The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Every evening my local news channel flashes a pie chart on screen that gives the results of some type of viewer’s poll. If the subject of the poll interests her my wife will often say something like “Wow! Can you believe that? People are stupid! What were they thinking?” And while I will admit that it makes me take a second look myself, I quickly dismiss it. Results from a poll like this mean absolutely nothing. I love it when they show the pie chart with the little blue slice that tells you that 33% of the callers are in favor of something that you think is crazy. The part that they don’t tell you is that only three people responded to the question-2 against it- 1 for it. How scientific does that sound?

I think of this today after an online discussion (if you want to give it that much credit) that I had with an individual about weatherization. They commented on a picture I posted of an HVAC duct system that was full of trash. Pencils, barrettes, gum wrappers and other household junk that a little kid might play with were inside the duct…and it was filthy. The conversation quickly jumped from finding a contractor to clean their system to why the government would buy lazy people cellphones and duct cleaning. I personally don’t know if the government does either, so I jumped out of the loop. What I do know is that for the last two years the government has assisted low income citizens with the energy efficiency of their homes. Has it worked perfectly with no abuse? What do you think…it’s a national program?

Here is what I do know; of the 15,000 homes weatherized in Georgia I have only personally viewed about 200 in 20 of the 159 Georgia counties. There was a group of roughly 25 monitors hired by The University of Georgia that scrutinized 10% of the total amount of work done by the government. We talked to the homeowner, looked at the work done, and looked at their complete file. Did I see some abuse? Sure. Did I see some life changing results? Sure. Did I see a study with enough participants to be considered meaningful and scientific? I believe I did.

I am as guilty as the next person of condemning the typical recipients of government assistance. The people we all imagine are straight out off of the People of Walmart website; they are people that want something for nothing. But this is not what I saw. I saw elderly widows heating their homes with a gas oven that you could only stand to operate with the batteries from the Carbon Monoxide detector removed. I saw children of single mothers studying for tomorrow’s algebra test with a coat on and blankest nailed over door openings to keep the heat from a small electric heater inside the un-insulated room. I saw wheelchair bound husbands at home with the kids while the wife worked two jobs. I saw people without enough to eat that had two years ago had paid income tax of five figures. I saw someone with a Lexus in the driveway. I saw all of this in only 20 counties of 1/50^th of the United States.

So we want to know what works and what does not. There are several ways to find this out, but let’s look at two:

Bring up the level of insulation, air sealing and heating in people’s homes to modern standards using conventional fuels (gas and electricity). Study the results and determine what give the greatest payback. The homeowner saves money on the operating cost of their home for the life of the home. Pass these results to the average person that wants to save money.

Give billions of dollars to companies that want to manufacture expensive solar panels in the United States. If they fail, they simply file bankruptcy and you have nothing to show for money spent. Well you do have a pile of solar panels that maybe you could sell to the Chinese? I doubt it…give maybe.

We put men on the moon by trial and error; we didn’t just borrow the money and shoot them straight up there. By weatherizing homes and studying the results we accomplished two things. We brought many homes into the 21^st century and we found out what works and what does not. We completed our study and gave the gift that keeps on giving!

About this blog

The purpose of this blog is to bring a practical understanding of energy usage. Usage=money. To me it's that simple. You can't stop using energy completely, and I don't think any of us want to anyway. I love all of my gas and electrical appliances and toys and have no intention of not using them. But what I want to avoid is spending money unnecessarily to operate and enjoy them. Saving the polar bears and the ice caps can be just an added benefit...I want to save money!

This is a highly technical and polarizing subject. I have taken hundreds of hours of classes on this subject and I don't pretend to understand all of it; I'm not that smart. But I do know that even a little knowledge will save you money. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If replacement windows cut your power bill in half, you must have left them open year round. Closing them would have cut your bill in half. Even if they did cut your bill in half, would paying $3000-$5000(or more) to save $100 a month be a good idea? It would if you had money to throw away; but to most of us...no. The quickest savings will come when you spend the least amount of money. This may sound stupid, but what if a $5.00 tube of caulk saved you $5.00 on your first power bill. That would give you 11 months of profit! I know this is a small amount, but it adds up.

There will be times when you have to spend large amounts of money; nothing lasts forever. When you have to replace those windows or HVAC, this is the time to save. Getting a new HVAC unit for a tax break and a reduction in your power bill might not be the smartest idea. If it still functions you should consider making sure that it is functioning at it's highest level. Low efficiency can be compensated for (somewhat) by a good delivery system; the duct work. If you are losing half of your conditioned air to duct leakage all of the SEERs known to man won't save you that much. Sealing your ducts is do-it-yourself friendly and cheap. Insulating them is slightly tougher, but not much. The pay back on this one is fast and it will only compound itself when you have to replace the unit!

I would like to add one final and important note; don't let your politics keep you from saving energy. Don't do it for them, do it for yourself and your pocketbook! The government is full of ideas-some good and some bad. Ideas good-application bad. Buying a $40,000 electric car that essentially runs off of coal anyway is not very smart; the payback on that one is the day after...never! But I don't want to get started on these topics, I just want you to save money and use common sense at the same time! Don't be sold by a contractor and don't be sold by the government. Once again, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is!

Attic stairs

Insulating and air sealing the attic is of utmost importance here in the south. R-38 insulation is recommended in both flat and vaulted ceilings, but it won’t do much for the air infiltration/exfiltration that takes place between your attic and your living space. Blown cellulose does air seal slightly because of its weight, but it will not truly define the thermal envelope of your home. Top plates of walls, knee walls and HVAC penetrations are big culprits for energy loss, but one overlooked energy drain is the attic access. The photo below is of an uninsulated attic access taken with an infrared camera.

Many older homes here have a small (24”X24”) attic hatch that is often hidden away in a closet. These are relatively easy to deal with by weather stripping and gluing batt insulation to the attic side of the panel. If they are too light to fully compress the weather strip, adding another layer of drywall or plywood to the back side will help. The large pull down stair cases or “disappearing stairs” as architects like to call them can be tougher to deal with, but when properly sealed will make a tremendous difference.

Most builders or insulation companies will simply place an R-13 batt between the stairs and the cover panel. This makes little sense when you have an R-38 attic, but it is common. There are several commercial options available to seal and insulate the access that work very well, but some are rather expensive. An attic tent is good for providing an air tight seal, but has little R value. There are foam options that both air seal and insulate, but you want to be sure that what you install is tall enough on the attic side to hold back 13 inches of blown insulation (an insulation dam). If you are the least bit handy, building an attic “coffin” is the cheapest and easiest approach. One sheet of cheap plywood or OSB will do the job and you will find that it is much more rigid than the commercial options.

The coffin is a simple 5 sided box with a lift off lid. The weight of the top is heavy enough to compress the weather stripping and give a good seal. Be sure to make the sides of the box tall enough for the stairs to fold up in! This may sound like common sense, but it was my first mistake. Once you have sealed the attic hatch you can proceed with air sealing and insulating the remainder of the attic.

Homework 2: Duct Sealing

                                        Homework 2: Duct sealing

Since we breezed right through the air sealing mentioned in the previous blog, let’s move on to duct sealing. One of the things that I neglected to mention in the previous post was that some of the processes I am describing for saving energy in your home are based on living in central Georgia. Climates with different humidity levels would certainly be handled somewhat differently, but for duct sealing it’s all one in the same. The more conditioned air you keep in your home and duct system the less your unit will run and the cost to heat and cool will go down.

If you’re anything like me the understanding of how exactly a heat pump air conditions your home is a big mystery. You turn it on, a miracle happens, and cool air comes out of the registers! Really I understand a little more than that, but for duct sealing you don’t need to understand how the magic happens, you simply need the will and a few materials.  A bucket of mastic, 24”zip ties (two for each connection), a razor knife, foil tape (not duct tape!), a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a box of disposable latex gloves. All of which can be purchased for less than $100 at Lowes or Home Depot, but I prefer my local hardware store.

I would be glad to go in great detail about how to seal each and every connection, but really you just remove each connection, clean with alcohol and coat with mastic. If you liked making mud pies as a kid you will have no problem duct sealing. There are some great videos on Youtube.com and wxtvonline.org that will lead you through the process step by step and it is a homeowner friendly job. By sealing your system you will prevent air leakage in to (and out of) your home even when the system is not running.

What you need to think about when doing this job is that the air moving through your duct system is inside the envelope of your home. When you have leaks you are mixing outside (unconditioned) air with the expensive air you have conditioned. When your duct system is in the crawl space you are mixing in damp, potentially moldy air. When it’s in the attic you are mixing in insulation particles and very hot air. And don’t for a minute think this applies only to older homes and systems. 10%-35% leakage in systems that were new or only a few years old is not uncommon; I’ve seen them first hand. To sum it up-If you don’t have mastic on all duct connections you are giving money away! Time to play in the mud!

Homework

                                                          

The first day of Spring is right around the corner! Now we can spend a little time outside instead of looking out the window and saying, “boy it looks cold out there”. As bad as I hate to admit it that is what happens at my house. I tolerate cold weather, but the novelty does wear off eventually and I hate it. So get outside and enjoy the warmer weather and when you have a little free time…how about some energy saving homework!

Rebates and incentives are available from the power companies to throw you in gear, but if you’re like me you would rather do it yourself and not have a stranger looking at your junk. I can only say that my wife is collecting stuff for a yard sale so many times before it begins to sound stupid even to me, so let’s minimize outside labor. Here is a good way to get started. Turn on every appliance that exhausts outside the “envelope” of your home. This would be bath fans, range hood and clothes dryer. This will put your home under negative pressure (more air going out than is coming in) similar to what a blower door will do, but on a smaller scale. With a lighted stick of incense in hand walk around your home and test areas you suspect air to infiltrate. Suspect areas would be:

1.       *Doors and windows.

2.       *Plumbing penetrations in cabinets.

3.      *Fireplaces.

4.       *Light switch and receptacles.

5.       *Attic access.

6.       *Whirlpool tubs and shower stalls. (this will be covered in another blog about     dealing with the giant hole under bath tubs)

7.       *Duct registers and return grills.

If you don’t like using the smoke, just use your face. The skin there is very sensitive and you will feel the air moving against it, but the smoke is a great visual aid.

If you choose to use spray foam to seal some of the leaks you find, be careful. It takes a little practice to not get it everywhere, and once it’s on your skin, you will wear it for a while. Latex caulk is much easier to use because you can wash away your mistakes. If you choose to caulk larger holes, go at it in stages by allowing the initial application to harden and apply in layers.

This is the basic premise of air sealing. It is a homeowner friendly sport and it will save you dollars. Keeping the conditioned air in your home is very important and will save you money. Insulation alone will not hold the air in your home; it will only filter the escaping/infiltrating air. I will add that an official blower door test is a good idea for everyone. This will insure that you home is not too tight, but it has been my experience in the hundreds of homes that I have tested that few are too tight! In a future blog I will cover homeowner friendly duct sealing, attic and knee wall sealing and large hole repair. Until then….enjoy the changing season!

Pneumonia Weather

Georgia is a weird place to live in the winter. It will be so cold one day that your heat pump will run almost non-stop only to be followed by several days of weather so warm you will be tempted to run the air conditioner. It’s what old timer’s call “pneumonia weather”. Of course we all know that changes in temperature won’t cause pneumonia, but it does make keeping your house comfortable a challenge and figuring out how to dress a nightmare! No worries really, it will be so hot here in a few months that this dilemma will seem like a bad joke.

Your view on why the earth is warming is undoubtedly tied to your political beliefs, but there is real evidence that it is, whether caused by man or God. I really don’t think this has anything to do with the mild weather we have had this winter because I’ve seen many just like this one over the years and truly believe it is just part of some kind of cycle. But how we react to this change defines us all.

I commented on a Facebook post this morning for the sole reason of getting in the thread of comments that will follow. Anybody that claims never to do this either doesn’t use Facebook much or is lying…or there is the remote chance that I’m just crazy. “I had to turn on the AC and its February” is how the comment read. I really don’t intend to pick on anyone personally because most of us live in homes of similar construction, but if after one day of 75 degree weather you have to turn on the air conditioner, your home has problems. It is obviously not properly maintaining enough of the heating or cooling you are pumping into it; if it were a cooler, you would throw it away. The power companies make it seem cheap on their itemized bill and I’ve overheard people brag about it. “Ten dollars a day to live in comfort is cheap”. Maybe, but what if you had to put ten dollars’ worth of ice in your refrigerator to store food? What if you did this even when it was below freezing outside? That doesn’t sound cheap and it’s really the same thing.

I understand that if I were not a man (at my advanced age) I would feel differently on the issue of air conditioning. The mercurial body temperature of women my age and older is truly a sight to behold. I’ve gotten up in the night and witnessed my wife on top of the covers, spread eagle looking like she was taking a break in the middle of making a snow angel. Sorry for that image, but I do try to understand. I’ve often thought that having cold flashes would have been a much nicer way to end ones reproductive cycle, but unfortunately I don’t make the rules. If I were to ask what menopausal women did before one-touch climate control, the answer would be either “who cares” or “go to hell” and both answers have merit. But why not simply open the window, turn on the ceiling fan, and shed some clothes! I believe getting up and turning down the thermostat (while cursing life and your oblivious spouse) often brings as much relief as the temperature change itself. But honestly even if you must have air conditioning during these times setting the thermostat in anticipation of these events is not going to help anything; it will only cost you money.

When I built my current home the builder told me that my new windows did not come with screens. “You have to order them separately and they cost extra” were his exact words. Like any other red blooded American man I like to save a dollar anyway I can and at the time I was happy that my builder had tried to do so by not ordering the screens. But after three years of the HVAC running during moderate weather (spring and fall) to keep the temperature at a constant level, I knew I had to make a change. I will credit my wife for my knowing that I needed to make this change, but regardless of the reason the change was made. Luckily my builder still had the screens in his warehouse and I got them for free. I noticed that the boxes had my name on them so I asked him again why he had not installed them on my home when it was built. He didn’t seem to remember the conversation we had about the extra cost and reluctantly told me that by leaving the house closed up tight I would have less sheetrock problems; fewer “nail pops”. So I’m paying the power company roughly ten dollars a day, on top of my mortgage, just to keep my house looking nice? Not anymore; not when I don’t have to.

Living in Georgia, I understand the amount of time that one can live comfortably with the windows open is short. The key to staying comfortable in your home is simply keeping the air that you paid to condition air inside your home. With proper air sealing and insulation (and ceiling fans only when you’re under them) you will eliminate many of the days when you run the heat at night and the air conditioning in the day. Think of your home as a cooler, the tighter and better insulated it is the less ice you will have to buy.

Much of the need for temperature control is rooted in psychology and what we perceive as comfortable. In the winter you run in to a home that his heated to 68 degrees and start shedding clothes, but set it to 78 degrees (the summer AC temperature) and it feels like a sauna! Set it to 68 degrees in the summer and you’ll watch television in a coat! Bear some of the responsibility and dress accordingly. Don’t you remember the first thing your mother told you when you complained of being cold? “Put some clothes on!”

I know this is an over-simplification of energy usage and I meant it as such. I’ve taken many classes and I read books, articles and blogs on this topic whenever I get a chance.  Believe me when I say that fine tuning (and agreeing on) usage and savings is a science in itself. This is not a one size fits all topic and you will be second guessed at every corner. But a little here and a little there combined with a healthy dose of common sense will save you money and keep you comfortable.