Asheville's Red Cross staff are top of the line when it comes to saving lives, but when it came time to save money on their energy bill, they found that they had a lot of room for improvement. The GO Team worked with Conservation Pros to perform an energy audit on the Red Cross building and find ways to lower their overall energy consumption. This was our first time working in this field and that made it a pretty interesting week for us.

One of the first things we learned about was how to assess the building envelope. The building envelope is the protective shell of a building that keeps conditioned air inside and everything else out. With the help of an infrared camera, blower doors, smoke pencils, and other auditing tools, we were able to locate compromises in the building envelope and find ways to raise the facilities r-value (resistance to heat flow). I knew that the Red Cross building was old, but I was still surprised by how many air leakages their were. We found openings around the whole attic where air was entering and exiting the building. Dollar bills were literally flying right out of that place!

Another thing we assessed was how much energy was being used to operate appliances. The Red Cross workers were pretty good about shuttting everything off when they left work, but some appliances still suck up energy even when theyre turned off. Take TVs for example,when you turn the average television set off, its still burning 50% of the electricity it would require while on. We learned that the best solution for that is to use surge protectors so you can completely power everything down with a simple flick of the switch.

Later, we flicked a light switch on in the attic so we could check out the building's elaborate network of HVAC systems. If the Red Cross building was the set for a vampire movie, those HVAC ducts would be perfect for them to be crawling around in as they search for the blood banks. I was dissapointed when Walt, the HVAC guy with the awesome infrared cameras, told me that in reality, a HVAC duct couldn't really hold that much weight. Not only did the air vents hold too little weight to film a good movie, they held too little airflow to operate at maximum efficiency. Many of the duct joints had not been sealed together, causing conditioned air to leak out into the attic instead of making its way down into the common rooms. Other ducts had been haphazardly sealed together using duct tape, which despite it's name, is not a good duct sealant. We learned that all of these problems could be fixed pretty easily, and would greatly boost the buildings energy efficiency.

We weren't there to see the changes made after the audit. But, after assessing all of the inneficiencies in the building, the audit team planned to formulate the cheapest, most efficiency boosting plan possible. After that, it was only a matter of time before The Red Cross was out of the electric bill red zone and into a world of greener opportunities.