While making upgrades can enhance your home’s energy efficiency, it can be counterproductive if your existing appliances and systems aren’t operating at peak performance. To help consumers identify key problem areas, we asked five Diamond Certified Experts to weigh in on some of the most basic yet overlooked aspects of home energy efficiency.

1. Air sealing – Dustin Cook of D. Cook Construction
Air transmission is a major cause of home energy loss—it’s typically conducted through cracks, joints, and other gaps between the interior and exterior of a home. A simple way to address this is to fill in breaches with supplemental sealing agents like caulk and expansive foams. Read more

When shopping for solar panels, seeing the numerous products available on the market might get you thinking about quality. Is one panel really that much different than another? Is it really worth it to pay more for expensive panels? As with most products, where there’s a variance in price, there’s usually a variance in quality as well. Here are a couple of the major differences between high- and low-quality solar panels:

Panel degradation
One of the primary differences between expensive and inexpensive solar panels is the rate of panel degradation—that is, the amount of production efficiency the panels lose over time. Read more

The Diamond Certified Tip of the Day series was a big hit with consumers this year, providing useful information and advice for a wide range of topics across many different service industries. The series will continue in 2013 and beyond (with the addition of new media channels!), but in the meantime, here are 5 of the most popular tips from 2012. Look for Part 2 next week!

1. Solar
Before installing a residential solar system, take steps to ensure your home is as energy-efficient as possible. Install weather stripping around doors and windows, add new insulation in walls and attic spaces, switch to fluorescent light bulbs, or insulate your water heater and water pipes. Read more

Most homeowners have heard the advice to budget for 20 percent over what they expect to spend or avoid making additions once the work is underway, but many experts recommend more specific ways to save money on a remodeling project. Consider the following tips:

Time your job right. Contractors often charge more during peak construction times (summer and fall) because labor and material costs are usually higher due to increased demand. Schedule your job during winter or downtime in your contractor’s schedule to knock hundreds of dollars off your remodeling bill. Ask your contractor about off-season discounts or other money-saving scheduling arrangements.

Combine jobs. If you’ve been considering getting new windows, Read more

People have many reasons for switching to solar power, from rising electricity consumption and energy costs to growing concerns about the environment. Regardless of why you want to install a solar system on your residential or commercial property, there are numerous factors to consider before making a final decision. To ensure you’re as knowledgeable as possible when going through the process, consider the following tips and information:

Make sure you understand your utility company’s rates. In many areas, there are different “tiers” of usage and each has a different formula to calculate cost. Higher energy usage tiers have higher rates. In these schemes, you pay more as your energy demands increase. In the Bay Area, Read more

The savings with solar can be substantial for homeowners with electric bills topping $100 a month.  Randy Zechman, the CEO of Clean Solar, a Diamond Certified company, suggests the first step is to review your PG&E bills for the past 12 months to determine how many kilowatts you’re using and what you’re paying. This helps solar contractors, who have to be licensed, know which size system to install in your home.

Rather than depend only on a solar contractor’s representations as to the amount of energy a system will produce, ask for what’s called a solar production guarantee. Get this in writing along with the warranty. Mr. Zechman says you can still get federal tax credits and rebates from the state for installing a solar system. Read more