Buildings, houses, our apartments — they’re always costing us money. And yet they’re a lot nicer than tents when winter comes. But how do you save money and also reduce the pollution coming from your house? A home energy audit can be a good first step.

You can have a home energy auditor come to your house to find where you’re wasting energy, what kinds of changes you can make in your home (even if you’re renting), and what steps can save you money or reduce your carbon pollution — or do both.

If Avista is your power company, you can apply at their website for a certified energy auditor to do a thorough and free energy audit. You can add a blower door test if you want for $100-$150 to look at how leaky the house is.

Avista’s waiting list is a few months long but is becoming shorter. It’s easy to sign up and well worth the wait (go to bit.ly/4bTNETj). The average self-paid audit in the U.S. is about $400. If your power company doesn’t provide this great service, look for an energy auditor who is certified by a nationally recognized organization and not trying to sell you something. Buyer beware.

Avista-contracted auditors will take about 1 1/2 -2 hours to inspect your house and will receive your past couple of years of energy usage before the appointment to help them prepare the report. They will listen to your concerns and questions to help center the inspection and tailor advice on future actions you can take. My wife and I, plus a number of friends who have gotten Avista energy audits, all found the auditors courteous, thorough and great at explaining things.

Infrared cameras help them check every room in your home from the attic to the basement for insulation efficiency of walls, windows, doors and electric outlets. They check whether light bulbs are incandescent, fluorescent or LED, and on the age and efficiency of your furnace, water heater, stove and fridge. Our inspection was much more thorough than I expected.

The report we received included infrared pictures and described areas needing improvement, areas that were fine and what we could do to fix problem areas, roughly estimating the cost for changes and savings both in terms of cost payback and carbon pollution avoided.

This is helping us prioritize our improvements. Some of our first actions? Finish changing to LED bulbs and modify the exhaust fan vent in our kitchen. It is surprising how much cold air is coming through that vent.

Our house is pretty well insulated, but we were surprised at the areas that the auditor’s infrared camera showed were leaky. Some will be easy to fix, others not so much.

We are now motivated to seal leaky doors, replace our ancient upstairs gas furnace with an electric heat pump and replace our ancient gas hot water heater with an efficient electric heat pump water heater. Those last two will cost more money than the easy fixes, so the financial payoff will be much longer, but our carbon pollution will immediately plummet. Both furnace and water heater are already far beyond their use-by date, so we’ll avoid them breaking down unexpectedly.

Summaries in the Avista inspections contain no information on the extensive rebates and income tax deductions now available from power company, state and federal sources. For most home efficiency and electrification upgrades, those incentives can cover somewhere from a small percentage to most of the cost of the job (go to bit.ly/49taRdt). For many projects, this means savings are much better than the audit states.

An example is a friend’s recent replacement of their gas hot water heater for a high-quality electric heat pump water heater. The total heater replacement cost without incentives was $3,000. With a 30% federal income tax incentive of $1,000, and an Avista rebate of $500, the final cost of the new heater was about $1,600.

Increased interest in electrification and efficiency has brought out scammers and folks with questionable backgrounds offering energy audits and contractor services. On the Palouse, we have some excellent area contractors who are likely to still be around after the job is done and rely on happy customers for referrals. Buy local and get multiple estimates.

That energy audit can be a good first step toward a more comfortable, cheaper-to-maintain house with increased resale value that pollutes our air less. You can be helping yourself, your community and our future.

Cantrell is a longtime Moscow resident and member of the Palouse chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby.