The Greened House Effect - Latest Blog Entries

Spring Fever

Wed, 04 May 2011 13:42:00 -0400

Winter was tough – the sound of housewrap slapping in the frigid winds was a bit unnerving, but little by little we became aware of some of the consequences of our Deep Energy Retrofit.

Since the bulk of efficiency improvements had been made (in the form of the exterior spray foam curtain wall & new windows and doors), we were pleased to find that the house heated more quickly and kept its heat longer, meaning that the furnace ran less often. By spending some money up front and laboring so hard on the project, we had aimed to cut our energy bills, be more comfortable, and have better indoor air quality. It was clear that our energy bills were dropping dramatically, even though I’d decided to boost the temperature in the house to fulfill our “more comfortable” goal. But even though I raised the thermostat from 68°F to 70°F, our gas bills plummeted by nearly 70%.

We also found that the humidity levels in the house stabilized at a very comfortable 50%. Usually our humidity levels would drop into the teens during cold winter months, making the cold seem even colder. In the summer, humidity levels would head into the 70%+ range, making the heat seem hotter. Since we’d finally blocked all of those cracks and gaps in the house with spray foam and new windows and doors, humidity couldn’t escape the house in the winter, and couldn’t enter the house in the summer. This means that we’re more comfortable year-round while running the HVAC much less.

An UltimateAir RecoupAerator being installed

Still, that indoor air quality issue needed attention. With a drafty house, you’re replacing the air due to the many leaks in your home (albeit inefficiently). With all of those leaks sealed up, we were trapping indoor air contaminants and excess humidity, which could easily become a health hazard. We needed a solution, and we turned to UltimateAir and their RecoupAerator Energy Recovery Ventilator.

An Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) constantly cycles the air in your house, bringing fresh air in from outside and exhausting stale air from inside out. While it does this, it traps the energy (heating or cooling energy) from the outgoing air and deposits that energy into the incoming, fresh air stream. The RecoupAerator can recover 95% of the energy that would normally be lost through your old cracks and gaps. Plus, the RecoupAerator is the most energy efficient in its own operation of any ERV on the market.

With our stated goals of energy efficiency, lower energy consumption, comfort, and better indoor air quality met, we had another aspiration for our 70-year-old house. We wanted to upgrade the aesthetics. The exterior retrofit gave us that opportunity, since we needed to re-roof, re-side, replace windows, doors, gutters, and more.

Jeff installing siding - see the EcoStar roofing with the offset installation for a "cottage" look

The EcoStar faux slate recycled roof looks great – so many people ask us about our “slate” roof, not realizing that it’s a recycled rubber product. The Pro Via Doors and Windows gave us the opportunity not only to add super-efficiency to the openings in our building envelope, but also add pizzazz.

Pro Via Door's Signet Entry door in Cherry . . . see the Inspirations Art Glass insert . . .

We incorporated Pro Via’s Inspirations Art Glass series into the Signet front door, and then chose complementary designs in the casement windows of the new bays. We also ran that color theme to the small upper windows in the super-insulated addition and the addition’s door. The Signet entry door with Inspirations Art Glass made one neighbor stop in her tracks – “Oh, my! That’s gorgeous!” Matt, the contractor, remarked that he could see how it was “all coming together” when the front door was installed.

The color & design on the flanking casement windows of the bays -- they complement the Inspirations Art Glass on the Signet entry door

With spring arriving, I was finally able to get on to the siding. We would rest a lot easier once the house was sided and painted. For siding, we chose LP Building Products’ SmartSide Trim & Siding. SmartSide is an engineered wood product, meaning that it’s made from small diameter, rapidly regenerating trees. The trees are “stranded” and then laid into mats which are infused with Zinc Borate (environmentally friendly treatment against rot, decay, & bugs) and marine-grade resins before they’re subjected to extreme pressure and heat. The siding is then given a resin-infused overlay and priming.

The result is a product with a 50 year warranty that looks and acts like real wood – as an alternative to fiber-cement board (which I’ve installed a lot of over the years), SmartSide is lighter, stronger, and comes in longer, 16’ lengths. It cuts with standard woodworking tools and doesn’t create the kind of dangerous silica-dust that fiber-cement siding does. I found a set of siding gauges that allowed me to install the siding on the project alone – usually I would need an extra hand to hold up the other end of each 16’ piece. Instead, the Gecko Gauges clamped to the course below and then allowed me to gently set the piece for the next course before using a pneumatic nail gun to nail the piece in place.

That's me, using Gecko Gauges and a pneumatic nailer to install LP SmartSide solo . . . note the cedar relief on the lap siding

In about five weeks of my “spare time,” I was able to side the whole house. Sherri handled all of the painting, working right behind me to caulk & paint all of the SmartSide trim & siding. With the Sherwin-Williams Duration exterior paint we used, and the superior paint-holding power that SmartSide has, we don’t expect to have to re-paint this house for a long time.

With the fascia boards in place, we were able to get the gutters installed. Here was another opportunity to work on the overall traditional look of this old Cape Cod. We thought that the “cottage-style” faux-slate roof and cedar relief siding would be well complemented by half-round copper gutters, but the expense was too much to consider.

Above: The GutterSupply.com gutters being installed on the rear of the house

Below: The finished trio - EcoStar roof, LP SmartSide siding, and GutterSupply faux copper gutter

A quick look on www.guttersupply.com revealed that they had an aluminum half-round gutter that was painted to look just like slightly aged copper at a fraction of the price of the real copper half-rounds. GutterSupply.com also carries all of the brackets, downspouts, fasteners, and adhesives for the job, and they very expertly crated everything for shipping so that it arrived with no damage whatsoever. A local crew installed them for us, and the result is beautiful.

Jeff bends copper sheet into standing-seam panels for the Pro Via bay window roofs

Last on our list of aesthetic improvements were the bay window roofs. I got several quotes on having the metal roofs done in steel and copper – sticker shock puts it mildly. I decided that it was my chance to learn a new skill. With a downloaded .pdf file on how to bend standing seam roof panels on a metal brake, I borrowed Stalwart Construction’s brake, bought $300 worth of sheet copper at a roofing supply house, and set about roofing the bays in standing-seam copper. A little nerve-wracking working with expensive materials, but with a bit of patience, I got it all done.

As summer approached and the days warmed, we were finally able to put the back deck in order again and stand back to take a deep breath. While the interior of the house still had a long way to go, at least now the exterior was all buttoned up. Our 1940’s house now had a 21^st century shell. With the aesthetic improvements, we knew we’d have little exterior maintenance to do for the rest of our lives. We’d also brought the house up to its “curb-appeal” potential with the EcoStar faux-slate roof, Pro Via Inspirations Art Glass Windows and Signet door, LP SmartSide Trim & Siding, and GutterSupply.com faux-copper half-round gutters. Not to mention a bang-up job on those standing-seam bay copper roofs.

Above: The finished exterior on our Deep Energy Retrofit - note how the SmartSide, EcoStar, GutterSupply.com gutters, & copper work together

Below: The Wilson Family and our Deep Energy Retrofitted House

Come back next time as we embark on the interior finishes in the super-insulated addition, and as we plan out the interior retrofit of the basement. As always, keep an eye on our HD video series, and come back often for updates at the Greened House effect.

Curtain Wall Retrofit

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:43:00 -0500

Stalwart Construction finished on Friday. When Monday arrived, things seemed pretty quiet around the house. Except for that exposed housewrap blowing in the wind. My task was pretty clear: Get the curtain wall on the house before the winds of winter began to blow in earnest.

Jeff adds exterior curtain wall studs to the back of the house - note the new garage/office addition on the left.

Deep Energy Retrofit? What was I thinking?

What’s a curtain wall? In our case it’s a wall built onto the existing exterior surface of the house (walls & roof). I attached 2”x3” studs, on edge, right over the old siding. I screwed these through the old siding & sheathing, directly into the old studs underneath using 4” screws. These studs ran from the top of the foundation to the eaves. We had removed the aluminum siding that had covered the original redwood, but had decided to leave the redwood in place for a few reasons. First, the paint on the surface likely contained lead. Removing & dumping it would be hazardous. The spray foam would contain the lead paint, sealing it off from the elements. Second, the siding would keep the 2x3 studs from being in contact with the wood sheathing across its entire surface. Essentially, the relief of the lap siding held the stud out off of the surface so that the spray foam could expand behind each stud in most places, creating a thermal break. Finally, leaving the siding meant less overall waste off the site, so the siding was left in place.

Jeff applies FoamItGreen spray foam into the exterior curtain wall cavities (above & below).

After the 2x3 studs were attached, I applied the FoamItGreen spray foam insulation into the cavities, getting 2” – 2 ½” coverage. This gives us an extra R-14 to R-17 insulation value on top of the R-15 we already had in place, for an R-30 average.

Jeff installs LP OSB exterior sheathing.

With the spray foam in, I sheathed with LP OSB exterior sheathing and applied housewrap. Since we were “bumping out” the entire exterior of the house by about four inches, we were able to install new-construction windows from Pro Via. These triple-pane, gas-filled models will be a vast improvement over the old single-pane windows.

No regrets while removing the old, single-pane windows.

Eventually I’ll be installing LP SmartSide trim and lap siding, but I felt lucky just to get the house sealed up with house-wrap and the new windows before the first snow flew.

The way the house looked in January, after 4 months of Deep Energy Retrofit construction . . . (above & below).

The year ended with some chilly days closing things down outside. Third Sun Solar came by to officially commission our 4kW solar array on December 30^th, so we rang in the New Year with renewable energy. We still had a long way to go, but this winter would be the most comfortable we’d ever had in this house. Come back soon as we add an Ultimate Air Energy Recovery Ventilator, side with LP’s SmartSide engineered wood siding, install Guttersupply.com’s faux copper half-round gutters, and make lots of other improvements as we finish up the exterior at the Greened House effect.

Have a Nice Fall

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:32:00 -0400

The Friday before, Matt, one of the Stalwart Construction owners, said “Well, I guess all we have left is to install the bay windows and finish off the ridge cap on the roof, and we’re all done here.” I was instantly depressed.

For eight weeks the house had been a daily circus, with guys hanging off the roof, scaling ladders, and making all kinds of construction-related noise. I’d grown accustomed to having the Stalwart crew around – they’re all great guys, and they gave me the feeling that things were going to work out; that everything was going to be fine in the end. We were going to miss Matt, Travis, Rem, Patrick, & Jeff – the help, the noise, & their company. Heck, I realized that I was even going to miss Will’s “random singing events.” To be fair, I wasn’t going to miss one more round of Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything for Love,” but generally, I mean. Maybe it was just the impending loneliness talking.

Above: Matt, Travis, and I talk about the impending bay window install . . .

Below: Patrick walks across the frame . . . those are big holes in my house . . .

On a bright, crisp morning, the crew gathered for the last big task of installing the beautiful Pro Via bay windows. I’d gone back and forth about replacing these. I figured that they’d be pretty complicated to measure correctly, and that would pose an issue for Pro Via’s manufacturing. Still, these bay windows were some of the worst offenders in the house – they were cracked, rotted, and leaky, and if we weren’t going to replace them now, they’d never get replaced. So Pro Via had measured the windows themselves, and I had made scale drawings of the openings, figuring in things like the width of the interior wall, the thickness of the front brick “veneer,” and adding a little wiggle-room, just in case.

Above: The beautiful, and heavy, Pro Via bay window ready for installation . . .

Below: Hey! It fits!

I shouldn’t have worried. With the old, rotted, bay windows in a pile on the front lawn, I quickly insulated the frame with FoamItGreen spray foam insulation, air-sealing & adding about R-20 to the support framework. Then, with a few shims in place, the Stalwart Crew heaved-ho, and lifted the brand new, heavy Pro Via bay windows into place. They fit perfectly, and Rem went right to work getting them plumbed & level, and making sure they were securely fastened to the house. I came back through later and filled the gaps around the edges with plenty of spray foam, making sure we were really sealing up everything. I dreaded having to eventually figure out the exterior trim, but I pushed that out of my mind. That was my job, and it would probably have to wait for spring, since I had lots of other, more pressing, tasks before me.

Above: Rem & I hold on while the new bay window is slid into place . . .

Below: Nice work, everybody . . .

Not only were the new Pro Via bays a big efficiency upgrade, but they were an enormous aesthetic upgrade, too. We’d chosen art glass from Pro Via’s Inspirations Art Glass line for the side casements on the bays. It’s a simple design, but it complements the Inspirations Art Glass oval in the Pro Via Signet front entry door we’d chosen. Just another little detail, expertly executed by Pro Via, that worked to help make this old house become remarkable.

Above: Patrick installs EcoStar faux-slate ridge cap

At the same time, Patrick was finishing the last few details on the EcoStar faux-slate roof. He was very careful to make sure that the EcoStar ridge-tiles would stay put where they met the white WeatherBond TPO roof in the back. Once Patrick left, Stalwart Construction had finished their work on the Greened House effect.

Wasting no time, the guys from Third-Sun solar arrived to begin the installation of our photovoltaic solar array. First, they laid out the pattern for the stand-offs. These are the vertical elements that hold the frames for the panels off the roof. For our 4kW array, they needed to use 21 stand-offs, and this presented a minor problem. Each of the stand-offs would use two carriage bolts to connect it through the roofing & sheathing, and into the rafter below. This meant that each stand-off would put two small holes in my beautiful, water-tight, WeatherBond roof. It would be my responsibility as the homeowner to have a roofer seal each stand-off against the elements, but we’d basically spent all of our home equity money getting to this point in the process. I’d have to do this job myself.

Lucky for me, WeatherBond keeps an excellent video library on the installation of their products. They sent me “witches hats” which were used for roof perforations of any kind – like plumbing vents. I had plenty of TPO primer, adhesive, seam-sealer, and water-stop on hand from the roof install. While Third-Sun installed the stand-offs, I studied the install manual & on-line videos at WeatherBond, and they had me installing the witches hats like a pro in no time. That afternoon, after Third-Sun left, I installed all 21 witches’ hats, and we were ready for the frames and solar panels in the morning.

Above: Frames are attached to the now sealed stand-offs . . .

Below: Loading panels to the roof . . .

The panel install was quick. First, they installed the horizontal frame pieces to the stand-offs. Then they bolted the panels to the frames, wiring each one to the next as they went. Our system ended up with 18 panels which had to be spaced on the frames so that they didn’t cover the bathroom skylight or the main plumbing vent.

Above: The solar panels go into place . . .

Below: Wiring the solar panels together . . .

With the panels installed, they promised that an engineer would come by in the next few weeks to install the inverter, which would be the brains of our grid-intertied system. We’d have to wait to start harvesting electricity, but at least the panels were up where they belonged.

As the dust settled and October came to a close, I saw my “to-do” list grow considerably. First up, I’d be on the actual exterior “curtain wall” installation on the main house, which needed to be done before the snow flew.

Come back soon for more – see me install the exterior studs, FoamItGreen spray-foam insulation, LP OSB sheathing, and house-wrap . . .

The House Next Door

Mon, 17 May 2010 08:28:00 -0400

When the guys started arriving for work in the morning wearing winter hats and gloves, I had to reassure myself that things were really on track. Yes, the nights were cold enough for frost now. Yes, my coffee cup steamed a bit more when I stepped outside. Yes, the days were becoming alarmingly short . . . but we’re making progress, right? We’ll have a full roof by the time it snows . . . right?

Once the work began each day, though, it was easy to push all of that out of my mind. That’s one of the benefits of having way too much to do – you simply don’t have time to sit and contemplate your navel. Or obsess about the impending winter.

Pro Via Arrives!

This Monday, the beginning of the seventh week of our Deep Energy Retrofit, began at a run. Not ten minutes after the Stalwart crew arrived and hit the roof, the Pro Via van arrived with Conrad at the helm to install our new doors. Conrad brought his Dad along to help, and they didn’t waste a minute getting started. They installed the three new doors on the addition in short order, before moving on to the front entry door after lunch.

Above: Jeff & Conrad confer on the new entry door sill . . .

Below: Conrad installs the new Pro Via Signet entry door.

I wasn’t prepared for the change in the front of the house that the new door would make. It’s absolutely stunning. The door we chose is from Pro Via’s new Signet line of insulated fiberglass doors. You honestly can’t tell that the cherry-finish isn’t real cherry wood, it’s so convincing. We also decided to include an oval stained-glass window in the middle of the door from Pro Via’s Inspirations Art Glass line. The blue & green hues of the Inspirations Art Glass are a perfect complement to the rich cherry color of the wood. When Conrad finished with the Signet front entry door, Matt from Stalwart, who had been working on the EcoStar roof, stood back and commented that he could begin to see how it was all going to come together.

It's all coming together - the new Pro Via entry door and the EcoStar roof . . .

All of that beauty in an extremely energy efficient package – not only is the insulated fiberglass door super tight, but the triple-pane, krypton-gas filled glass is also second-to-none. The changes this door makes are positive, all the way around.

Above: Roof work continues as Stalwart installs more EcoStar faux slate tile . . .

Below: Donuts -- Vital Sustenance or the Food of the Gods? You decide . . .

While Conrad & his Dad were installing the new doors, Stalwart construction was hard at work continuing the EcoStar roofing install. They were making great progress, and hit the ridge by the end of the week. Every course of EcoStar tiles made me feel a little better about living beneath that roof, and not a day went by that someone didn’t stop and ask about our “slate” roof. I always had to tell them that it’s not real slate, but actually an 80% recycled rubber “faux” slate, which is much lighter, more resilient to hail damage, and more fire resistant. That, and it installs with roofing nails and a pneumatic nailer – much easier than traditional slate.

Above: Up on the Roof with the EcoStar install . . .

Below: Out with the old . . .

My work consisted of a laundry list of tasks. First, I prepped the bay windows for next week’s removal and replacement. I was glad to be taking off the old, rotted trim, and hoped that the new windows, so carefully measured by Pro Via, would fit well. With an old house, you can never tell until you actually get down to the installation.

Above: Jeff installs FoamItGreen spray foam insulation to the interior of the garage

Below: Exterior curtain wall installation begins with stud installation . . .

I also took the time to apply the FoamItGreen spray foam to the interior of the garage/workshop. The plan for FoamItGreen in the addition is to spray 2 ½” – 3” on the back side of the exterior sheathing, and then cover the spray foam with R-13 fiberglass batt insulation, giving us, roughly, an R-30 air-sealed wall.

Then I launched into the actual curtain-wall retrofit on the big, west side of the house. This is another of my “do-it-yourself” projects. I’ll be applying the exterior studs, spraying the FoamItGreen spray foam insulation, installing the OSB sheathing and house-wrap on my own, with help from my videographer-wife, Sherri. It seemed like it would be another journey of a million steps within our Deep Energy Retrofit saga, and I was taking, once again, the first few steps.

Keep an eye here for updates, and check back often. We’ll see you next time here on the Greened House effect!

Working On A Building

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:02:00 -0400

It may be an overused comparison, but major home renovation actually is a bit like child-birth, insofar as you really don’t remember the pain after the fact. Until Sherri pulled out some old photos, I’d forgotten about our big Halloween party from many years ago. The old pictures showed us preparing food on plywood countertops, bare light fixtures dangling from the ceiling, and the walls behind us stripped to the exterior sheathing – no plaster or insulation left after the big demolition of our kitchen in advance of a major overhaul. At that point we also had two very young daughters, too, which compounded the issues of living in a construction zone. Yet, there we were, throwing a big party in the mess. The most surprising thing about those old pics? We were actually smiling in the middle of the mayhem.

Our Deep Energy Retrofit was a little different, since we were sticking to the exterior of the house, but our nervousness about the impending winter weather constantly prodded us on. Nobody wants to get caught half-dressed when the gales of November come early. So it was with great relief that our sixth week started with Travis and Rem getting to work on the rear dormer roofing. Since we’d raised the pitch of the rear roof up to a shallow, 1:12 pitch, we would not be able to use shingles back there. We’d need a membrane roof to make sure it started and stayed water tight.

Above: Rem preps for the WeatherBond Weld-Free TPO installation . . .

Below: WeatherBond Weld-Free TPO roll on the ground . . .

Normally this would be a black rubber roof, but we wanted something more durable, since we would be installing our solar panels there. We didn’t want the roof failing before the solar panels had to be replaced in 30 years or so (our PV system is warranted for 20 years, but will likely last longer before out put falls dramatically).

Above: Travis rolls out the WeatherBond Weld-Free TPO

Below: Rem works (and lives) on the edge . . .

We decided to go with a more robust roofing, so we chose WeatherBond Weld-Free TPO. This roofing is multi-layered – it’s black underneath but white on top, and sandwiches in a mesh reinforcement, making it much thicker than traditional rubber roofing. This type of membrane roofing usually requires a commercial installer with a roof welder to seal the seams, but WeatherBond Weld-Free TPO doesn’t require a welder, using a system of seam- and edge-tapes with adhesives and sealants instead. This meant that any residential roofer who followed the directions properly could install the roofing without any special, expensive tools.

Above: Travis seals the seams with tape . . .

Below: . . . and white seam-sealant.

Travis and Rem cleaned the surface and laid out the WeatherBond system. They remarked often at how easy the WeatherBond Weld-Free TPO was to work with, compared with standard black rubber roofing. It didn’t wrinkle or bunch up, and didn’t shrink the way black rubber roofing can in time. The resulting surface was very sturdy and puncture resistant, which would be important as the solar installers started their work.

We also liked the white surface for our installation. This would help to keep the roof surface cool in summer months, when high heat can reduce the efficiency of solar panels. Keeping the surface cooler meant that the panels wouldn’t heat up as much, and the panels would continue to produce more power.

Above: Patrick installs drip edge on front roof . . .

Patrick and Matt kept at it on the front roof, installing the EcoStar tiles up there. We were glad to see all of the roofing go up, and we felt like the worst of our water woes were over.

By Friday, Stalwart Construction moved on to installing our Pro Via Windows in the addition. Installing windows is tricky, and needs to be done correctly to make sure water stays out, generally speaking. Should water get in, however, it needs to be able to drain away, so close attention is needed to make sure all of the pieces of membrane-tape overlap correctly and that caulk is used in the right places.

Above: Jeff waits for a window . . . note the FoamItGreen spray-foam insulation in the new wall cavities. This 2 1/2" of foam will be backed up by R-13 fiberglass batt for an R-30, air-sealed wall.

Below: Installing a window in the addition . . .

The Stalwart Construction crew was meticulous, following the rules to a T. They were able to install all of the addition windows that one day, and even installed the kitchen window on the main house. These high-quality Pro Via windows were a key ingredient in our recipe for Deep Energy Efficiency. Since we were building out the exterior walls by about 4”, we were able to replace the old windows with “new construction” windows instead of replacement windows, giving us full control over sealing our building envelope where the windows meet the house.

Above: Jeff & Rem apply the membrane tape to the kitchen window sill . . .

Below: The kitchen window opening . . . note the bats hanging from the ceiling, marking another Halloween where we experience the joys of home renovation.

We were happy to see the window installation – just another step toward being “dried-in” before winter started. On Monday, I knew that Conrad would be coming from Pro Via to install the new front entry door and the doors on the addition. As the week ended, I was reminded of how close we were to our yearly Halloween party, a tradition that has held on since the year we remodeled the kitchen. I realized that our guests would once again be able to experience a Wilson remodeling project up-close, and I was looking forward to telling everyone about the process of our Deep Energy Retrofit.

Check out our videos at www.youtube.com/greenedhouseeffect.com or here on our site in HD!

Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 08:10:00 -0500

My work spraying the FoamItGreen spray-foam insulation on the north was the first step in the actual Deep Energy Retrofit of the exterior walls on our old house. This step would ensure that our house was air-sealed from the outside, since the spray foam expands as it cures, invading every little nook and cranny. This was only the first wall of three that would get the “curtain wall” treatment – I would have to retrofit the large, west wall and the south gable end myself at some point later on.

The first full week of October was upon us, and we were still without a proper roof. We tried to be philosophical about the whole thing – it would all be over soon, right?Then we’d have a nice, new roof. Sure. Try telling that to yourself in the middle of a rainy night, as the blue tarps slapped and whipped at the house corners, and you’ll find it cold comfort. We needed to get the roof on, and we knew it needed to happen soon.

Above: OSB sheathing goes on the addition walls . . .

Below: LP's TechShield Radiant Barrier OSB Sheathing goes up on the roof.

Below: The TechShield viewed from inside the addition . . .

Before the roofing could start, however, Stalwart had to finish the sheathing. That was well underway Monday morning, with both the OSB wall sheathing and the LP TechShield Radiant Barrier OSB roof sheathing quickly covering the studs.

About lunchtime the Pro Via truck arrived to deliver our new windows and doors. I was glad that we had the addition roughed in so that the professional, triple-pane windows and high-end fiberglass doors had a place to live while they waited for installation. This addition to the Deep Energy Retrofit was crucial – the windows from Pro Via have an actual R-value of R-9. Compared with our 70-year-old single pane windows, we were expecting a huge savings in energy. On top of that, though, the new windows and doors look fantastic, making sure that we were not only updating the building’s energy efficiency, but also making the home beautiful in the process. Pro Via also offers Inspirations Art Glass in their windows and doors. That would bring even more beauty to this Deep Energy Retrofit. Deep Energy Efficiency, beauty, durability, and distinctive style – Pro Via was helping us to bring all of these things together.

Toward the end of the day, Sherri snapped this shot of the guys working on the addition roof sheathing.

If you look closely, in the top left corner of the picture, you’ll see me up underneath the blue tarp, working on the rounded dormer trim that needed to be in place before Stalwart Construction could put the rubber roofing on. I spent more than a few days under the tarp this way as the dark clouds rolled in and out.

As the week wore on, showers dotted the schedule. Nothing much, but enough that we had to be constantly wary. Still, Stalwart got right to work with the roofing as soon as it was possible. We were excited to see how the EcoStar faux slate roof tiles would look off of the pallet, and up on the roof, but first the crew needed to install the underlayment. This meant EcoStar’s GlacierGuard at the roof edges and corners, and EcoStar’s AquaGuard across the whole surface before the 80% recycled rubber slate-like tiles could be applied. The end of each work day found us re-tarping what had been uncovered that morning – the process of un-tarping each morning and re-tarping in the afternoon was a tedious, if necessary, job. We were all looking forward to that new roof.

Above: Patrick & Travis install the GlacierGuard

Below: Travis tarps the roof for the night . . .

By Thursday, Matt and the crew were ready to start installing the roof tiles on the addition roof. Matt and Patrick worked the tiles, pre-bending and installing them in a staggered pattern, while the rest of the guys prepped the main-house roof with the GlacierGuard and AquaStar. As the roof tiles went up, the neighbors began to stop by more frequently, and even strangers would stop to ask about our new “slate roof.” It was interesting how many people thought it was real slate – a testament to EcoStar’s attention to detail with their product. According to EcoStar reps I talked with, the molds for the tiles were actually taken from real slate samples, giving EcoStar an amazing edge detail that was randomly varied throughout.

Above: Matt installs EcoStar AquaGuard underlayment

Below: GlacierGuard goes on main house roof . . .

Above: Matt installs the EcoStar roof tiles . . .

Below: Installed tiles -- note the 1" offset reveal. This will help to give the house a "cottage-like" feel once we're finished

Below: Noon on the first day of real roofing -- here comes the rain again . . .

Matt and Patrick installed the EcoStar tiles using stainless steel roofing nails – since the EcoStar tiles have a 50 year warranty, the nails and underlayment would need to last as well. That’s one big reason EcoStar provides a whole system for roofing, including not only the tiles, but also several underlayments and the stainless nails.

Above: Drip, Drip, Drop little October Shower . . .

Finally, our luck with the weather ran out. A big storm came up overnight on Thursday, dumping tons of rain on the tent that was our house. Even though we had all paid close attention to those tarps, constantly setting and resetting them against the wind, they were simply no match for the storm that hit us. I woke up at 3am and checked key spots in the house – everything was dry. But when I got up at 7am, water was leaking in above the back door, above the front door, and through the glass-block garden window in our bathroom. We quickly tarped over the trouble spots and then went about cleaning up.

Considering how long we’d been living under the tarps, we’d been lucky, but we didn’t feel very lucky that day. The interior damage was slight – the living room ceiling had some slight drywall damage, and the garden window would need some skim-coating and new paint. We were able to get dried out, and I figured that I’d just add those drywall fixes to the list when we finally get to the interior work on our Deep Energy Retrofit. Still, it made me uneasy to know how exposed we really were. Worse than that, where had water gotten in that we couldn’t see? It was all a bit unnerving.

Damp and tired, we limped into the end of the fifth week of work on the Greened House effect. I tried to look at “the big picture” – that we would, at the end of this project, be more comfortable, save money, and help to fix our society’s Economic, Climate-Change, and National Security problems. It was a tough sell. We found better comfort in our usual rituals. We cooked a big meal with friends, drank a beer or two, and spent time laughing and talking about anything but our big, self-inflicted project. Here’s to better luck next week.

Simple Addition

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:06:00 -0500

Work on our Deep Energy Retrofit charged ahead. As we headed into the fourth week of work, Stalwart Construction started by erecting the main ridge beam across the new workshop/office/garage addition. The beam, a Louisiana Pacific LVL (laminated veneer lumber) was a double, 16” affair to which LP SolidStart I-joists would be attached as rafters, giving us a vaulted ceiling in the office.

Above: The LP LVL ridge beam is hoisted into position . . .

Below: Travis marks the ridge beam for rafter hangers . . .

Why a vaulted ceiling? Since we weren’t adding a lot of square footage to our 1000 sq ft house (only a total of about 350 sq ft), we wanted enough room in the office area to put in a sleeping loft so that it might be useful as an extra bedroom as well. We wanted the space to be multi-purpose, but also wanted to create a unique space. The engineered lumber from LP made the tall walls and vaulted ceiling very straight compared with standard lumber.

Above: Patrick installs rafter hangers to accept the LP SolidStart I-joists . . .

Below: Rem cuts blocking for the rafter ends . . .

The Stalwart crew worked hard to pull things together, since we were starting to experience frequent rain delays on the job. What should have been a quick frame-out of the addition was dragged out by these unexpected delays.

Will installs the exterior curtain-wall studs on the exterior of the north side of the house . . .

My work on the rounded dormers on the front of the house continued, readying them for the roof install once the addition was framed and sheathed. I worked underneath the big blue tarps, only loosening them a bit so that I could sneak up underneath. The weather was too “iffy” to do more. On the north side of the house, where the addition was being built, Will started the exterior retrofit on the main house. While I had originally wanted to do all of the exterior retrofit myself, I’d been called out of town on a shoot, and had to ask Stalwart to step up to the plate. Will added the first of the 2x3 exterior curtain-wall studs to the old wood siding, prepping the area for me to come in with the spray-foam.

Above: Will works on the north side retrofit . . .

Below: An LP LSL (laminated strand lumber) stud is measured for the addition walls . . .

With the front rafters in place, the crew quickly framed in the rest of the walls with the LP SolidStart LSL studs. We were finally getting a look at what we had only seen on paper. We began to imagine using the space, even though we knew that the interior work was still months away. All of that, we had decided, would be done on our own so that we could apply our “creative-frugal-unique” technique to every detail to make it a one-of-a-kind space.

Above: The walls go up in the addition . . .

Below: A photo taken from "inside" the new addition . . .

That weekend gave me a chance to apply the first of the FoamItGreen spray-foam insulation to the exterior walls. As I worked, I could see the foam expanding into every nook and cranny, filling cracks and gaps I could see as well as many that I couldn’t see. This is a key component in our Deep Energy Retrofit project – using the FoamItGreen spray-foam insulation meant that we would be bringing our building envelope up to very high standards. Our house would become nearly as tight as a brand new home, thanks in part to the expanding spray-foam insulation layer we were adding to the entire exterior of the house.

Above: The north wall retrofit in progress . . .

Below: I apply the FoamItGreen spray-foam insulation to the curtain wall cavities . . .

And what’s next on the agenda? Sherri and I were praying daily that we’d be spared any really bad weather and that the roof work could begin. My original plan had been to get the house “dried in” by the end of two months. If the weather cooperated, we might make it, but October in southeastern Ohio is notoriously difficult to predict.

Come back soon for more of the Wilson family’s Deep Energy Retrofit. Watch as we bring our 70 year-old home up to date in both energy-efficiency and curb-appeal!

Framed

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:39:00 -0500

At the beginning of the third week of work on our Deep Energy Retrofit project, the weather forecast began to fluctuate. What had been several full weeks of clear-as-a-bell days started to deteriorate. While we had sheathing on our new roof, we didn’t yet have any underlayment or real protection from the elements. Two large blue tarps covered our entire house, and I tried to convince myself that we’d stay dry.

Travis and Jeff install LP SolidStart I-joists . . .

Framing of the garage continued in earnest. With the first floor framed, Stalwart Construction continued, adding the Louisiana Pacific SolidStart I-Joists for the floor of the upstairs and installing the LP TopNotch sub floor on top of that.

Will lends a hand on the I-joist install . . .

At one point, an elderly neighbor stopped by to watch the work, and shook his head, saying, “You couldn’t get me to use particle board like that on my house.” I quickly corrected him – the engineered lumber we’re using on our project bears little real resemblance to “particle board.” The high-tech engineered lumber from Louisiana Pacific is not only stronger, straighter, and free of knots and blemishes, but it’s also a much “greener” product than traditional lumber. I stopped my work on the arched dormers for a minute to explain just how different today’s engineered lumber can be.

First, while “particle board” essentially relies on glue to hold sawdust together, true engineered wood products use “strands and fibers” which are oriented in different directions (OSB stands for “oriented strand board) locked together with safe, low-emitting resins. Since these products are manufactured in a factory, there are no defects – like knots, twists, or voids – like you’d find in traditional lumber. Also, the moisture content of the products can be controlled, meaning that engineered lumber is more stable over time, meaning, for example, that your joists and sub-flooring won’t lose moisture and shrink over time, resulting in a squeaky floor.

Also, as a manufactured product, engineered wood is stronger, meaning we’ll need to use fewer pieces to achieve the strength in the structure that we need. As a bonus, they’re straighter, meaning that walls and ceilings will be straighter, too. This is especially important in tall walls and vaulted ceilings, like we have planned in our upstairs office space.

Finally, engineered wood products are a “greener” alternative to traditional lumber, since it uses smaller diameter, rapidly regenerating trees instead of trees which might take 50-100 years to reach maturity. Some of the materials can even come from what might have been considered “waste” products in years past.

Louisiana Pacific goes one step further, using third-party certified sustainably harvested wood in their products. They’re also working, for example, with government biologists in Canada to ensure species like the threatened Mountain Caribou can thrive in the managed forests where LP takes their raw material.

All of this together – the superior strength, stability, uniformity, and “green-ness” of Louisiana Pacific engineered wood products – is what made me choose LP SolidStart I-Joists, OSB and TechShield OSB sheathing, TopNotch sub floor, SolidStart LSL studs, SolidStart LVL beams, and SmartSide Siding & Trim. My elderly visitor was impressed by what I had to tell him – he told me that he was glad to hear I wasn’t using particle board.

The week was hit and miss, work-wise. Rain would threaten and then not materialize, or no rain would be forecast, and some would come. The most frustrating part was that the forecasts seemed to change every hour, and were never right. What should have been a quick-frame of the addition was drawn out by missed days, and Sherri and I were sleeping with one eye open, listening for rain on our little blue-tarped house.

Above and below: Travis and Matt install TopNotch sub floor . . .

Still, the Stalwart guys got the lower floor of the garage framed, sheathed, and the sub-floor on the second level. The LP TopNotch sub-floor is made to be exposed to the weather during the construction process, so I didn’t have to worry about the inclement weather.

I continued on my arched dormer retrofit, using the jig I built on the back deck to cut arched sheathing pieces with my router. I’ll likely just leave this jig in place until I’ve cut each piece of final trim – a job which is likely months away. I had found that I could sneak up under the blue tarp on the front to work on the dormers without having to remove the tarps. This meant I could continue my work leading up to the start of roofing.

Jeff loads in the EcoStar roofing materials . . .

Speaking of roofing, on Friday we took delivery of the WeatherBond TPO roofing which will go on the rear, 1/12 pitched roof surfaces (which will hold our 4kW solar array), and the EcoStar faux slate product, which will go on the steep front slopes. With the EcoStar stacked on palettes in the front driveway, people began to stop by and ask about the “slate” we were going to install. EcoStar looks so much like slate that nobody guessed it was made from 80% recycled rubber.

Living under blue tarps, praying for clear skies . . .

At the end of our third week of work, I was getting nervous. The weather forecasts were unreliable and shifting, and I worried about water through the tarps and into our house. With September drawing to a close, I worried that we’d have enough nice days to get the whole thing “dried in” before winter. Still, there’s little to do at this point but to keep at it, one step at a time.

Next week, the addition takes shape . . . stay tuned!

While The Sun Shines

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:35:00 -0400

I worked through that first weekend, making sure that things would be ready to roll on Monday morning when the crews came back. Retrofitting the arched dormers took time, and I had to make lots of little decisions as issues reared their ugly little heads. The weather was cooperating, though, with hot, dry days and clear nights.

Monday morning things picked up where they left off. Ben Stolzfus’ concrete guys got right to work, pouring the slab for the garage/office addition. By the end of the day we had a new driveway as well.

Stalwart Construction finished up their work on the rear dormer shed roof modification, which meant my work, adding the insulation, was up next. They moved on to the front roof retrofit while I insulated the rear roof. The front roof is a steep, 12/12 pitch, so everyone working up there used harnesses and ropes. The approach up there was to apply 2”x3” external studs to the existing roof using countersunk 4” screws. We applied the new framework right over the shingles. This would mean that the applied Foam It Green spray foam insulation would bond directly to the old shingles, saving a big load which would have normally headed to the landfill. Our approach, after then re-sheathing with LP TechShield OSB, would add 2” – 2 ½” of closed-cell foam insulation to the entire front roof face. This adds R-14 to R-17 to the existing R-30 to R-40 already in place, which makes for a very well insulated, air-tight roof – just what we’re after in our Deep Energy Retrofit project.

Patrick retrofits the front roof . . .

While the Stalwart guys attacked the front roof, I got acquainted with the Foam It Green spray foam insulation on the rear roof. I’d installed R-19 fiberglass insulation, paper side down, into each of the 9 ½” deep SolidStart I-joist rafter wells. Then I laid a craft-paper barrier on top of the pink fiberglass, after which I sprayed in about 3” of Foam It Green spray foam insulation. This gives our new shed roof about an R-40 rating, and since it’s essentially covering the old roof structure up there, which already had R-19 in place, we’re looking at a near R-60 in that part of the roof.

I was originally a little anxious about using do-it-yourself spray foam kits, since I’d never done anything like that before. As a company, Foam It Green has excellent resources for showing anyone how to apply their products, including videos on their web-site, www.foamitgreen.com. Their customer support lines are available 24/7, too, if you need it. They were able to help me plan my project and the amount of foam I would need, and I got tons of very expert advice on technical issues from one of their reps, Janelle. She was able to answer my questions about how much foam to use and where to use it, advocating a “not too much” approach that told me they were more interested in making sure we used the foam in an efficient way. In the end, I followed their instructions and found that the kits are very simple to use, and I got the hang of spraying a fairly even coat in the first few minutes (look for a foaming video and a blog discussion of best practices in using spray-foam insulation coming soon!).

Above: Travis completes the external stud installation on the front roof

Below: I fill the voids between the studs with Foam It Green spray-foam insulation

The Stalwart crew finished installing the curtain-wall roof studs about the time I finished with the foaming of the rear roof. I just moved my foaming set-up to sit on the ridge, put on my climbing harness and rope, and “Foamed-It-Green” on the front of the house, too. Before the TechShield sheathing went up, lots of people stopped to tell me that the spray-foam looked a bit like snow or cotton-candy up on the roof, giving the house either a “Christmas in September” or a “Hansel & Gretel” appearance. I was looking forward to the energy savings we would be enjoying for many years to come.

Above: Will measures for the TechShield sheathing install

Below: The "radiant barrier" side goes down . . .

The Stalwart crew is close on my heels with sheathing the front roof . . .

Travis lent me his flush-cut hand saw to knock back the few places where I’d applied a little too much foam. The flush-cut saw was the perfect tool for this job, and I ran out that afternoon and bought one for myself. This job made sure that, as they sheathed the front roof, that none of the foam would protrude too far and interfere with the sheathing installation.

Above: Finishing up the TechShield OSB sheathing of the front roof

Below: You can see the new retrofit foam on top, and also some foam I used to seal the rafter tails and sill on the old construction -- this was a major leak which was brought to our attention during our HERS rating. Thanks, Foam It Green -- leak plugged!

As the week closed, Stalwart moved on to the addition framing. We were glad to see the old, rotted garage go, since there had been a good chance of it collapsing ever since we bought the house eight years ago. We were only adding about 350 sq ft to our house, but we had shoehorned four people and two businesses into 990 sq ft, so the new space would be welcomed. Our decision to add the square footage didn’t come lightly – Sherri and I have always been “small home” people, believing that smaller homes are more energy efficient, less expensive to maintain, and easier to clean. Long before Sarah Susanka published her “Not So Big House” series, Sherri and I believed in Sarah’s concepts of using space wisely first, before considering “bump-outs” or, finally, small additions. Our home simply could not provide the workshop and office space we needed, and we felt like we could justify a small addition and still be well below the average American new-home size of 2500 sq ft.

So, small addition it is. The lower section will become our workshop – not exactly a luxury for two people who make part of their living with their hands. I’m enough of a carpenter to need space to work (and sometimes a workshop “set” for how-to videos), and Sherri had been creating her unique wine-bottle art in the backyard. This meant that she could really only produce her art when the weather was good, which meant that she typically couldn’t work most of the winter. This would mean a warm, dry, secure place to work and keep our tools.

The upper section will become our office, which will house our small-but-growing production company, little blue house productions. We’d be up-grading from a 10’ x 10’ box with two desks, two file cabinets, and multiple shelves and racks. It will be wired for sound and video, and have a separate electrical circuit for our computers, sound, and video gear. The space will be large enough to have our desks and workstations and also include an area where clients can sit and watch versions of our latest projects on a wall-hung HDTV. Once the kids leave home, it might even double as a “mother-in-law” apartment.

That's me on the left, trying to help the Stalwart guys with the "big wall"

It was gratifying to see the walls come up that week. We’d so carefully designed the space to make sure we only pushed out one wall of the original footprint by 6 feet, and we could now get a feel for how our new space would work. When it’s done, we’ll also enjoy a super-insulated, airtight structure where there used to be a very leaky sieve.

Brian from Third Sun Solar gets a tour . . .

The work was happening fast, with big changes every day. Sherri was scrambling to make sure she was getting plenty of HD video and still pics of all the action, which frequently was happening all at once. She was learning what the production industry term, “run-and-gun” really meant. At one point, Brian from Third-Sun Solar stopped by to finalize plans for our photovoltaic solar system, and I had to come down off the roof to meet with him. While it seemed like the solar install was a long way away, I knew it would creep up on us.

Me? I worked through the weekend again, reminding myself that, in a couple of months, most of the hard work would be done and we’d be on to things like siding and trim. With the weather staying on our side, I had little to complain about, except the normal aches and pains of physical activity. I was looking forward to seeing the addition framing finished up so we could get a roof on before any bad weather hit, and I knew our time was limited on that front.

We’ve only just begun our Deep Energy Retrofit, with much more to come. Want to see how we transform our 1940s kit home from energy hog to miser? Want to see us bring the exterior into the 21^st century while keeping its Cape Cod charm? Want to see what happens along the way? There’s a lot in store, so stay tuned!

The Journey Begins

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:56:00 -0400

Leading up to the first day of work, semi-truckloads of materials would arrive, and it got to the point that I could hear the deep rumble of the loads as they turned up our street. I knew that we were in for it – most of the semis are set up to deliver to lumber yards, where there’s usually a forklift or two around to unload. In our case, it was usually just Sherri and I standing there when the loads arrived, and the drivers would grin and shake their heads. “Okay, let me know when you’re done so you can sign for it.”

The whole family gets in on the act . . .

Loads of SolidStart I-Joists, LVL and LSL studs and beams, TechShield Radiant Barrier OSB, and SmartSide Siding & Trim from Louisiana Pacific began to pile up in the backyard. A pallet-load of Foam It Green spray-foam insulation kits weighing nearly a ton appeared on the driveway. Three pallets of roofing materials from EcoStar and WeatherBond came one afternoon. All of it needed to be moved to the backyard where it would be safer, and all of it had to be moved by hand, since no heavy equipment would fit back there. By the time it all arrived, we’d covered every square inch of yard with loads of building materials.

Breaking up the old driveway and slab . . .

When I told everybody that we wanted to start building on the day after Labor Day, I guess I didn’t expect them all to show up at once. Sometime just past 7:30am on September 8^th the work began like a cannon shot. Matt, Will, Travis, Rem, Patrick, and Jeff from Stalwart Construction showed up first, wasting no time getting started on the rear shed roof dormer retrofit. Shortly after, Ben Stolzfus and his crew arrived to start the workshop/office addition concrete foundation work. When I got back from walking the kids to school, Tony Trace was there loading the small dumpster on his truck – Tony’s truck and Ben’s dump truck and front end loader were inches away from each other, belching diesel fumes. They all seemed to be competing for the “loudest” prize, but I think the loader won as it pummeled the old concrete into submission. Every kid in the neighborhood wanted to stop and watch the heavy equipment work.

Prepping the old shed roof to raise the pitch . . .

It was quite a show, and it was clear that there was no going back. The Stalwart guys began prepping the rear shed roof dormer, taking off what they needed to in order to build a new, flatter roof above the old pitch. They’d be raising the pitch from a 3/12 to a 1/12, in order to mesh the old structure in with the new addition, of course, but also in order to give the new solar array a better, more southerly facing. Lucky for the guys, they’d be using Louisiana Pacific’s SolidStart I-joists for rafters – these engineered joists are much lighter (and stronger and straighter) than dimensional lumber. I knew that we’d have a good, strong roof to hold the solar array plus whatever snow might accumulate there in a hard winter.

Rem loads a SolidStart I-Joist to the roof for installation . . .

Insulatiing the concrete slab . . . harder to do after it's poured, right?

The Stolzfus crew quickly removed the old concrete slab, which didn’t even have a foundation, and was badly cracked and heaving. Our new slab would not only have a proper foundation, but I’d asked Ben to make sure that the slab was insulated underneath, using 4” of foam board, and that it was a “floating slab.” This means that the slab is interrupted with some foam board insulation before it reaches the foundation wall, minimizing thermal transmission from the ground outside, through the foundation, and into the slab. Since we wanted to be able to partially heat our workshop (we’ll likely keep the temperature above 55°F during the winter so that we can work comfortably in a sweater), we wanted to make sure it was well insulated from the ground up, and the concrete slab and foundation can wick a lot of heat out of a space in a hurry if they’re not properly insulated.

Rem & Patrick install SolidStart I-Joists as rafters on the new shed roof . . .

I donned my toolbelt and made sure everybody had what they needed. Those first couple of days my time was spent putting out small fires and answering questions – where do you want these wires to go? What is the level of the slab going to be? How do you want the new driveway pitched? But I had decided during the bidding process that I would not be able to afford to pay to have every job done, so I had taken on several things myself. First, I’d be doing all of the spray-foam insulation. It made sense for only one person to do this job, since I really didn’t want two spray-foam kits open at once. Also, I wanted control of making sure every little nook and cranny was filled with foam – any hole would compromise the building envelope, and I was serious about having a very tight house when we were done.

That's me, retrofitting the arched dormers in front, trying to keep up with Stalwart . . .

I also took on the task of retrofitting the rounded front dormers on the house. They really add a lot to the house, and I knew that the retrofitting process would be time-consuming. I had partially restored the dormers once before, about seven years ago, so I already had experience making the jig with my router on the back deck to cut the various arched pieces of trim and crown mould. This time, I’d be adding the “curtain wall” to the arched roof, sides, and front of the dormers, and it would take a fair amount of time to get it right without compromising the charm of our little blue house.

When I told Matt Cooke, one of Stalwart’s owners, that I wanted to take on these tasks he said, “Look, I don’t mean to doubt your abilities, but I don’t want to be slowed down waiting for you to finish something so that we can move ahead. As long as we agree on that, I’m fine with it.” Now, there are usually five or six Stalwart guys working at any given time, and only one of me. Add to that the fact that they’re all 10-15 years younger than this 42-year-old, and I knew I’d have to be on my toes. I was right. Timing things so that I was out of their way and completing my tasks on schedule kept me running. Since the pitch of the front roof is a steep 45°, I spent many days in my old climbing harness, swinging off of a safety line, trying not to drop too many tools on innocent bystanders below.

That's Will, loading a SolidStart I-Joist -- while singing "The Gambler" at the top of his lungs . . . I'm thinking of putting together a mix tape of Will's jobsite songs when the dust settles . . .

Here's what things looked like after the first four days of work . . . good progress while the sun shines . . .

At the end of the first week, things were pretty much a mess, and I was nursing some sore muscles I hadn’t used in a little while. Luckily, the weather was perfect, since there were now some serious holes in the roof. We slept with one eye open though, watching the weather on-line every few hours. I kept telling myself (and anyone who would listen) that we just had to get through two months, and we’d be through the hardest part of the project. I hoped for the good weather to continue – usually our September and October are dry – but realized that we couldn’t be so lucky as to have two full months without rain. I slept fitfully, often heading to the couch in the middle of the night so I wouldn’t keep Sherri awake.

Travis, on the left, and Will work on the rear shed roof dormer retrofit . . .

A contractor friend of mine smiled when I told him that it was the details that kept me awake at night. “It’s always the details,” Danny laughed. “We make these big plans and they’re so exciting, but when it gets down to it, you just have to grind through the million little details as they emerge to make it all work out right.” I wasn’t laughing particularly hard at that point. Even so, I like this work – I told Sherri dozens of times that, even through the many little frustrations which can creep up on you on a job like this one, the sense of purpose behind our work here makes it all worthwhile. Purpose in the larger sense, of course – fixing economic, climate, and security issues – but purpose in a smaller sense, too. I like the idea that we’re responding to the issues of our day with action, and that someday our girls might look back and remember that we were trying to make their world, the world of the future, better.

At lunchtime, looking over the plans, and conferring with our neighbor, Chip . . .

Anyway, I spent that first weekend on the roof, tending to my tasks, getting ready for the Monday onslaught. The weekend became my chance to catch up; although I’m not sure I’ll ever catch up on the lost sleep.

And that’s where we’ll leave the Greened House effect this time. Come back soon for more on the Deep Energy Retrofit of our 1940s kit home – next time I’ll start the spray-foam process and talk about how we integrated deep energy efficiency with our traditional Cape Cod home. See how we aim to improve the traditional qualities of the house while bringing it into the 21^st century. Stay tuned!

You've Gotta Break A Few Eggs . . .

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:37:00 -0400

Ultimately, you can plan and plan and plan, but one day you’ve got to pick up a hammer and get to work. It wasn’t going to be pretty at first, but you know what they say – “You’ve gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.”

Most of my life I’ve been making plans to build the perfectly energy-efficient home “someday.” I’ve considered earth-sheltered concrete homes, straw-bale, rammed earth, “Earthships” made of old tires, cob construction, timber-frame, and log homes, and I’ve got the extended library to prove it. As a teenager I would write to companies like Earth Sheltered Technologies, and then read and re-read their sales brochures over and over, imagining how life would one day be living in such a revolutionary structure. I even sent a hand-written letter to Malcolm Wells (architect and proponent of Underground buildings) once, to which he kindly replied. I read his books the way most teenagers read comic books – over and over, not wanting to miss a single detail.

Okay, I’m a dork. How many kids obsess about energy efficiency at the age of 15? But here I am, now 42, husband and father of two great kids, and I’m living in a leaky 1940s kit house. With the economy in the tank, climate change breathing down our necks, and a global terrorist threat all linked to how we use and waste energy, I finally had to ask myself, “If not now, when?” It’s all well and good to talk about energy efficiency, and to rant and rave about how bad things are, but it’s quite another to become part of the solution.

I was also running into two types of people who were passing like ships in the night, and I realized that these people ought to get to know each other. First, homeowners would ask me for advice – friends in the neighborhood, people at trade shows, e-mails through my web-site – asking what they could do to cut their energy bills. I could only give them half-measures and “weatherization” techniques, which might cut their bills 10%-15%, but wouldn’t really make a serious dent. Second, I was meeting building scientists and builders, like the great guys at Sustainable Spaces in San Francisco, energy efficiency author John Krigger, and countless efficiency enthusiasts who understand that Deep Energy Efficiency in older homes can be had with “off the shelf” technology. This stuff is ready to go now – we’re not waiting on better technology. It’s time for us to use what we have to make a big change. I needed to tell this story to get both of these types of people “in the room together” if we were to solve our energy problems.

So, it was finally time to put my money, blood, sweat, and tears, where my mouth was. On a clear, hot morning at the very end of August, I took up my crow-bar, and my wife, Sherri, took up her camera to help document our Deep Energy Retrofit journey, and we began to demolish the parts of our old house which wouldn’t be coming with us into the New American Energy Economy. Two areas would need some serious demolition – the old attached garage and the moldy basement paneling.

The garage had all but rotted off the house, and we realized that it would have to go. A previous owner, in an attempt to make the small space larger, had removed the back, load-bearing wall, but neglected to put in a beam to hold the rafters. Once gone, the whole roof began a slow descent into the garage, and the floor in the tiny office we used above the garage was suspiciously springy. When the kids were little and prone to jumping up and down out of sheer excitement for any random reason, I had remind them that we “never jump around in the office,” because we could end up on the garage floor – desks, computers, and all. To make matters worse, the rear roof had been severely neglected to the point where the entire back of the garage was being held together by siding. The old concrete slab, with no proper footing, had cracked and shifted, creating peaks and valleys. In short, the whole structure was dangerous, and had to go.

Sherri took on the job of clearing the basement of the old mold-ridden particle board paneling. Again, some well-meaning previous owner had installed this to improve the aesthetics of the basement walls but, as Sherri pointed out, neglected to follow the instructions printed on the back of the paneling, barely visible through the brown & green stuff now growing there – “Not for use in humid or damp areas.” Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but are basements ever considered arid? This stuff also almost certainly contained formaldehyde, which was common in press-board like this, and which is known to be bad for you.

Why clear the basement as part of this DER? Because one of the places people neglect when it comes to air-sealing and insulation is the rim board and sill of their house, and the moisture and condensation prone masonry walls. The sill is where the wood part of the frame of your house sits on top of the block or concrete foundation. We plan to apply 2x2 metal studs to the inside of the masonry basement walls and floor (once we’ve done mold remediation), dry it thoroughly, spray the FoamItGreen closed-cell spray-foam insulation into the cavities made by the studs/strips, and then drywall and floor with new materials. The foam acts as a vapor barrier, keeping moisture from the masonry at bay. It also insulates and air-seals, keeping humid air out in the summer, and keeping the basement wall surface from being so much cooler than the surrounding air. This eliminates the possibility of condensation, and it’s the condensation that helps to make the perfect environment for mold, mildew and algae to grow. On top of that, I’ve been told that the foam insulation will also inhibit radon gas from infiltrating the basement air, improving our air quality even more. Dollar for dollar, our basement retrofit, coupled with an UltimateAir RecoupAerator ERV for fresh-air management, may prove to be one of the best investments in our comfort and health we could make.

The demo went smoothly, and we were able to divert the old aluminum siding to the recycling center up the road. We actually got a little money back, but really only lunch money when you count it up. We had also designed our DER to leave the house roof and original wood siding intact so that they wouldn’t need to head to the landfill. While we had minimized the amount of construction waste, we still hated to send anything to the dump. Despite lengthy research into the subject, our area of the country has no good solution for construction waste recycling. While we can take old doors and windows to our trusty ReUse Center, little else can be salvaged. Reluctantly, we filled a dumpster and a half with waste.

Check out the rafter we found, with the names of the original workers penciled on it:

Your experience might be vastly different, however, if you live in an area which supports recycling of construction debris. Matt Cooke is a carpenter and owner of Stalwart Construction. These are the guys I’ve hired to frame, roof, and install windows on my DER. He mentioned that when he worked in Seattle, Washington, for a time, that he was able to toss mixed construction debris into a dumpster which would be sorted at a central facility. I easily found great information at Seattle’s King County web-site, making it easy for contractors and homeowners to recycle construction debris. Before I had considered leaving the asphalt shingles on my roof instead of removing and dumping them, I had found shingle recycling in Minnesota (see this program and more at http://www.shinglerecycling.org/). While a smattering of recycling programs existed in other parts of Ohio, we’re not fortunate enough down here in Appalachia to have them. Too bad. Think of the jobs which could be generated in the processing of construction waste and the amount of resources and energy which could be saved by avoiding the need to cut down more trees or mine more minerals or manufacture new materials. A missed opportunity. Make sure you spend a few hours researching construction debris recycling in your area before you write off the idea – in some cases, recycling is cheaper than disposal.

My guilt was only compounded when I read the book Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. They make the startling point that someday, as resources dwindle and populations rise, we may be forced to “mine” our landfills to extract the very materials we call waste today. They argue that we need to begin to think in terms of “Cradle to Cradle” when using any material which has to be cut, mined, or manufactured instead of thinking “Cradle to Grave.” This means that materials continue around and around in a cycle of use and reuse. They make the point that we need to address this issue at the point of design and creation, not after the fact as we do now with traditional recycling. Even their book is printed on a 100% recyclable plastic “paper” which could continually be re-processed into new items, over and over again, with little loss of quality.

So the first phase of the Wilson Deep Energy Retrofit started the way many home improvement projects do, with a bit of demolition. Sherri and I would collapse into bed in the evenings of that first week, sore and tired. Our neighbors began asking questions and gathering on the driveway to watch. I began to sleep a bit restlessly, the list of details overflowing in my over-active mind. More than once I asked myself, “What the hell are we doing?” More than once I’ve had to remind myself that our purpose here is higher than our momentary discomfort and anxiety. We’re trying to make a difference – not only in our own comfort and energy savings, but also in the economy, the climate, and security. We’re putting Stalwart Construction, a group of carpenters who happen to be my neighbors, to work, stimulating our local economy. We’re using products from companies who have been badly burned by the recession and housing industry downturn. We’re dramatically reducing our energy use, easing our impact on both climate change and national security issues.

We can’t do it alone. We all need to employ the Greened House effect if we’re really going to make a change. Keep an eye on our story, and feel free to comment and ask questions. We believe that the more we talk, plan, build, and share ideas, the better our DER approaches will become. We’re all in this together, and we have the ability to roll up our collective sleeves and make a difference. Stay tuned!

Toasting Your Pastries in the New Energy Economy

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 10:05:00 -0400

So we know that Deep Energy Efficiency is the best way forward, but just exactly how are we going to toast our pastries in the new energy economy? By that I mean how will we improve our quality of life at home while drastically decreasing our use of energy? When I began to ask that question about my house I quickly realized that simple “weatherization” wouldn’t make the kind of difference we were after. We wanted to bring our 1940s home up to 21^st century standards, bringing it as close to “net zero” as possible. Ideally, we wanted an approach which could be replicated on other older homes, which would help to fulfill the promise of the Greened House effect as we imagined it.

Enter the Deep Energy Retrofit (DER). In my research on approaches to retrofitting older homes for maximum energy efficiency, I came across this term as a way to describe a whole-home, all-systems approach to efficiency in an older home. While not a “one-size-fits-all” approach, it is a customizable set of ideas which looks at everything affecting energy use at home: the building envelope and insulation, doors and windows, heating and cooling, water heating, lighting, appliances, indoor air quality, and finally home energy production. With a comprehensive attack on all fronts, older homes can be brought to (or very close to) net zero.

All of the credit for creating the Deep Energy Retrofit processes goes to many building scientists, builders, and energy enthusiasts who have applied these ideas on their own homes across the country. I merely discovered what a handful of people have begun to demand – deep energy efficiency in their older homes – and decided to use my ability to tell a story widely to get this information in the hands of as many people as possible. The idea of the Greened House effect, which includes my lifetime of building experience and interest in energy issues, was born.

To date, the DER process has been applied mostly in colder climates, but building scientists now see it as applicable in many climate zones, including warmer southern climes. Where I live we get both cold winters and hot summers, so our heating and cooling loads are just about equally split. We also wanted to deal once and for all with the humidity issues in our home – low humidity in the winter and high humidity in the summer – so that we’d have a healthier and more comfortable daily life. In order to have a real effect on those issues, we would have to somehow seal the building envelope of the home and add insulation value. This would also require that the 70 year-old windows and doors be brought up to date. Leaving no stone unturned, we would also scrutinize our furnace, air-conditioning, water heating, lighting, appliances, and “phantom loads” which haunt our electric bill. Only once we had plugged every energy leak in our old home would we consider generating our own energy through solar panels.

While there are several approaches available to someone interested in designing a DER for their home (and which you can read more about in my forthcoming book, the Greened House effect, available by mid 2010), ours suited our specific situation. I asked many building scientists, builders, and manufacturers for their help in hashing out exactly what would work in our case, and we came up with the following approach.

The Building Envelope

Your building envelope is what stands between your indoor air and the outdoor air. It includes every part of your walls and roof – starting with the paint on the interior wall, through the plaster, insulated wall, sheathing, and siding. It includes windows and doors, of course, but also any perforations through that protective shell. Older homes like ours were built in a time of cheap, plentiful energy, long before we began to see energy as a scarce resource. This meant that little attention was paid to making the building envelope air-tight or well insulated, since you could simply turn up the heat to stay warm.

Now, however, new homes are built with as airtight a building envelope as possible. Easy to do when you start from scratch, but much more difficult when you want to seal up all of the holes in an older building. What we needed on our home was a way to tighten up the building envelope to keep from losing our conditioned air from the inside to the outside, and to keep out the unconditioned air from the outside coming in. Sealing the building envelope this way definitely keeps the warmth or cool inside the house, but it has other benefits as well.

Specifically, by tightening the building envelope, you keep out uncomfortable high humidity in the summer and keep in comfortable levels of humidity in the winter. This allows us to be comfortable at slightly higher indoor temperatures during the summer and slightly lower indoor temperatures during the winter, which allows our furnace and air-conditioner to work even less to deliver the comfort we want. Controlling humidity this way also contributes to indoor air quality by making sure humidity levels always stay below the level where moisture will condense and contribute to mold production.

The challenge here is that it seemed necessary to me that we would have to remove all the siding on the house, all the way down to bare sheathing, in order to achieve the air-sealing using housewrap and tape. I assumed that we’d also have to remove all of the roofing to do the same up there. The amount of work and garbage involved in that process dismayed me, until I came upon a solution. Spray foam insulation applied in a “curtain wall” to the exterior of the house, leaving the old roofing and siding underneath.

What is a “curtain wall?” In our case, we’ll apply 2”x3” studs directly onto the asphalt shingles and old siding of the house in a furred-out stud pattern. We’ll use 4” screws, countersunk, in order to fasten those new curtain wall studs to the house. Then I’ll spray closed-cell polyurethane foam insulation (using do-it-yourself kits from www.foamitgreen.com) between the studs. After that, we’ll sheath the house with new OSB sheathing (using a radiant barrier OSB sheathing on the roof from Louisiana Pacific – called TechShield - see it at www.lpcorp.com), housewrap, re-roof (using EcoStar recycled rubber roofing – www.ecostar.carlisle.com) and re-side (again, using LP’s SmartSide Siding and Trim).

The spray foam approach does a number of things all at once. First, it insulates at a level of R-7 per inch (learn about R-Values in insulation here). Next, it’s sprayed on in a thin layer which expands to 6-times its initial thickness, filling and sealing holes and cracks as it expands. Since we plan to add about 2 – 2 ½ inches of spray foam to the entire exterior of the house, we’ll add R-14 – R-17.5 in insulation value at the same time we air-seal the house. Since we already have cellulose insulation blown into the existing wall cavities for an effective R-15, we’ll end up with an air-sealed R-30 wall – right up there with the best new homes. But there will be other benefits to applying the spray-foam right over the existing roof and siding.

First, we we’ll save a couple of dumpster loads heading to the landfill. This is important to us, since we hope that many older homes will eventually be able to adapt and use our Deep Energy Retrofit approach, and the amount of construction debris from a widespread application of this method would be enormous (especially in areas like where we live where few recycling opportunities exist). As another benefit, we will encapsulate forever the layer of old, white, most likely lead-based paint which is on the old siding. When we remove and recycle the aluminum siding (probably installed in the 1970’s, and put directly over the old wood siding), we’ll expose the old lead-based painted surface, and the foam will make sure that it is no longer exposed to the air. (Incidentally, the lap siding will also hold the 2”x3” curtain wall studs off the exterior wall surface just a bit, allowing the spray foam to expand in behind the studs in the spaced made by the siding laps, providing a “thermal break” which will keep even more of our heating and cooling energy in the house by avoiding “thermal bridging” between different wood surfaces . . . read more about it in my book).

With the curtain walls installed on the entire exterior of the house, we’ll replace the windows with triple-pane, krypton-gas filled windows and insulated fiberglass doors from Pro Via Door & Window. The windows are among the most efficient in the building industry, achieving an R value of 9. This completely blows away my 70 year-old, single pane windows which are badly cracked and leaky. Also, by properly installing the new windows and doors using 21^st century best-practices, we seal up another set of 70 year-old holes in our building envelope around the rough openings.

And this is what we’re after here – by going to these lengths, we’ll be giving the exterior of the home at least another 50 years of life (probably far more), making sure that this house will continue living to at least 120 years of age. Drastic as this approach may seem, it’s far less invasive and far less expensive than tearing the old house down and starting over. As a matter of fact, when you consider that our house needed a new roof anyway, and that the siding was damaged and in need of repair, the additional cost of the retrofit made sense. Even at current electrical rates (before a coming 45% increase and before carbon taxes are initiated), I calculated that the retrofit portion of the plan will pay for itself in 12 years through the energy we’ll save (see the calculation in my book).

Energy Recovery Ventilator

Once the house has been tightened, we add an Energy Recovery Ventilator (the UltimateAir RecoupAerator) to bring fresh air into the house without losing the heat or cooling energy we’ve put into the indoor space. Energy Recovery Ventilators (ERVs) exhaust stale air from your home and bring fresh air in while keeping 95% of the energy (heat or cooling, depending upon the season) inside the house. Usually you get fresh air into your older home via the many leaks and gaps in the building envelope. Once the house is tightened, the stale air accumulates, and so can contaminants from carpets, paint, cleaning solutions, cooking, and more. This means that your air-tight home needs a way to bring fresh air indoors to keep you comfortable and healthy.

Aside from the projected energy savings from our DER, we’re really looking forward to the control of humidity inside our house (which provides the bulk of our discomfort in our sweaty-summers and arid-winters). We’re also anxiously awaiting the fresh air that an ERV will provide – especially in the months when it’s not feasible to simply open a window to bring in outdoor air without losing scads of energy. The RecoupAerator also has a feature called “EconoCool” which monitors temperatures indoors and outdoors, working in place of your air-conditioner to cool the house in the summer. This will save us even more money on electric bills by avoiding the use of the energy hogging air-conditioner.

DER Home Systems

Next, we’ll look closely at our heating and cooling, water heating, lighting, computers, and other energy-users in our home. Actually, we’ve been making these decisions over the years as we’ve had to replace worn-out appliances, and we have a 97% efficient furnace, 16 SEER air-conditioner, tankless water heater, front-loading clothes-washer, and other energy-efficient appliances. Even so, in a future blog post I’ll talk about your options in all in-home systems, and show that a higher sticker price often yields a lower lifetime cost when energy use is factored in.

To our energy savings through deep energy efficiency, we’ll add a 4kW solar panel array which will be grid-tied to generate most, if not all, of the energy we need from here on. Look for a discussion of how we design, apply for grants, finance, and install our system. I’ll also cover pay-back time and many of the other benefits – namely thumbing our nose at Big Coal and the mountaintop removal mining which is so prevalent in our Appalachian region.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that we’re aiming to reduce our energy needs by 50%-60% through deep energy efficiency and then produce the rest through clean solar. Join us as we take this Deep Energy Retrofit journey, and help us spread the Greened House effect by sharing our story with your friends. This is the challenge of our generation – to show the world how the problems of our economy, climate change, and security can all be met through Deep Energy Efficiency at home.

A Deeper Shade of Green

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:58:00 -0400

We’re facing a big challenge.

When I say “we,” I mean that on a couple of different levels. First, “we” as a society are facing a big challenge in our rotten economy, changing climate, and threatened national security. The one big reason we face these problems is the “energy obesity” we suffer from collectively as a result of decades of inattention to efficiency. Whether we’re talking about the inefficiency of our cars or our homes, our energy gluttony has helped to foul the economy by making our whole system vulnerable to the wide swings in energy prices.

Had we been more careful, and made sure to squeeze the value out of every BTU we consume, we could now be thumbing our noses at those high energy prices. Heck, by insisting on efficiency, we’d have driven the price of energy down simply through the basic economic principle of supply-and-demand. Had we been more careful, we’d have put far less CO2 into the atmosphere, and climate change would be less of a threat. Had we been more careful, we would not now find ourselves at the mercy of what Thomas Friedman has called “petro-dictators” – those bad actors in unstable energy producing regions of the world. We wouldn’t be contributing to both sides of the war on terror through the dollars we spend to heat our homes or drive our cars.

So the collective “we” faces a big challenge in getting our energy use under control, but as individuals we also face a big challenge when we try to do our part at home. While the virtues of “weatherization,” changing out light bulbs to compact fluorescents, or turning down the thermostat are often touted as ways to help solve energy problems, they simply don’t go far enough. What we need is a new roadmap to a more profound solution. What we need are dramatic changes in the way we use energy while improving our comfort level, not draconian energy-starvation that leaves us cold. What we need is a deeper shade of green.

So how do we do it? If we simply ramp up production, keeping prices low by producing more energy, we do nothing to fix the economy in general or to address climate change and national security. In fact, it’s easy to argue that we’ve been doing just that over the last 30 years, and it’s gotten us here – in the middle of a global economic, climate, and security morass. If we attack energy efficiency, however, we make a difference across all three problems. We put thousands of Americans to work on older buildings, stimulate the production of energy efficiency materials in the construction industry, and encourage companies to increase their research and development into new materials and practices. We potentially cut each older home’s energy use by 50%-90%, helping reduce our carbon footprint and avoiding energy imports from unstable regions of the world.

But it’s going to cost an arm and a leg, right? Good question but, surprisingly, no. As a matter of fact, if we compare what we might spend to generate new energy from sources like Carbon-Capture and Sequestration Coal (CCS or the poorly named “Clean” coal) or new nuclear plants – avoiding the waste of energy in the first place through deep energy efficiency is far, far cheaper than generating new energy other ways. Check out just how much in this graph, produced by a group called Architecture2030 using Energy Information Administration data:

Deep Energy Efficiency on older buildings is 1/6 the cost of CCS Coal, and 1/5 the cost of new nuclear. The report goes on to show that efficiency does well against standard “dirty” coal technology, which costs $126 billion to create the same amount of energy. This makes Deep Energy Efficiency 1/3 the cost of what is currently the cheapest (and dirtiest) form of energy generation. So efficiency costs less, and results in what we call “negawatts,” or power which doesn’t have to be generated by another source. This gives us the biggest bang for the buck in solving climate change and national security issues, too, since efficiency requires no energy supply once installed.

What’s more is that the opportunity in retrofitting older homes and buildings for Deep Energy Efficiency is an enormous opportunity for the construction industry. While sales of new homes has dropped precipitously from pre-recession levels, and part of this drop will likely be a permanent correction, the market for retrofits can easily make up for the shortfall. As a matter of fact, the American Housing Survey, produced in conjunction with the Census Bureau, reports that there are over 80 million homes in America that are 30 years old or older. These homes would have been built before what we learned about energy efficiency following the energy crises of the 1970s, so they’re largely poorly insulated, not air-sealed, and have inefficient windows, doors, appliances, and heating and cooling systems.

80 million homes? And another 15-20 million homes which are 20 years old or older, which would also benefit from many of the same efficiency measures. The construction industry, even at the height of the building craze, built less than 5%-10% of that number of homes on an annual basis. This means that the market for retrofitting older homes dwarfs the new homebuilding industry, and that opportunities are slipping through our fingers the longer we wait to make Deep Energy Efficiency a national imperative.

Deep Energy Efficiency. It’s an idea whose time has come, and it’s the challenge to which our generation must rise. This is our Victory Garden, our Apollo Project. This is our American Energy Revolution, and it starts right at our front doorsteps.

Next time on the Greened House effect blog, we’ll talk about the Deep Energy Retrofit process, and show how the Wilson house will take advantage of the Greened House effect to slash our energy use while making our home healthier, more comfortable, and less expensive to maintain. Stay tuned!

There's A Hole In My House

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:39:00 -0400

There’s a hole in my house. I’m not kidding.

Actually, there are hundreds of holes in my leaky old house, and all together, they add up to a size which is roughly equivalent to me leaving one of the windows wide-open all year round. That’s right – it’s as though, through the bitter cold of winter and the sweltering heat of summer, I’m trying to heat and cool the great outdoors.

How did I find this out? I hired a “HERS” Rater to do a full diagnosis of my energy use at home. “HERS” stands for Home Energy Rating System, and is administered by RESNET (Residential Energy Services Network), a non-profit organization which helps to set standards for energy performance in buildings. Basically, a RESNET trained HERS rater has the knowledge and tools to come to your home, tell you how efficient or inefficient your home is, and point you in the right direction to solve your energy use problems.

Our HERS rater was Andrew Frowine of SaveGreenUSA (www.savegreenusa.net). “Often we aren’t brought in soon enough,” Andrew said. “The best approach is to evaluate what you have before you start throwing money into it. I tell people, let’s look at the basic shell of the home, make it as tight as feasible, and then we can help you draw a roadmap to lay out what repairs might have the best benefit to you.” First, we sat down around our kitchen table for a cup of coffee while he asked why we were interested the HERS testing and what our goals were. We told him about our goal of bringing “this old house” into the new energy economy to help solve economic, climate, and national security issues, and he actually listened with a straight face. Andrew really “got” what we were after, and after our talk he began setting up his equipment to show where our little blue house was failing us.

The testing began with a series of blower-door tests. This contraption mounts in one of the open doors of your home, completely covering the opening except for a fan mounted in the bottom. The fan is connected to a digital air pressure meter and is controlled by a computer which interprets data generated by the various tests. Essentially, it’s able to determine how much your home leaks, allowing heat and humidity to escape in the winter time, or heat and humidity to enter during the summer, compromising the efficiency and comfort of your home. It then assembles other data collected by the HERS rater to give a whole picture of your energy use.

After the automated tests, Andrew made the rounds testing different zones in our house and even individual switch-plates and electrical outlets to see exactly where our big leaks were. We learned how recessed lighting is a major culprit, but also how I opened up a whole slew of gaps in the building “envelope” when I cut into the knee-wall in the kids’ room to put in built-in book shelves, failing to properly seal around the frames. Aside from those “aha!” moments, some of the known leaks, like the rotting old attached garage, came as no surprise.

Next, he used a special camera with thermal imaging capabilities to show where heat was leaking into our air-conditioned home (or ouut in the winter time), bringing southeast Ohio’s signature high-summer humidity with it. Andrew measured the size of the home, the size and number of windows, input data from our electricity and natural gas bills. He also told the computer what type of insulation we had, and the size and efficiency ratings of our furnace, air-conditioner, and water heater. No stone was left unturned, and we were amazed at how thorough the information gathering was.

A few days after Andrew’s battery of tests, we received a detailed packet of information from him which spelled out the failures in our home’s energy use. It included some easy-to-read graphic displays of issues in our home and Andrew’s expert opinions as to where our energy-efficiency dollars might be best spent.

In the end, our house scored better than we expected – a HERS score of 84, which beats the benchmark house which is set at the baseline of 100 (scoring above 100 means your house is relatively inefficient, while scoring below means it’s relatively more efficient than the benchmark test home – a score of zero would be a “net zero” home, which means that it uses only the energy it creates, as through solar or wind power). Shortly after moving in ten years ago, we hired a contractor to blow cellulose insulation into the walls, which had no insulation whatsoever. We had also changed out a few of the worst doors and windows, so we had expected a better than average score.

Still, a HERS score of 84 is a long way from zero, and we realized that we had a long road to travel. The map we’ve chosen to get there? A Deep Energy Retrofit – taking a whole-house, all-systems approach which would bring us as close to net-zero as possible, and help the Wilsons have the biggest positive effect on the economy, climate change, and national security that we can.

The Greened House Effect . . .

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:10:00 -0400

What are the three biggest problems in the world today? A poisoned economy, a warming climate, and global terrorist threats. Installing a few compact fluorescent light bulbs won’t restart American industry or save the polar bear. And it won’t impress Osama bin Laden. The solution that crushes all three crises is deep energy efficiency at home.

What happens when you slash your energy use at home by 50%-90%? You save money on your energy bills and hedge against the sky-high energy costs of the future, of course, but ultimately you do so much more. You fuel the economy by putting Americans to work in green manufacturing and construction. Your carbon footprint dwindles. You stop funding terrorism by cutting out unstable foreign energy sources. You restore confidence in America by rolling up your sleeves and showing the world that the solutions to the problems of our time start right at home.

You've heard of the greenhouse effect - how gases like carbon dioxide and methane trap the sun's warmth on the planet, making temperatures rise. Now you’ve heard of the Greened House effect - that's what happens when you dramatically reduce your home's energy use through a little-known process called a Deep Energy Retrofit (DER). Using "off the shelf" technologies available today, we slash an older home's energy use, bringing it well into the 21st century. The best news? It’s cheaper and cleaner than coal or nuclear and will revolutionize the way we live, work, and travel. Use the Greened House effect to fix your pocketbook, our economy, our climate, and our security.

I'm Jeff Wilson, carpenter, and host of many popular home-improvement TV shows on the HGTV and diy networks. Through the chronicling of a months-long construction process, I’ll tell my own Deep Energy Retrofit story. It includes new technologies and old technologies, best practices in construction and simple tips for homeowners and renovators. I’ll not only talk about the “how” of this powerful approach to energy at home, but also the many reasons “why” to DER your home to combat a bad economy, accelerating climate change, and an unstable national security environment.

I helped to build the green, passive solar home I grew up in, which my father designed. Energy issues are in my blood - even my great-grandfather, an architect, experimented with solar thermal energy back in the 1970s. Now I'm bringing a lifetime of knowledge, energy, and passion to the story of the Greened House effect to highlight the positive, concrete ways that we as Americans can transform the world for the better.

Follow along on our blog and through our HD video series. We'll show you the ups, downs, ins, and outs of the power of DERs. Really interested? Follow us on Twitter at @tgheffect, and on Facebook.