These upgrades offer other benefits as well. Depending on the type of improvement you make, your home can have better comfort (warmer in winter, cooler in summer), fewer drafts, lower maintenance costs and effort, and improved security and fire safety–all of which increase your home’s value.

HES is easy to use, and it gives you the option of entering a few basic facts about your home, or a lot of detail. Starting at the HES top page, this is the general process you will go through to evaluate your house.

You may prefer to print out the input forms first and use them to collect information around your house before starting your on-line session.

1. Input your ZIP code.
The Home Energy Saver's top page prompts you for your ZIP code. Once you’ve entered it and selected "Go", the Energy Advisor will give you a breakdown of the energy use of an average house in your region, and the same house after energy-efficient improvements.
2. Input key facts about your home.

Below these initial results you'll find an input page with about two dozen basic questions about your home. Most of these you’ll be able to answer from memory. A few (e.g., energy prices) may require you to look up information in your records.

Answer as many questions as you can, and hit "start calculation" or "save answers". The Energy Advisor will recalculate the energy use and costs, this time based on your home. Now you have a breakdown of energy costs in your house, not an average house, and you can look at recommendations for saving energy tailored to your own home, ranked by payback time.

If you don’t or can’t provide everything that the Energy Advisor asks for, don’t worry–the software automatically adds in default values drawn from a database of typical housing characteristics. However, the more information you can give the Energy Advisor, the more accurate its calculations.

A note of caution: do not return to the key inputs page (using your browser’s back button) to edit the house description. Each time you press the submit button on that page you create a new session ID, and you no longer are editing your original session. Use the detailed input pages (described below) to edit a house description that already has a session ID.

3. If you want to know more about the specifics of your energy costs, go to the modules and enter detailed information.

Home Energy Saver performs detailed calculations for the energy use of your home’s space heating, cooling, and water heating systems, appliances, lighting, and miscellaneous energy use.

You can focus on any one of these areas by clicking on the particular module (via the blue links across the top of the page) that interest you, and filling in the blanks. For example, if your home has high winter heating bills you can enter more detail about the parts of your home that affect heating (roof, walls, windows, heating system, etc.). When you go through the detailed input modules, the Energy Advisor will calculate your heating energy use more accurately, and give you appropriate recommendations about energy-efficient heating improvements and suggest ways of insulating your home.

If you have the time, work through all the modules, and answer as many questions as you can. You may be surprised by energy guzzlers in your home that you didn’t know about. If you don’t have the time right now, look in the upper left hand corner of the page with your energy use results, copy down your session ID number, and log on again when you do.Each module will give you an option to "save" your results. When you've finished entering information you can select the "calculate" button to get your full results. The calcualtion is very detailed and will take a minute or so to complete.

A Few Hints

Some of Home Energy Saver’s modules request a lot of detail, and it’s likely you won’t be able to answer every question in your first session. That’s OK–we offer a printable list of all input questions, which you can answer at your leisure and later revisit your session and enter the updated house information.

Depending on how much time you spend collecting information about your house, it can take from 10 minutes to an hour to completely describe your house in the Energy Advisor. Generally, the more time you spend to accurately gather the information (measuring, checking product name plates, etc.), the more accurate your energy bill estimate will be.

Next steps: The Making It Happen Module

Once you’ve got your energy use breakdown, and you’ve read about the recommended energy retrofits, your next step is to figure out how to accomplish them. To do this, go to the "Making it Happen" module. There you’ll find information about how to select and where to find energy-efficient products, choose contractors, and find financing for home energy efficient renovation.

"Tips" gives you a menu of links at the U.S. Department of Energy, and other sites that can help you get the highest energy bill savings from your home and appliances.

The "products" link will take you to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web sites describing energy-efficient products that carry the Energy Star label.

"Purchasing" has links to mail order and online product vendors.

The "Installation" page provides links to consumer information from the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as help with choosing contractors.

You can find information on tax credits, energy-efficient mortgages, and sources of loans for energy-efficient home improvements on the "Financing" page.

"Examples" will show you Web links about new and existing homes that have been built or remodeled to maximize energy efficiency.

From the "Advice" page, you can send e-mail to an energy expert at the U.S. Department of Energy, who will answer your questions. You will also find links to utilities, non-profit groups, and state agencies that can help you with more information about local programs that promote energy efficiency, and relevant businesses.

Please click on the "e-mail" button and send us your comments about this site, including any problems you may have had, so we can keep improving it.

Many other questions can be answered via our help page.