Category — home performance

More than cutting down on your meat consumption, more than any re-use or reduction of various products, more than recycling, composting, or growing your own organic produce, more than driving a hybrid vehicle, and more than saving the rain forests!

Seriously.

Not that the previously mentioned efforts are bad things to do. Au contraire. We firmly believe that every effort an individual makes to help reduce greenhouse gases is valuable. But if you truly want to make the most impactful steps towards reducing your carbon footprint you will reduce the energy associated with heating and cooling your home.

The Encyclopedia of Earth website gives this breakdown for a the carbon footprint of a typical American:

20% home energy use

17% food

13% transportation

the other 50% is broken down into travel and leisure, clothes and other goods, homebuilding, and some other stuff.

So here’s the question to ask yourself: am I doing all I can to reduce my home’s heating and cooling costs?

If you haven’t had a comprehensive home energy audit yet, the answer is no.

Simple as that.

A couple of months ago I wrote that Home Performance NC was selected to do an energy audit of a historic home as part of a contest sponsored by the Raleigh Historic Districts Commission, Preservation North Carolina, Sustainable Raleigh, and us! The end result is a video targeted towards people who own historic properties.

We were very excited to be part of this project because we are passionate about historic homes and believe that they can be made very energy efficient without destroying their historic elements. Our owners’ home is 95 years old and has been weatherized to current Energy Star standards! It can be done!

Here is a slideshow of pictures provided by Raleigh Historic Districts Commission. Enjoy!

Dear Mr. Energy,

You are always going on about sealing this, sealing that. Seal your ducts! Seal your attic! Seal your escutcheons (whatever those are)! Is it possible to seal too much?

–Wondering in Wendell

Dear Wondering,

The answer to your question is no, it is not possible to seal too much. But it is possible to get a house so tightly sealed that no outside air comes in, which is a bad thing. Sounds contradictory, right? Not really.

Here’s the deal:  sealing a house keeps energy from leaking out or leaking in. You want that. It’s a good thing.  But a certain amount of fresh air has to circulate in order for the house to be safe. So it’s a balance. If your home is super-sealed (including the escutcheons, which are the little plates that surround where your plumbing enters your home), you need to install appropriate ventilation to make sure the home’s inhabitants get the air changes they need to be healthy.

Which is why it’s very important to enlist the help of a professional building scientist if your home is approaching super-tight status. Building scientists see the house as a whole system, and possess the appropriate skills, knowledge, and equipment to make sure that in addition to creating a very energy-efficient home, you are also creating a safe home.

You can find a building scientist by looking at the list of accredited analysts on the Building Performance Institute’s website: bpi.org. And yes, Mr. Energy is one. How else would he know everything he has been telling you?

I wish I could tell you that Cash for Caulkers was going to be retroactive from the beginning of this year, or even last year. I wish that the plan was a little further along in the process and we knew more details. This would help homeowners make decisions about what they can do now, and it would help us here at Home Performance NC know the best move to make to help out people living in central NC. We are hoping that it will be a retroactive plan, at least to the beginning of this year. Several blog posts on various energy efficiency/”green” blogs have suggested as much. 

In any case, if it *is* going to be retroactive from the beginning of the year then I suggest that anyone who wants part of the action contact a BPI analyst for an energy audit appointment as soon as you can. We’ve heard through the BPI newsletter that BPI professionals will be the ones performing “quality assurance testing,” which only makes sense to us. This means a complete, professional energy audit, including test in, to determine the problems in your home, then a test-out, to determine whether the work that was done will yield result.

We predict that energy auditors are going to become pretty busy in the next couple of months. This is great news for us, but for you – the homeowner – it means you’ll need to plan ahead. We don’t know how long Cash for Caulkers will go on, but people will need to plan several months ahead in order to get the audit and the work done, especially in a competitive environment. 

If you’re interested in an energy audit by a BPI analyst, please contact us at Home Performance NC. Mark, our lead auditor, is BPI certified, and has a bunch of other certifications and verifications to his name – in other words, he’s thoroughly qualified to do an audit on your home. He is happy to travel anywhere in central NC to do an audit – we’re located in Pittsboro, but he’s traveled to Lexington, Rougemont, Greensboro, North Raleigh – anywhere within a couple of hours of our home in central North Carolina – to do an audit. He’d also consider traveling further if he was doing more than one audit over a period of several days. E-mail: mark@homeperformancenc.com ; phone: 919 360-1570.

Here is the link to the fact sheet presented by the White House on Cash for Caulkers. Finally!

We’ve been waiting for this for a while. We are still interested to find out exactly how this will all go down, but the basics of the program (cut and pasted directly from the fact sheet) seem pretty good:

Rebates delivered directly to consumers: Like the Cash for Clunkers program, consumers would be eligible for direct HOMESTAR rebates at the point of sale for a variety of energy-saving investments in their homes. A broad array of vendors, from small independent building material dealers, large national home improvement chains, energy efficiency installation professionals and utility energy efficiency programs (including rural utilities) would market the rebates, provide them directly to consumers and then be reimbursed by the federal government.

$1,000 – $1,500 Silver Star Rebates: Consumers looking to have simple upgrades performed in their homes would be eligible for 50% rebates up to $1,000 – $1,500 for doing any of a straightforward set of upgrades, including: insulation, duct sealing, water heaters, HVAC units, windows, roofing and doors. Under Silver Star, consumers can chose a combination of upgrades for rebates up to a maximum of $3,000 per home. Rebates would be limited to the most energy efficient categories of upgrades—focusing on products made primarily in the United States and installed by certified contractors.

$3000 Gold Star Rebates: Consumers interested in more comprehensive energy retrofits would be eligible for a $3,000 rebate for a whole home energy audit and subsequent retrofit tailored to achieve a 20% energy savings in their homes. Consumers could receive additional rebate amounts for energy savings in excess of 20%. Gold Star would build on existing whole home retrofit programs, like EPA’s successful Home Performance with Energy Star program.

Oversight to Ensure Quality Installations: The program would require that contractors be certified to perform efficiency installations. Independent quality assurance providers would conduct field audits after work is completed to ensure proper installation so consumers receive energy savings from their upgrades. States would oversee the implementation of quality assurance to ensure that the program was moving the industry toward more robust standards and comprehensive energy retrofit practices.

Support for financing: The program would include support to State and local governments to provide financing options for consumers seeking to make efficiency investments in their homes. This will help ensure that consumers can afford to make these investments.

It’ll be interesting to see what’s required of already certified, licensed BPI analysts and HERs Raters. Hopefully not much more than what they’ve already done. A national standard exists – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
No matter what you think about Obama, the stimulus program, or government spending, there’s no doubt that this program has massive potential for companies like ours. If this goes into effect anytime in the next couple of months by the years’ end we could see tripling or quadrupling our workforce, for sure. Good for us and good for potential employees. Especially good for homeowners who want to make long-term changes in their homes’ energy efficiency!

Up until now we’ve been telling you that an energy audit and subsequent weatherization will pay for itself in 2-3 years. We have years of data from Energy Star and the Low Income Weatherization program to back this up. But now it’s time to give you real examples of ways that our clients have saved and will save money from applying the results of an energy audit to make their homes more energy efficient.

Real world example #1: Joe Suburban Homeowner Guy from Cary

The client in this first example owns a 3200 square foot home in one of the most densely populated suburbs of Raleigh, built in the 90s. It’s one of many in a neighborhood of homes built at the same time. These homes were not built to Energy Star standards and probably went up very quickly. It’s unclear if one builder built all of them or if a number of builders participated in this subdivision.  If you live in the greater Raleigh area you know that there are many neighborhoods like this in Cary, Apex, North Raleigh, Wake Forest, Holly Springs, and other suburban pockets.

We did a comprehensive home energy audit and were also contracted for follow-up weatherization. This customer’s energy company is Progress Energy, so he qualified for the duct testing and duct sealing rebate.

One of our suggestions for weatherization was to seal the home’s HVAC ducts. We did some other weatherization as well, but for this case study I want to focus on the duct testing and sealing.

Here’s what the homeowner paid for the audit + duct sealing, minus the rebates from Progress Energy:

$570

Plus, he’ll also get a $30 tax credit from the federal government. 

We calculate that his heating and cooling costs were $2600/year.

When we tested his HVAC ducts we found that they had 26% leakage. That’s right – 26%. What this means is that 26% of the heated or cooled air wasn’t reaching the house.  Every time the heat pump kicked in – either to heat or cool the home – only 3/4 of what should have been going in was going in.

Unacceptable, right?

Believe it or not, most homeowners experience 20-30% leakage in their home’s HVAC ductwork, and some research even puts it as high as 43%. So our homeowner, at 26%, was experiencing average energy loss through his ducts. But who wants to be average? Especially when it comes to wasting energy!

After sealing this homeowner’s ductwork, we re-tested his ducts for leakiness and found that we’d reduced the leakage to 4%. 74% capacity to 96% capacity. Not perfect, but darn close.

From his ducts alone, he should save, very conservatively, at least 10% on his  energy bills. We’ve looked at many reports that state duct testing/sealing can save more like %20-%30 on heating and cooling costs. 

We estimate that with the money this homeowner will save in energy costs from his HVAC system alone he will have a 100% return on his investment in the audit and the duct sealing within two years. This doesn’t count the other energy efficiency work that we did on the home, and it’s using today’s energy costs. If rates go up, the return on his investment will be even faster.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that we’re using the savings on the duct work to calculate the pay back for the price of the entire audit – an audit that pointed out many other ways the homeowner could save money. 

A win-win for the homeowner, no?

Check it out:

When a home energy audit pays

Thank you. Thank you very much.

We do have a slight disagreement with the article, or maybe with Cash for Caulkers. It’s hard to tell where this is coming from.  ”This” being the amount of money they’re budgeting for weatherization retrofits:

…getting all that work done might run into the tens of thousands of dollars. And any new federal program – which is still being drafted and is not guaranteed to become law – would cap the government reimbursements at $12,000…

Uh, what???? That is a TON of money! Seriously. I guess if you replace every appliance in your house and get a brand new HVAC system and foam insulate everything it might cost you that much, but that’s a little far out of the ballpark of most home’s weatherization retrofits. Like out of ballfield and up to the moon. Here’s more:

Homeowners need not despair. There are some simple improvements that are relatively cheap and can pay for themselves quickly. Just adding the insulation, caulking and lights might run an average homeowner $5,000 to $7,000, he said.

Uh…more like $1000-$4000, buddy. But I guess we’re in central NC, not the center of Manhattan or San Francisco, where I imagine everything costs 3x as much as here.

Okay, okay, I found another article that mentions the $, but here it says that the $12,000 is 50% of the homeowner’s total reimbursement, which could be up to $24,000.

Holy moly! I’m guessing we’re talking more than weatherization, then. Like geothermal, or solar. Which is completely cool (and methinks we’ll be doing some upgrades to our house if that’s the case) but falls more in the lines of a complete energy overhaul than a retrofit. But tomaytoes, tomahtoes, right? Bottom line, actual weatherization should not cost much more than a couple thousand dollars, and most of the time it costs much less than that.

Anyway, the program sounds good and I really hope everything works out the way it’s predicted to. I truly believe that energy audits and weatherization are effective ways to improve your home, save you money, and save the world and I’m glad that other people (lie our president) do, too.

In my last post I focused on Progress Energy’s rebates for duct testing, which can be applied towards a full energy audit done by one of their approved contractors, like us. This post will outline how Progress Energy helps its Carolina customers follow up an energy audit with weatherization to improve a home’s energy efficiency.

Basically, PE provides rebates for weatherization in the areas of duct sealing (covered in the last post), air sealing, and insulation. They will also help homeowners replace their heat/AC systems if you replace them with high efficiency systems. And finally, they offer rebates on window replacement. We don’t happen to think that replacing your windows is the best way to use energy efficiency dollars, but in case you disagree with us or have other compelling reasons to change our your windows please take advantage of this rebate.

Here are the details on PE’s rebates for air sealing and insulation:

They will give you a rebate of $.375/sq. ft for air sealing your attic and improving your insulation levels up to $375, if…

• You are improving your insulation from less than R-19 and going up to at least R-30. (For more information then you’ve ever wanted to know about “R” values and what they mean, please go to this website).
• AND you have a centrally ducted Heat/AC system
• AND you have the work done by someone on their contractor list (and YES, we are on that list, too)
• AND you are a Progress Energy customer.

That last one seems a little dumb to have to add, since we are talking about Progress Energy, but I guess they get enough non-customers asking for their rebates that they had to put that in the description.

Anyway, this is a really, really great deal for homeowners. But here’s the kicker: do not, I repeat, DO NOT do the easy thing and just hire an insulation contractor to dump a bunch of insulation on top of what you already have. No sirree! Be sure to have your audit first so you can show your contractor where you have leaks in your attic, then SEAL THE ATTIC (!!), then add the insulation.

Seriously. Dumping more insulation on top of an unsealed attic is like…I can’t think of a good analogy right now – but it’s not a smart thing to do. Sealing the attic is the #1 most important thing in this whole equation.

Seal it. First, have an audit (and get your rebate for duct testing). Then seal your attic…then, and only then, increase your insulation.

Please.

This is a re-post of something I wrote last fall, but it is totally worth it to re-post it in case you didn’t read it before or if you somehow have missed what an AMAZING deal Progress Energy is giving to its customers in the Carolinas. Out of all the energy companies that serve central NC, they are giving the very best incentives to homeowners who want to make their homes more energy efficient. We can only hope that other power companies in the area catch on to the value that PE is giving their customers.

Here’s the original post, which only focused on Progress Energy’s DUCT SEALING rebates. The point of this post is to show you how you can use this rebate to help pay for a full energy audit:

If you have Performance Energy as your power company I’d like to take a minute to break it down to you how much money you can save by getting a professional Energy Audit (which includes duct testing) and then having your ducts sealed.

The prices I’m listing below depend on the house, the number of HVAC units, and the condition of your ductwork, but here’s a general roundup:

Energy Audit: $300-$450
Duct sealing: $250-$400
Progress Energy rebates:
Energy Audit: up to $90
Duct sealing: up to $240

If you have a BIG HOUSE and 2 HVAC units your price for the audit and sealing will be in the $800 range…but your rebates will be $330. So the whole shebang will cost you $470. And since industry experts estimate that sealing your ducts can save you 10-20% on your home heating and cooling bills…you do the math. How quickly will you earn back that less than $500 payout? Not to mention that you’ve also had a full energy audit done, so you’ll know exactly where to put other money to get the best return.

If you have a smaller house with only one unit, your costs will be more like $550. You’ll be eligible for a $180 rebate, which puts your costs around $370 or so. Again, how soon will you earn your money back if you’re saving 20% on your heating and cooling bills? With a year…then after that the savings go in your pocket.

For a list of Progress Energy approved service providers, go to their website. I’m sure you’ll see that our company, Home Performance NC is one of those listed!

Next: Progress Energy and more weatherization rebates

This morning seemed like the first morning this winter when it was truly COLD outside. The thermometer read 31 degrees at 7:45; no doubt it was even colder overnight. It’s warmed up some now that it’s mid-day, but this gave us a good taste of what’s to come: cold weather and probably the highest energy bills of the season.

I asked Mark, our lead auditor, what “good” heating/cooling bills looked like this time of year. Obviously, it’s going to depend on the size of your home, your personal comfort level, and your energy use habits, but he made a guess that less than $.10/sq.ft/monthly average sounded reasonable. $.10/sq/ft/monthly average being an acceptable amount of money to spend.

Of course, acceptable is relative. It largely depends on your pocketbook! But in our house, which is 100 years old, 2600 sq. ft. and fairly leaky (still…despite all the sealing and weatherization we’ve done), $260/month on average seems acceptable. But we’d love to spend less. And frankly, I’d love to turn the thermostat up a degree or two.

Here are some unacceptable scenarios we’ve seen recently:

• a co-worker lives in a 900 sq. ft. house – about 40 yeards old – that has a brand new (like 3 month old) HVAC system…their bills have averaged $150/mo.
• a new client lives in a 4000 sq.ft. home which was built within the last 5 years and their bills average $550/mo. And they’ve shut off the vents to a room that never gets above 55 degrees when the rest of the house is at 68. I haven’t seen the house yet, but I’m willing to guess the room they’ve shut off is the bonus room above the garage.

Both of these homes need energy audits, stat. I can guess what might be the problems (see comment re: bonus room) but to really know we need to get in there with our blower door and IR camera. For sure they need duct sealing, but beyond that? Home Performance NC to the rescue!