Electricians & Cable Contractors – The Great Swiss Cheese Makers

So have you ever hired an electrician to install a recessed can light or bathroom vent fan?  Or what about a cable contractor that installed additional cable hook ups in the house that required working in the attic to run the new cable?  Have you ever gone up into the attic after they finished their work?  I mean why would you?  It’s not like they installed a new tile back splash, there is nothing really worth looking at.  Or is there?  Well it is my experience that very few home owners even go up into their attic, let alone after a contractor has been up there.  Therefore most homeowners don’t know that the electrician or cable contractor made swiss cheese of their attic.

I have inspected hundreds of homes that have clear paths of travel through the insulation to work area.  Then you get to the area where they did the work and the insulation is pushed out of the way or compressed.  Not to mention the hole created to run the cables.  These holes and the displaced insulation is a large energy penalty on the home costing you more monthly to heat and cool your home.  I have seen holes drilled into the ceiling for a single wire as large as two inches.  As stated in my post on attic air sealing, these holes allow the air that you paid to condition to easily escape, costing you money.  Even the compressed or displaced insulation is affecting your utility bills.  As another in the home performance industry, Energy Vanguard wrote about uneven insulation in their blog titled “Flat or Lumpy – How Would You Like Your Insulation?”  Now of course how much it really costs you depends on the amount of holes and actual displaced insulation.  But sometimes it can be severe, actually cause comfort and durability issues.  So what may have been a rather efficient home is now full of holes in the ceiling and insulation increasing your monthly cost to operate the home. 

As a result I would grab a can of foam and a rake to seal these holes and even that insulation out so your home can perform at least as well as it did before the contractors tracked through attic.

Why I Hate My Job

Well not much really.  But let’s be honest, would you have even had interest in reading if the title was “Why I Love My Job”?  So this is basically my year in review of working for Conservation Services Group performing home energy audits and to share a little more about my job that I did not get to share during the panel discussion at the AIA Ohio Valley Region convention in Dayton, OH last week.

So let’s stick with the title and what I do not enjoy about my job.  First, 90+ degree days, it makes for very uncomfortable working conditions as the attic is 100+ degrees.  However that is a condition of the job and is only an issue of comfort.  The hardest, as well as worst part of the job is delivering news to customers as I was reminded of today.  First is the customer that already has decent levels of insulation and based upon calculated paybacks and program goals do not qualify for very attractive incentives for energy efficiency improvements through the utility rebate program that we do work for.  I get a lot of eye rolling, but that is easy to handle, just lots of additional table talk which can add a lot of time to an appointment that only allows 4 hours to inspect, test, generate a report and present it to the customer.  However the absolute hardest part about my job is telling a customer, especially an assisted customer that is getting free work done that cannot have any air sealing or insulation work done until combustion safety issues have been resolved such as back drafting water heaters, or high CO levels.  This can really tug on the heart strings when you are in a home that has little to no insulation and you can see they would greatly benefit from lower utility bills and truly cannot afford to make some of the repairs necessary, yet their income level is not low enough to qualify for weatherization assistance that would actually make these repairs.

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Friday Video – Blower Door Basics & Weatherization Training

So it is no secret that my career path has changed a little over a year ago from design and producing construction documents for projects ranging from home additions/renovations to multi-million dollar commercial and institutional buildings.  These days I am performing home energy audits and have been involved heavily in the weatherization industry, as I feel this is a good fit to keep me sharp and give me great field experience with building science issues that I can take back to the architecture profession if I ever decide to return to a traditional design firm.

During my conversations with customers I am always telling them it was an easy transition into the job because I am already knowledgeable of construction techniques and building science.  I just needed training on the equipment and testing procedures.  So for those that are interested in home energy audits, here is a great video on the basics of blower door testing that was produced by the Montana Weatherization Training Center.  Over the past year, they have produced a whole series of videos on their WXtv site, featuring different aspects of the energy auditing and home weatherization industry.

Check out the Montana Weatherization Training Centers WXtv to view more great videos geared towards training the weatherization industry.

Performing QA/QC Inspections

After a little more than six months with Conservation Services Group and 245 home energy audits under my belt, my role is changing a little.  I am now exclusively doing Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) inspections for the next couple of months.  I will be following up on the contractors that are performing work for the Columbia Gas of Ohio Home Performance Solutions program to ensure that they are air sealing and insulating the homes properly and to at least the home energy auditors recommended levels.  Also true to the BPI standards, as part of the QA/QC inspection, I am re-performing the worst case draft test to ensure that all of the atmospheric burning equipment is still drafting properly and not back drafting due to the tighter home that was created.

So now I go from performing two home energy audits a day to 4 QA/QC inspections a day.  Let me tell you, it is a lot dirtier of a job than standard audits.  Climbing through freshly installed cellulose insulation looking for ceiling penetrations verifying if any air sealing work was done if the blower door results don’t show what the contractor claimed or they did not meet the minimum reduction for time charged.

Performing these QA/QC inspections is only going to improve the quality of my home energy audits in the long run.  Because I have always felt I lacked experience in the home weatherization industry when it comes to the final installed product.  Therefore now that I am seeing how things are installed, properly and improperly.  I will be even more specific with my notes to ensure they seal penetrations and install the insulation as I would expect them to.

So as the heat begins to rise, the pace picks up and I am sure I will hear from some hot contractors.  This time not because I am enforcing LEED requirements, but because they are defending the quality of work.  So let’s bring on the heat and new experience.

-Josh-

Kitchen exhaust really sucks!

Range HoodI think the title explains itself.  Commercial range hoods or downdraft exhaust are becoming popular in new homes and kitchen renovation projects.  You know they look cool or have the ability to hide in the counter top, and man can they suck.  Hold your hair piece around some of these because you could lose it.  They actually pull so much air out of the house, that they cause very harmful conditions in the home.  And I have been conducting energy audits on more and more of these homes lately and leaving with not so happy customers.

The issue that these exhaust units create is that they are pulling so much air out of the home that air has to come back into the home somehow and this is causing standard atmospheric water heaters and the less efficient furnaces that are still in operation in lots of homes to backdraft.  So anytime you turn on the exhaust, it actually pulls the combustion gases from your water heater into the home increasing ambient levels of carbon monoxide.  And this situation can occur in any old, new, large, and leaky home.

I mention not so happy customers because when I come across this condition, all incentives from the local utility to make efficiency improvements are halted until the back drafting issue is resolved because we don’t want to tighten up a home and make the conditions worst.  Although this is not really a green building issue, it is just that green builders and designers who look at how the house works as a system takes these kinds of issues into consideration.  Therefore here is a preview of a great article from GreenBuildingAdvisor.com on ways to prevent the back drafting from these high cfm rated exhaust fans that any homeowner, architect, designer & builder/remodeler should read if considering one of these units.

Makeup Air for Range Hoods

If your kitchen has a powerful exhaust fan, it may be pulling air down your chimney or water-heater flue

Most homes have several exhaust appliances. These typically include a bathroom fan (40-200 cfm), a clothes dryer (100-225 cfm), and perhaps a power-vented water heater (50 cfm), a wood stove (30-50 cfm), or a central vacuum cleaning system (100-200 cfm). But the most powerful exhaust appliance in most homes is the kitchen range-hood fan (100-1,200 cfm).

Every time an exhaust fan removes air from your house, an equal volume of air must enter. The air that enters cracks in a home’s envelope to replace air that is exhausted is called “makeup air.” Two trends affecting makeup air are causing increasing problems for homeowners: homes are getting tighter, and range-hood fans are getting more powerful.

So where does a powerful range-hood fan get its makeup air? If the house doesn’t have enough random air leaks around windows, doors, and mudsills, the makeup air is often pulled backwards through water-heater flues or down wood-burning chimneys — a phenomenon called backdrafting. Since the flue gases of some combustion appliances can include carbon monoxide, backdrafting is dangerous. In some cases, it can be life-threatening.

Continue reading the article at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com