Making Our Home a Home Sweet Home: Part 4 – If Only We Could Start Over

A house is a system.  It is made up of separate systems that have unique functions, but, like we’re discovering in medicine, thanks to Patch Adams and many others, you do best when you treat the patient, not just the disease—the whole rather than the individual pieces.  How the individual components interact with each other is critical in the overall success of an organism, or a building.  Prescribing treatment for one ailment may cause side effects.  Yet, both in home comfort improvement and in medicine, budgets (of money, time and tolerance) may limit the possibilities.  We want the house to succeed—but more so for the folks who call it home.  That takes thoughtful prioritization.

Like an organism, the way a house interacts with its surroundings—what it lets in and keeps out, and when—determines its comfort, performance, and longevity.  Like a body’s skin, the exterior of a home must manage water, moisture, air (and all that’s in it), temperature, light, sound, and even other organisms introduced by its environment.  Bodies and homes need fresh air, fresh water, and a healthy amount of sunlight.  The respiratory and digestive systems and skin are wonderfully capable of ensure healthy quantities of all of these, but, like a building, it requires proper user input.  If not, we know what can happen.  Some bodies are able to handle negligence better than others.  Homes are the same way, and can easily be designed to control these elements.  Or, redesigned, as best we can.  If not, deterioration and discomfort move in.

So, if we can’t start over, we still have the chance to make what we have work better.  For centuries, as human shelter progressed, keeping critters (the big ones) out was job one.  After we got the hang of that, water was next.  For some houses, it still is next.  We all know if we have a leak in the roof how much more an emergency that is than an air leak!  And, rightly so, because water is destructive.

But, once we get water out of the picture, air is next.

Making Our Home a Home Sweet Home: Part 3 - Fixtures and Equipment

Around the time of the window replacement, our gas pack (a combination air conditioner and gas furnace) needed to be replaced.  At that time, the contractor mentioned we didn’t need to bother replacing the ductwork, as it was R-4.2.  I didn’t look into what that meant (as far as ENERGY STAR or other recommended performance programs) and just took his word for it.  Later, after looking in my scary crawl space (see Part 2), I understand why he did not want to replace them or at least seal them.  While he installed a new digital thermostat, it was not programmable.  I also did not know to inquire about SEER and AFUE ratings (air conditioning and furnace efficiency ratings, respectively), so he just replaced it with whatever was on sale at the time.

A while back Duke was giving away low-flow fixtures to its employees (my wife Beth qualifies here), so we picked up a 2.2 gallon-per-minute showerhead.  But, it still takes a good 20-30 seconds for hot water to reach its destination at any of our three fixtures.  We have replaced all our incandescent bulbs with CFLs, but still have one halogen lamp.  Reasonable LED torch style floor lamps are not readily available yet.

These are not uncommon circumstances.  Ideally, of course, we’d address all these issues in one fell swoop.  All the walls, roof and crawl space need (some, or better) insulation and air sealing, which would impact the load and therefore size of the HVAC equipment.  We could use a more efficient water heating system, or at least a recirculating pump to minimize water use.  We should replace all our appliances with ENERGY STAR rated ones.

I’m guessing our financial reality is like a lot of other folks.  A lot of other responsibilities and commitments, with school debt, three kids, travel plans, the list goes on.  But, we got to the point where how we feel at home became a real priority.  The following posts will describe the pathway we took, and the thinking, and building science, behind it.

Making Our Home a Home Sweet Home: Part 2 – The State of the House

We moved into to our Durham bungalow in 2002. It is of 1940 vintage with a brick façade on the 24’ by 36’ original footprint.  A 12’ x 22’ wood sided addition was added 10-15 years later off the back of the house, and vinyl siding covered the same years later.  The home was drafty, inconsistent, and generally uncomfortable, in regard to temperature. When we first moved in the windows were hernia-inducing. By 2006, well before I was trained in existing home performance, we replaced them simply for the ability to open them and get fresh air and not necessarily for the energy improvement (which the new ones certainly provided). So new windows were in place when we started looking into our recent comfort improvements.  (I’ll pause here to say that I have learned that replacing your windows may not be the best first step to improving energy efficiency or comfort in your home. The following discoveries in our home seem to confirm the same.) We have storage in the attic, but it’s a shallow space with hardly room to stand between the collar ties and rafters.  Fetching stored kids clothes out of the attic was a trip to the sauna in summertime. The leaky access door provided a ready avenue of airflow. An interesting excuse for insulation had settled between the ceiling joists: some sort of black, sooty rock wool. The soffits lacked any venting. Two gable vents and a passive turbine vent were present.  The hardwood floors above our crawlspace gave us frozen toes in winter. The crawlspace itself was a horrible dungeon; a cobwebby critter hotel full of allergen-rich air rising into the house through the floorboards.  When we put a French door off the back room to the patio this fall (not an energy decision), we discovered the lack of quality and quantity of insulation in the addition.  As it turns out, there was no insulation in the walls and only a six-inch layer of critter covered fiberglass batt insulation laid on the drop ceiling above. It was actually a welcome discovery, because we now knew why that space was so generally uncomfortable. This also helps to confirm the likelihood and unfortunate reality that there is no insulation in the plaster-finished walls of the original (brick) portion of the house.

Pictured Above: The crawlspace. Typical by local standards including moisture, mold, cobwebs, and critters.

Making Our Home a Home Sweet Home: Part 1 - Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home. It’s pretty easy to read that phrase as cliché, passé, or as a slogan some potato chip maker might use to associate the taste of their potato chips with warm fuzzy feelings. I used to think all these things, until very recently, when my wife, Beth, and I decided to do some work at our house to improve comfort, health and performance. It’s actually been sort of transformational for me, making physical investments in this house. I’m buying into it, literally and figuratively.  Into the house, and the place, the neighborhood, the town, for our marriage, our family, our home. It feels good.

See, we’re traveling people. We both were born on other sides of the planet, and made our way to a common hometown on Virginia. Our nearly ten years here in Durham is practically the longest either one of us has spent in one place, let alone one house.  It has been a long process settling in here, but each year it feels more and more like home, especially with three little girls under the roof (when they’re not raising the roof!).

We’ve done some painting, made some minor interior changes over the years, but I didn’t really start to feel ownership in the place until we started making some significant comfort improvements. Sure, I have dreams (big ones) about designing and building a home for us someday. Who doesn’t? And, for crying out loud, I work at a design-build company, so the waiting strikes me each day as I view the delightful design work gracing the monitors around the office! Alas, it is not time, but we have warmed to our little Durham bungalow, and even a bit more, literally, with the recent work we have done. Bloom where you’re planted - Puttin’ down roots - Love the home you’re with. Choose your phrase, that’s what we’re doing!

What have I done, already, you ask? Great question. I’m a Home Performance Specialist after all.  So, I put my work into practice on my own home. Over the next week or so, I’ll walk you through the former state of our home, the approach I have for generating decision making, and the decisions we made for our home and our comfort. Stay tuned!

           Pictured Above: Bradley, Beth, and the girls at home.

Paint 'Em White

That is one item on Bill Clinton’s list of 14 Ways to Create Jobs. He is talking about roofs on buildings. Our Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, has been talking up the clear benefits of white or reflective roofs. When making a roof material and color choice on a new building, this is a no-cost way to significantly reduce the energy needed to cool buildings. Zip. Zilch. A white roof does not cost more than a black one. And when in the process of replacing a roof on an old building, it does not cost more to install a white roof. Again, not a penny more.

In commercial buildings in the southeast, most of the conditioning load is to cool the building. Because of internal heat generation from lights, people, and machines, cooling systems are often running even when it is cool outside. This is another reason why a reflective roof choice is so effective in our climate. It reduces the load of the primary mode of operation of the mechanical system.

We chose a white metal roof for our commercial building in Durham. We chose it because it looks good, because it is extremely durable, because it is a great surface for collecting rainwater that we will use for irrigation and for flushing our toilets, and because it has the highest Solar Reflectivity Index (85) of any roof that met the rest of our design criteria. Not only does this save on utility costs over time, it allowed us to install smaller systems to condition the building. Yup, the color of the roof saved us money before we received our first utility bill. Why isn’t this the primary color choice for roofs?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/13/news/economy/white_roofs/index.htm
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/06/19/it-s-still-the-economy-stupid.html
http://www.facilitiesnet.com/roofing/topic/Picking-A-Cool-Roof-SRI-Index-Is-Key--19903

Pictured below: The low-sloped white roof of the ClearSense building at 502 Rigsbee Avenue overlooking Downtown Durham. The rails will support solar panels (soon to be installed).

Old Houses and Five Sided Boxes

In the winter, air comes in through the bottom of your house and exits through the top. If you put a top hat on the house, that effectively stops most of the air flow without capping the bottom.  If you just cap the bottom, that also effectively stops the air flow. This is the five sided box idea. Five sided boxes (one side left unsealed) work nearly as well as six sided boxes (all sides sealed). What this means for your home, in practice, is that closing and insulating your crawl space has significant impact even if you have a very leaky attic.  Conversely, if you air seal and insulate your attic but you have a very leaky crawl space or basement, you will still see significant energy efficiency and comfort benefits.