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

It’s about more than energy

Home energy audits are about more than energy usage, they are also about health and safety of the home and its occupants.  Earlier this week the local media picked up on a story of a woman who died from carbon monoxide poisoning due to a malfunctioning furnace.  (Carbon monoxide kills 1, hospitalizes 3)  Even the Building Performance Institute (BPI), an organization that creates the standards for home energy auditors had a press release of a family that died from carbon monoxide and why our work is so important.

Water heater failing the spillage test & back drafting combustion gases into the home.

A lot of the testing that we do as home energy auditors is combustion safety testing and monitoring the levels of carbon monoxide not only in the home but what the appliances are producing and checking for gas leaks.  What I see more often than gas leaks and furnaces with high levels of carbon monoxide however is water heaters that back draft combustion gases into the home.  And this can happen with old and brand new hot water heaters and is easy to create conditions within a home that makes it difficult for a hot water heater to draft properly.

A recent customer had two hot water heaters that did not have a strong enough draft pressure in the flue to exit the combustion gases, and a major gas leak was even found at the gas meter that was inside the home.  So by inspecting this customer’s home to help him improve the energy efficiency of his home, I potentially prevented him and his family from being a headline of carbon monoxide poisoning.

So schedule a home energy audit to not only improve the energy efficiency of your home, but to make sure your appliances are working efficiently and safely.

Crawling in dark places and learning lots

So it has been a busy six weeks working with Conservation Services Group (CSG).  The first week consisted of training from the Applied Building Sciences division of Conservation Services Group.  A lot of the class room training was a BPI Building Analyst review, along with software and additional field training.  The cool thing about the field training was we actually used my house as one of the two field training homes.  So I had six energy auditors inspecting the work that I have done to my house, and I was also able to put my home into the system and see if I would qualify for some of the utility rebates for a new furnace.  Unfortunately no, but I did get a lot of compliments on the work I have performed to date, except for the fact that my home is well below the Building Air Flow standard.

The second week was a week of shadowing an auditor.  Although I had to cut it a couple of days short due to my presentation at the AIA Ohio Convention, it was a great way/best way to learn how things are and should be done.  As well as a quick lesson into the utility rebate program that CSG is running.

The third week was the first of solo audits.  Expecting new employees to take a little bit longer at first as they get use to what is expected in an audit, as well as the program, our first week consisted of one audit a day to get our time down to 4 hours to conduct the audit.  The audit includes everything in a full comprehensive BPI audit as well as a report generated at the customers house and discuss it with them.  Let me tell you that first week was a trial by fire.  All the homes I audited my first week ranged anywhere from 1,500 to 4,000 square feet and all were built anywhere between 1910 and 1960, all with older systems and little to no insulation.  Most were very complicated houses.  So let’s just say my first week of audits was taking 5-6 hours to complete.  So I was getting nervous by the end of the week knowing that the next week I would be doing two audits a day.

Thankfully by the beginning of the fourth week something just clicked.  And that is when they started to fail.  Water heaters were failing the worst case draft testing left and right.  A few were not even drafting is quite conditions.  Now with some of these larger homes that have multiple exhaust fans, it is my opinion that we are creating un-natural conditions that the home owner would never create.  However that is the BPI standard that we work by, to turn on all exhaust fans to create the greatest negative pressure in the home.

All in all it has been a very busy 6 weeks getting use to the pace and getting my body to build its endurance to keep up the pace.  But I am seeing all types, sizes and ages of homes.  So it has been a great experience so far and I look forward to continuing to work for Conservation Services Group.  I am learning a lot and seeing how many things have been built, good and bad.  So if I get the time, I have some good ideas for some future posts.  So keep me in your RSS feeds for future updates.

Taking on a new position

Symbiotic home is restructuring again.  Owner of Sym-Home, Joshua Lloyd has accepted a position with Conservation Services Group (CSG) in their central Ohio office as an energy advisor.  He will be performing home energy audits for the Columbia Gas of Ohio, Home Performance Solutions Program.  A program that is providing its customers with a full comprehensive energy audit for $50, and very attractive rebates to perform the recommended improvements.

Joshua looks at this opportunity to get knee deep and dirty in the building science industry, experiencing firsthand what time and systems can do to a home, as well as see good and bad ways to build a house.  The position will provide Joshua with the latest information and techniques for retrofitting homes to improve energy efficiency.

In the meantime Sym-Home will finish out its current design contracts.  Joshua will continue to blog about his experiences in the field and focus his free time to finish the Architectural Registration Exams (ARE) to become a licensed architect as well as obtain the LEED for Homes credential.  At that point in time Sym-Home will be available on a limited basis for residential design services.

We thank you for your support, and hope you will continue to follow our activity on facebook & twitter.

Sym-Home Re-Launched

Symbiotic Home (sym-home) has expanded upon its mission of documenting the “Greening” of a typical 1960’s home on a modest budget prioritizing projects in terms of needs, environmental benefits and financial paybacks.

Sym-Home is now providing residential design services, home energy audits and consulting.  Sym-Home specializes in energy efficient, healthy & durable homes.  Joshua Lloyd, owner of sym-home, draws from a decade’s worth of experience in the architectural field. In addition, his experience includes producing construction documents and coordinating LEED documentation for Ohio’s first LEED Platinum Home, located in Columbus, Ohio.

Sym-Home also provides home energy audits, helping home owners to take control of their homes energy usage by providing them the appropriate information after a thorough inspection and test on the home to see where the most energy is used and prioritize a list of recommended projects in terms of financial payback.  Joshua Lloyd, is a certified Building Analyst through the Building Performance Institute (BPI) to conduct home energy audits.

Sym-Home also provides consulting services to homeowners, builders and other design professionals.  Sym-Home can assist project teams with issues related to high performance structures, from building science issues, schematic level energy modeling for both commercial and residential structures, and LEED documentation and coordination.

Sym-Home considers residential design and home energy audits as a complimentary service to each other, especially for home owners looking to renovate or add on to an existing home.  Home energy auditing tools can be a valuable resource during the design and construction phases of a new home and renovation.

For those of you who have been following the renovation process, we will be re-posting all the projects with more images and information regarding each project in a series called “To Kill an Energy Hog”

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