Utility's Responsibility?

       In the process of testing homes for various utilities and nonprofits I have experienced increased concern for combustion safety within the Energy Audit community. Some programs require combustion analysis for furnaces. BPI, RESNET, NYSERDA and many other rater establishments have exacting protocols for combustion safety including combustion gas analysis.  I liken this to an annual physical that is a one day snapshot of your health. Who is to say that next week, next month, something won't fail? Home IAQ should be continuously analyzed to keep homeowners healthy and safe. Why can't the companies that profit from the sale of gas and oil take responsibility for combustion safety? Home owners are, for the most part, clueless about the risks and often disconnect or ignore CO monitoring systems because they are annoying or hard to service. I have found many with the batteries disconnected. Or just gone. Locally, LCUB is installing fiber optic and going into the cable media business. This becomes a two way portal into homes. Why not hook smart thermostats and IAQ equipment up and feed a central utility server that monitors air quality, CO, Gas, PM2.5 etc? Increasingly Alexa/Siri driven controls for home appliances are connected with thermostats and smartphones which in turn can be set up to track IAQ. Who better than the power companies that sell what is a potentially dangerous product to oversee the safety of their product? I am guessing, but I suggest that the residential insurance industry would like this idea.

    Anyway, tighter homes will make Indoor Air Quality more relevant to home health and safety, maybe this should be a code issue for oil and gas fired equipment?

Weatherization Workforce

          One of my clients is an energy services provider that operates within Knox County. They provide the administration needed to qualify homeowners for free weatherization. I do energy audits for them, blowerdoor and duct tests and documentation about the condition of their clients' homes. I am currently on hiatus because, while there is plenty of need, money and expertise, there are not enough laborers. Because of bidding constraints, contractors providing fulfillment are not allowed to bid beyond a certain amount, as a result, wages are not enough to attract workers. This is not easy work. Hot, dusty attics, wet, moldy crawlspaces and homes that are cluttered and in poor condition. Weatherization will not be successful until the people who do the work are paid well enough to attract skilled, reliable labor. 

 Contractors need to get the value of a Blower Door test, not just for code compliance but also for home health. Blower Door testing is the only way to confirm that a home is tight enough to control indoor Air Quality.

 I have been testing homes for the KUB Round it Up program that CAC is running. Its nice to be back in the game. I am still in awe of the conditions in which so many of our low income families are living. USPS says the deliver mail to 160,000,000 addresses. Most of them are paying a utility bill as well as dealing with IAQ issues in their homes. Weatherization is the best solution for this problem and will save the nation more than the cost of the retrofit. 

NHCP

 I got lucky and found a volunteer spot for Nashville Conference, so I hope to see friends there.

Energy Audits

     I am about to re-embark on Energy Audits for CAC as a subcontractor. I forget how much redundant detail is required by these reports. These home are participants in the Round-it-UP program and there seems to a level of distrust around how the money is spent. Same thing now with Habitat. What is causing all this? Am I so naïve? Is the Weatherization Business really that corrupt?

I know I'm going crazy, but..

 We cannot "Drill, Baby, Drill!" our way out of conflict with Puntin. "All of the above" energy policy is short term and fallacious. We are living beyond our means in terms of global resilience. Got to find the off ramp for aggression, the costs are too great. Its all about population, so let's all move to the moon and Mars, "To infinity and Beyond!"

Clean Air In Buildings

   More government legislation coming on home efficiency and ventilation. YEA! The Clean Air in Buildings Challenge is promoting monitoring Indoor Air Quality in our built environment. Long overdue.

   Pandemic control requires IAQ control for good health indoors. Schools are way behind the mark as are other municipal and office buildings, not to mention homes... As climate chases us, more and more indoors, our shelter needs us to take greater responsibility for indoor air quality. Smart thermostats are the central control system, HVAC companies have to get up to speed on this. Continuous conditioning is becoming the norm as lifestyle and structure changes in tighter buildings requires tuning. A system that is programed to adjust to loads requires expert skills at commissioning with ongoing tweaks to respond to occupant behavior. When I model a new home or audit an existing one, my agreement with the occupant is for 4 seasons after CO is issued or the retrofit is done. I suggest that my HVAC buddies look at the "Set it and forget it." mentality and add it to their service contracts, some surely already have. Heathy homes, safe shelter and sustainable efficiency is the future. Get On Board!

Healthy Home

 These days there is a lot of research on the effect of weatherization on indoor air quality. A recent study here in Knoxville of the monetary benefit of whole house makeovers show a home can benefit some 5 times more savings through reduced asthma and respiratory occurrences. Tightening up a home and providing ventilation is a 2 fold improvement in both economic gain and occupant health. Get an energy audit and improve your health as well as reduce your utility cost. Win Win!

     A recent home we helped design tested at .40ACH50 and has recorded a utility cost of $.48 per day. Simple, sensitive HVAC and IAQ systems control thermal comfort and good air quality. Air tightness, good windows and doors and imperative. We should all benefit from modern building science. Science works!

     Hope for Homes legislation needs your help. Contact your senators and Representatives to help pass Hope for Homes bills. This legislation will aid the weatherization of our built environment, making houses more efficient and healthier.

 Get a blower door test if you want to improve your home's efficiency and health. Most homes built before2018 code requirements leak like a sieve. A home cannot be too tight so long as you provide makeup air. Get an energy audit today.

 Hope for Homes is US Gov't legislation designed to help home owners to improve their quality of life. Please contact your House and Senate representatives to approve this legislation.

 There seems to be no end to the misinformation about the correlation between air quality and envelope tightness. To be clear, a home CANNOT be too tight. Once air tightness is accomplished the effectiveness and necessity for ventilation becomes paramount. You are pissing in the wind trying to control IAQ without a tight home. Air tightness allows for good continuous ventilation and adds quality of life for the occupants by providing filtered fresh air.

 A recent disappointment in Sevierville:

 Over the past 2 years I have been testing new construction for 2018 Code Compliance, specifically Duct and Blowerdoor pressure testing. This year the code officials decided to abandon 2018 and adopt state level 2012 IRC . The state does not require pressure tests, stating they are "Voluntary" so, of course, no one does. A step backwards for those of us who support sustainable healthy homes. 

 Blower Door tests are the best way to assess a home's efficiency and health, the baseline. Without this test knowing how effective work done has changed the home is guess work. Home owners have no other way to gauge their home's health and efficiency is hard to prove. If you have questions about your home's ability to support a healthy environment get a blower Door Test.

 Our growth based economy is unsustainable. At some point resources and space will run out. Before that happens, durable housing that can be reused is imperative.

 So many thoughts recently about relentless development and how to create sensible, healthy home growth. Energy efficient homes are, by design, durable. Homes built to be healthy and long lasting is somewhat in the face of our planned obsolete mentality. Are we building homes designed to fail to increase recycling do to failure? I fear we have less interest in durability than sales.