Your Questions
Asked and Answered
Q. What industry sector do you compete in?
A. Our industry is called “Home Performance” ...because we work to make your home perform to its optimal level of energy efficiency. After working with us, most homeowners find they get comfort and health benefits they never expected, while reducing their energy bills by 30-50%.
Q. What products do you offer?
A. Home energy audits and green energy remodeling for the residential marketing.While green energy remodeling is the term we use for our services, others in the industry call this work variously retrofitting or home-performance contracting. We are licensed General, Insulation, HVAC, and Solar contractors and also hold the necessary licenses to install PV and solar thermal.
Q. How long does the process take?
A. It depends. The audit typically takes 2.5 - 4.0 hours depending on the size of your home. After the audit, we will get you a complete and customized audit report showing you how your home performed, generally within 7 business days. We deliver your audit report over the web via a web conference or in a face-to-face meeting. You are under no obligation to choose us to complete any of the work indicated. That said, we are licensed contractors and most people do decide to work with us for their green energy-remodeling needs. A typical green energy remodeling project can take as little as 2 days or as long as 10 days to complete in your home. After the remodeling work is done, we’ll perform tests on your home to check that we achieved the improvements that we promised.
Q. What does a homeowner need to do to get ready for the Home Energy Audit?
A. Recurve asks the homeowner to make themselves available at the home for about 45-minutes at the beginning of the Home Energy Audit and 30 minutes at the end of the audit. The diagnostic testing takes anywhere from 2-4 hours in your home, depending on the size of your home and its complexity. We will need access to your attic and crawl space and will also need to access the heating and cooling systems in your home. In order to do energy modeling and to determine how much energy you are currently consuming and the potential for saving with Green Energy Remodeling - we will need access to your utility (gas, electric) bills for the past year. We’ll ask you to sign a release form to enable us to access your billing history electronically.
Q. Will I be able to take the results of the report to a contractor to do the work?
A. The short answer is yes. However, in many instances, you’ll need to take the results of the reports to multiple contractors to get the work done and find a general contractor to supervise the work. Because this process is complicated and time consuming, many homeowners choose to rely upon us not only for their Home Energy Audit but also for any of the Green Energy Remodeling that is recommended as a follow on to the audit. Remember that if you do contract with Recurve to do the Green Energy Remodeling, we will credit the cost of the audit back to you - so long as the remodeling work is booked within 30 days of the completed audit.
Q. I know my house needs ________________ (insulation, air sealing, etc.) - why should I pay for a Home Energy Audit?
A. The Home Energy Audit is an essential first step for any homeowner concerned about the comfort, air quality, or energy efficiency of their home. Your Home Energy Audit will confirm what you know about your problem and to discover if there are other contributing factors that need to be addressed. If you know you’re going to do some energy remodeling work anyway, in most instances the Home Energy Audit is a free service*.
*Schedule work with Recurve within 1 month of your Home Energy Audit, and the cost of your audit will be credited back to you by Recurve ... so long as you book it with Recurve within 30 days of the completed audit.
Q. What are permitting costs going to be?
A. There are no permitting costs involved with a Home Energy Audit. When it comes to the Green Energy Remodeling work done through Recurve, permitting costs vary depending on the scope of work and the cost of permits in your locality. We add a small fee to cover its time to file for and pick up the permit.
Q. How soon can I have the Green Energy Remodeling work done?
A. If you have a date in mind, let us know and we’ll get back to you. We typically schedule Green Energy Remodeling jobs about one month out to give us some time to engineer your solution and order the required components. Once we have your deposit and paperwork, we can lock in a time that works best.
Q. Why don’t I just get some solar panels?
A. Solar panels only affect one aspect of a healthy, comfortable, and energy efficient home, even though today’s building science tells us that the correct approach to being energy efficient is to first reduce your energy load. Then you use properly sized and efficient systems, like solar. Solar costs about $6,000-$8,000 per Kilowatt. By reducing your load and introducing efficient systems Recurve can often reduce your solar needs by a kilowatt or two. The cheapest energy is that which you never use. The golden rule is to reduce and then produce.
Q. I have moisture / mold issues.
A. Mold and moisture lead to serious indoor air quality issues. There are typically four different causes of mold in a house: a leak, a relative humidity issue causing condensation, water weeping through a basement wall, or inadequate ventilation (i.e. unventilated water vapor in a bathroom). Recurve will focus on what’s causing your mold/moisture problems and remove that source. We will determine and implement the most cost effective and sustainable solution to ensure you will always have a healthy home and mold will not return.
Q. I want to replace my windows.
A. Do you want to replace them because there’s something aesthetically displeasing about them or is it purely for energy efficiency reasons? Compared with replacing your windows, there may be other more effective measures to create a comfortable and efficient home that Recurve will prioritize for you as part of our energy audits. That said, Recurve is also an Authorized Serious Windows dealer and is happy to assist you with your residential window needs.
