Residential » sym-home

Energy Hog – Attic Air Sealing

The first of our home improvements projects to cut the energy usage in the home was air sealing in the attic. Now I have to admit that when I started doing the work in 2005, I did not fully understand the importance. Now that I inspect homes or follow up on insulation contractors’ work, I see firsthand how important air sealing work really is.

A simple explanation of what air sealing is, it is the work performed on the home to reduce the amount of air infiltration into the home by sealing small and sometimes large gaps and crevices. I utilized the DO–IT–YOURSELF Guide to Sealing & Insulating with ENERGY STAR to perform the air sealing in the attic before installing insulation. These holes in the home can waste approximately 25% of the typical homes heating and cooling cost and is almost always the most cost effective improvement that can be done to most homes to reduce the utility bills and increase the indoor air quality (IAQ).

Air sealing not only helps reduce your heating and cooling costs, but sometimes more importantly, air sealing helps to improve the indoor air quality and durability of the home. Tighter homes typically have less dust because not as much gets pulled in through these cracks; they are typically more durable because excessive air and moisture does not enter the walls or attic that could cause mold and rot.

The goal of air sealing your attic is to make the ceiling as air tight as possible to stop any air movement. Now most home owners don’t think of their attic being full of holes. However it is full of them, plumbing stack penetrations, wires, can lights and other ceiling fixtures. If you hold your hand over these holes, you can feel the hot or cold air from inside your home making its way into the attic, costing you money. Because as this conditioned air leaves your home, unconditioned air is being pulled into your home through other gaps or crevices in your home, typically in the basement (more on sealing the basement in a future post). When your home has low levels of insulation, it is easy to find these holes. However if you have good levels of insulation, you can find these holes by looking for discolored insulation, as most insulation types are air filters and the discoloration is a sign of air movement. So review the air sealing guide, buy a few tubes of caulk and cans of Great Stuff and seal up those holes and start saving.

Here is a video series on the Fine Homebuilding magazine website on air sealing your attic that is worth watching, or check out other attic air sealing videos on YouTube.

Residential Energy Modeling

Energy modeling is becoming more common place with the design of commercial buildings. However it is primarily used by the mechanical engineer to design and size their systems. Very seldom is it used in the early stages of a project as part of the design process for the entire building to maximize the energy efficiency. In the residential sector of design and construction, energy modeling is rarely used. It is more common place with Energy Star rated homes, even then it is only used to show compliance with the requirements of Energy Star standards, not a part of the design process.

Energy modeling in new home design, construction and renovations can be a very effective tool to weigh the cost effectiveness of any design strategy used to improve energy efficiency in a home. Actually most energy auditors use some form of energy modeling to show their customers what kind of financial payback they could expect when implementing any of the recommended improvements. So why is this tool not used more within the design industry? Energy modeling is a standard service I provide with any home design work that I do, as well as a service that I provide to other design and construction professionals. I offer this because some jurisdictions do require an energy compliance certificate. Granted most design professionals and builders use REScheck as their preferred method. However, REScheck will only demonstrate compliance using the trade-off approach and the prescriptive packages approach as described in the energy conservation codes.

More advanced software packages such as REM/Design which I use takes this a step further. REM/Design and other software packages will not only provide you with a compliance certificate, but it will provide design loads along with estimated energy usage and cost to operate the home. This can be helpful as a preliminary sizing tool for your heating and cooling systems. What is also valuable about this feature is it gives you the ability to weigh the cost effectiveness of “upgraded” insulation levels or more efficient systems. The software will even break up the loads into building components, so you know where most of your energy is being lost in the homes envelope. For instance a recent project I was consulting on, I was able to determine that the six skylights the homeowner wanted in their passive solar home were more of an energy penalty than an overall gain. So there was a compromise and the number of skylights was reduced to 3 as a daylighting strategy instead of one for heat gain in the winter time.

Component loads

In an article posted on the American Institute of Architects website (Sustainable AIA: 2031–Why Energy Models Don’t Predict Actual Energy Use), it discusses the criticisms that energy modeling does not predict the actual energy usage of the building or home. To some degree that is expected, energy modeling simulates the energy usage of a home to determine design loads based upon your geographical region. Each software package takes into account occupants; however they cannot take into account occupant behavior which has a huge impact on the performance of any building or home. Of course each software package has its flaws and performs some calculations better than others.

In the coming weeks, Chris Laumer-Giddens with Energy Vanguard in Georgia who is a licensed architect and HVAC designer will tell us the basic differences in some of the more widely used energy modeling tools.

Deep Energy Reduction with the Thousand Home Challenge

Thousand Home Challenge Threshold Calculator Last week I had the opportunity to attend an introductory webinar of the “Thousand Home Challenge” whose mission is to demonstrate the possibility of reducing our existing home stocks overall energy usage by 70-90%. Their goal is to achieve these reductions by energy efficiency measures, renewable resources, community solutions, and behavioral changes. The intent of the challenge is to use these thousand homes as a resource and educational platform for change to help transform our existing building stock.

The first step is to determine your energy reduction goal by using their threshold calculator. You have two options when it comes to determining your reduction goals. The first option or as they refer to as Option A, which is intended for high energy usage homes, sets a 75% reduction goal based upon a recent years’ verifiable energy usage. Option B is for low energy users and sets an energy reduction threshold based upon your zip code, finished floor area, number of occupants and a few other simple inputs.

Our home as it was purchased in 2005

So to continue the Sym-Home mission of educating others and to show that existing homes can make deep cuts in their energy usage; I will be enrolling my personal residence into the challenge. Considering my family has made significant energy related improvements to our home to bring down our utility costs, we are at the point of pushing the envelope, looking to make those energy related upgrades that the average homeowner doesn’t even think about. However we are considered to be a lower energy user, so we will be enrolling into the challenge and attempting to meet the energy usage thresholds of Option B. As you can see, by our current usage and goals set, we are still looking at a 42% reduction in energy usage to meet the challenge. I will continue the blog series, Kill’n a Hog….an Energy Hog, of tracking our energy improvements and take them to the next level as we go beyond what most consider to be a DIY project.

If you are considering some major energy related improvements to your home, consider enrolling into the Thousand Home Challenge. The first step to participating in the Thousand Home Challenge is to attend the introductory webinar to learn more about the goals, mission, and determination of one’s threshold allowance. So if you are interested, the next webinar is currently scheduled for May 31^st. Check out the 1000 Home Challenge website and enroll to make some deep cuts and help our country reach energy independence.

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.

Our work isn’t always sexy

Is it Form Follows Function, or Function Follows Form? As designers and architects we are taught that design or more specifically aesthetics are an important aspect of the job. However good design is not always a priority, or should I say what we consider to be good design.

A picture and comment posted on twitter reminded me of that. It sparked a conversation with John Morefield (@Arch5cents) of Architecture 5¢, he is quick to remind us we don’t work for sexy, we work for our clients. And that is what makes our job difficult. What is not aesthetically pleasing to our trained eyes may be beautiful to our clients. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With each project we spend lots of time with our clients to personalize their home, and at times it can be hard to not get personally attached to the project because you have made some sort of personal connection with that person, couple, or family. So we have to remind ourselves that every aspect of our job is about design, we are designing our clients new way of life and it goes way beyond the exterior facade. We design spaces, solve problems and in general improve our clients way of life by accommodating their needs and wants.

Now I don’t claim to be a strong designer, nor do I have a style. My style is what the clients’ style or needs are; I solve the problem handed to me. And sometimes aesthetics takes a back seat to budgets, programming needs and site constraints. Again, we as designers may not be satisfied by the final solution, but in the end, if the clients life has been improved and they are happy, then it was a successful project.

View more photos of this project on our facebook page.