help you figure out where you’re losing energy and money, just by taking a snapshot of your house.
It’s pretty important that we step up our heating/cooling efficiency — because man, you weenies waste a LOT of energy while trying to ensure that the ambient temperature is exactly suitable for your delicate flowerlike skin. But so far, we’re not great at figuring out where we’re going wrong. The most common way to police a building or home’s particular level of resource-sucking is a blower door test, used to measure the airtightness of buildings, which, experts agree, is kind lame.
Now, a reasonable, cost-effective solution may have appeared in the form of a start-up called Essess (guys, maybe next time pick a name where reporters don’t have to fall all over themselves explaining that it rhymes with “recess,” not “S.S.”). Essess plans to take high-speed thermal scans of all residential and commercial structures. It will compile a data base of this information, and then give each building an energy score, which owners can use to consider how they can improve their efficiency. Plus it involves these sort of neato space-age pictures of your house that make it look like a scary molten alien.
So far, Essess has not figured out a way to scan people’s homes and print out a report to tell them how much of their furniture is so hideous it should be turned into kindling for efficient wood-based home heating, but we can dream.
