Posts from — May 2009

I just read this article on the Century 21 website about how the hottest new thing in real estate is to not only “stage” your home to help it sell, but to “energy stage” your home. At first it made me laugh, since it seems like all you have to do is to slap on a trendy prefix (like ‘eco’ or ‘green’ or ‘energy’) and you’ve not only invented a new word, but you’ve invented a marketing opportunity,

But in reality it will actually help your home to improve its energy efficiency before you sell it. That’s what I was saying in the post I wrote a couple weeks ago about why you ask for an energy audit when buying a new house. My post was for the buyer; the Century 21 article is for the seller. Either way, it’s a smart thing to do!

If you are buying or selling a house in Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Apex, Pittsboro, Sanford, Hillsborough, or Carrboro and you’d like an energy audit, please consider Home Performance NC!

In my last post I explained what we did to initially improve our house (or rather, what we thought were improvements), and the resulting exorbitant energy bills. By adding central heat and air to a house that was essentially, a giant colander, we were wasting tons of heat and tons of money. After that first winter we knew we had to make some changes.

But first, some good things about our house:

• Because it is so leaky, the 95-year-old wood has been preserved. The bead board expands with humidity and shrinks with dryer air, and indoor air quality is high.
• One of the home improvements we made early on (before we moved in) was caulking almost every bead in the house. Did I happen to mention that every ceiling and every wall is made of beadboard – beadboard that is made of single pieces of wood? So when I say we caulked almost every bead, I mean we caulked almost every board on every wall of every room of our house. We estimate that we used over 150 tubes of caulk! I spent about a week straight caulking the kitchen ceiling alone. At the time, we were caulking for cosmetic reasons, but since then we’re so grateful we did it since plugging up the cracks plugs up air flow, which helps keep the heat in in the winter and the cold in in the summer. In the second floor rooms it also created a barrier between the attic and the rooms upstairs. This was crucial – not just because of heat loss – but because our 95 year old house has a 95 year old attic, filled with 95 years worth of dirt, which was sifting down into those rooms every time there was a vibration. With two boys, our house is filled with vibrations!
• Because our house was built before central heat and air it is naturally situated to keep as cool as possible in the summertime. We have deep porches on the south and east sides of the house, so the only direct sun in our 1st floor windows is very early in the morning, and the west and north sides of the house are backed by large trees. It’s also situated on the top of a hill, which naturally lends itself to a nice breeze on all but the most still of days.
• Every window in the house is very large, and double hung. When the weather is temperate and we open the windows and doors, we get a wonderful cross-breeze through the house. Plus, the windows are gorgeous – they have 95-year-old glass! And no, we are not replacing them, nor would we ever. I’ll explain how we manage their leakiness in the next post.

Here’s part 1 of this series.

This is, obviously, part 2.

And here’s part 3.

This will be the first post of several about what we’ve done to our 100-year-old Carolina farmhouse to make it more energy efficient.  We’ve made some really stupid mistakes along the way, but we’ve learned from our mistakes, and trying to create a comfortable, safe and energy efficient home that was built in a different era of home energy use is what set us on the path to starting a Home Performance contracting business.

First, here’s our house:

It was built in 1914, so it’s actually 95 years old, not 100, and almost all the original  materials for the house were milled on site. Inside, every wall and ceiling that are original to the house (which is almost all of it except the bathrooms and laundry area – a.k.a. indoor plumbing!) are made of beadboard. We’re talking individual boards, not the plywood panels people buy now. On the backs of these boards is bark. 95 year old bark!

When we bought the house it was in fairly good shape structurally but at the time we thought it just needed cosmetic changes to make it a happy space for our family. That, and a bathroom upstairs. Oh, and did I forget to add it had no central heat or AC? The original heat was through propane stoves in each room. There was no AC. It was fairly rustic.

So we added a bathroom on the 2nd floor and took care of our cosmetic issues and put in central heat and air…

…and the first winter we went through 900 gallons of propane. Which in the winter of 06/07 meant $1900. (In this past winter’s prices the amount would have been closer to $2400). In the piedmont of North Carolina, which has a gentle winter. And our house is 2700 square feet.

Ouch.

This was part 1 of the series on how we made our old home more energy efficient.

Next, part 2: some good things about our house, despite the crazy high energy bills

And part 3: the d.i.y. weatherizer’s best friend.

The name of this blog is The Home Performance Blog and the business my partner and I own is called Home Performance NC, Inc., so I figure it’s  time I give a definition, or at least an explanation, of what “Home Performance” actually means.

 ”Home Performance” covers a number of different services under one umbrella. Here’s what our business does:

• conducts energy audits, using specific, industry-standard equipment;
• performs Energy Star ratings (using a scale of energy efficiency and building performance measures an Energy Star rater sees if a home meets a certain standard; my partner is both a RESNET-HERS Energy Star Rater and a Green Rater);
• analyzes the whole home’s performance in the areas of air safety, air quality, comfort, energy efficiency, and cost-savings (my partner is a certified BPI analyst, which is the gold standard for home performance);
• weatherizes homes, including crawlspace sealing, insulation, and duct repair;
• fixes other problems in your home, ranging from electrical and plumbing to painting to landscaping;
• renovates homes. My partner’s specialization is in historic properties.

Some Home Performance contractors just do energy audits and ratings; some just look at building safety and comfort, and some just weatherize. Our company does everything, but that’s because our top dog is, in addition to being a HERS-RESNET rater, a Green Rater, and a BPI analyst, a licensed and insured General Contractor too.

If you need more information, here is a link to the Energy Star website that includes a useful video, and be sure to check out our website: Home Performance, NC.

The eco-thrifty housewife in me loves that there is now a holiday all about getting rid of junk you don’t need by giving it to someone who might. I’ve been a long time lover of all things thrift, starting when I was 15 years old and sported pre-grunge styles best purchased at church rummage sales (not every teenager from the 80s had big hair and neon legwarmers; my crowd preferred plaid flannel, black trenchocoats and gas station attendant shirts, worn ironically, of course).

As a stay-at-home mom 10 years ago I discovered that the key to keeping my house somewhat tidy was to get rid of all the junk we didn’t need…and as a born and bred stingy person I’ve found that my local thrift shops are the best places to buy clothes for me and my family. In Chatham County, NC, where I live, we are lucky enough to have several brilliant second-hand and thrift shops operated by the PTA, Habitat for Humanity, and our local battered women’s shelter. If you go often enough and wait long enough you can literally find anything you need.

Naturally, National Curb Day has great appeal to me! Here’s how it works:

The first Curb Day will be on Saturday, May 16, 2009. On that day, or the night before, people are encouraged to take their valuable (but unwanted) items to their curbs. Because this is a weekend, it will not interfere with normal trash pickup. There will be treasures on neighborhood curbs all over the country. People will be out en masse picking up these free items. Kind of like Halloween!

I live in a fairly rural area and while there’s trash pick-up and curbs in the closest town (of 2500), there’s none on my road nor on the roads of the majority of people in our county. Some people pay for a trash removal service to come around and get their garbage, but my lovely husband takes our trash to the dump. So for me (and probably tons of other people around the country) Curb Day will have to be modified.

Here are some ideas for Curb Day for those of us who don’t have curbs:

• take your unwanted items to a central location as a freecycle event. No trading allowed – simply put it on display as ‘free for the taking.’ This would take some organization, but I can’t see why it couldn’t be done for next year’s Curb Day. (Note to self: in your free time organize this!)
•  take your unwanteds to your local thrift shop. The items won’t be free once they enter the shop, but it’s better than throwing them into the trash
•  investigate what your community has in place for unwanted(but still decent) items. Our dump/recycling center has a swap shop area, where people can leave items that are in decent shape. I have a friend who finds tons of clothes at the swap shop – no lie! If you always get your trash picked up, either by the town or by a service, you might not realize that something like this exists.

I think this is a brilliant idea and I hope it catches on. A big thanks to Mike Morone, the guy who invented it! We are of like minds, you and I.

If you are in the process of buying a new (or ‘new to you’) house in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Pittsboro, Apex, Cary, Raleigh, or, in fact, ANYWHERE in the world, you should get a home energy audit of your soon-to-be new home in addition to a home inspection. And I’m not just saying that because my partner does home energy audits! I’m saying it because it only makes good financial sense to do this, especially in today’s buyer’s market.

A home inspection is de riguer in buying a home, and since buyers have the advantage in the currently popped housing bubble, it is very likely you’ll be able to use problems found during the inspection to either get money off the asking price or get the repairs done before the deal is closed. But a typical home inspection only goes so far, and usually does not include energy efficient measures that a home energy audit checks.

Here’s what the American Society of Home Inspectors says about the importance of home inspections:

Bill Richardson, ASHI president, said, “In a down market, a pre-sale inspection can make a home stand out. More and more, sellers are obtaining pre-sale inspections to help uncover and address any issues before the first prospective buyer walks through the door. This simple step can allow for better planning and lower expense in making repairs, add value to the home and help speed up the process and the likelihood of an offer.”

In addition to pre-sale inspections, Richardson also emphasized the need to get a home inspection every three to five years to improve maintenance and avoid costly repairs. During a routine inspection, all the visible and readily accessible components and systems are checked. This includes everything from the foundation, roof and gutters, to a home’s exterior and interior walls, electrical wiring and plumbing.

Note this phrase: the visible and readily accessible components and systems are checked. This is why, in addition to the home inspection, you also need to get a home energy audit. A home energy audit goes beyond visible and readily accessible – it finds the almost invisible and hidden energy leaks in your home. An energy audit done by a qualified and certified professional, using current technology and equipment, can help pinpoint problems in the home that are not typically found in a home inspection. Furthermore, the results of an energy audit can be used in exactly the same way that a home inspection report is used; since an energy audit provides quantitative and qualitative data about a home’s energy system, it can be used as evidence of repairs needed before closing, or for the buyer to ask for money off the purchase price of the home.

It makes complete financial sense to get an energy audit before closing on your new home. Not only will it alert you to possible problems in your new home’s energy systems, it can also provide leverage when negotiating the price of the home .

Baseload energy consumption, simply put, is the amount of energy your household consumes under the best possible conditions. It’s the time of year when your heat isn’t running and your air conditioning isn’t yet on. 

In central North Carolina, where we live, this is actually tricky to figure out. Spring, while overwhelmingly beautiful, can also be a time of contrasts in terms of the weather. Some nights (and even days) in April might be 50 degrees – so cool enough so that you are using your heat – and a week later we might hit high 80s or 90s, which to this homeowner means air conditioning. 

The same kind of thing can happen in the fall, as well. In many parts of the country September means cool, pleasant temperatures. In the North Carolina piedmont September is Hot. It’s still flip-flop and beach weather. And October can be hot, or it can be cold, or it can feature a hurricane.

I love it here, but the weather can be fractious!

Anyway, spring or fall is probably your best time to figure out your base energy consumption. To do this you’ll need your electric bills, as well as your gas bills (if your home uses gas). Several year’s worth of bills are best, but if you only have one year you can still figure it out.

Basically, your base energy consumption if you live in central North Carolina is the total amount of energy consumed in either the month of May or the month of October. Essentially, you want to pick a month where the average temperature outside is similar to the temperature you enjoy inside.

Here is a great set of maps from the State Climate Office of NC that shows average monthly temperature for North Carolina.

Look at the energy bills for May and October and see how they compare. If you have last year’s, look how they compare. They should be similar unless you have changed something in your household over time. You may be using less energy than you used to, or you may be using more.

Calculate your average energy consumption during those months to figure out your baseload energy consumption. Once you have this figured out you can see the months you are using the most energy, which will help you figure out where to put your efforts in order to be more energy efficient. Your baseload energy consumption figure, plus a thorough home energy audit, can get you started on the road to a truly energy efficient home.