Home energy fixes for under $100

by Shana Fong on July 21, 2010
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Here are some easy and effective home energy fixes you can do around the house for $2 to $90:

  • Light switch and outlet sealers: under $5
    Two of the most frequently overlooked sources of air leakage in a home are light switches and outlets. Dodge those drafts by sealing up any switches and outlets where you can feel a draft on your hand.
  • Hot water heater pipe insulation: $2 per foot
    Use this cost-efficient fix as a quick way to reduce wasted energy on water heating. Insulating just the first 6 feet of pipe from your water heater will cost $12 and will save you over $5 a year on water heating while reducing CO2 emissions by more than 55 pounds. We typically recommend insulating the first 10 feet of pipe.
  • Monitor your meter: $20
    Purchase a Kill A Watt electricity monitor and plug in your appliances and electronics to find out which ones are the biggest energy culprits. Use this to inform your future upgrade decisions or see how much energy you can save with easy adjustments like turning down your refrigerator’s temperature.
  • Smart powerstrips: $20-90
    Cut back on phantom power by plugging electronics into smart powerstrips, such as the one by Wattstopper which turns devices on and off based on occupancy and uses a motion detector to manage energy use. Our recommended smart strip is Belkin’s Conserve.
  • Faucet aerator: $2
    These handy products are one of the least expensive ways to increase your water efficiency by mixing air into the water stream. When installed, each aerator will save 500-2,000 gallons of water a year.
  • Chimney balloon damper: $35-50
    The fireplace is a common area for heat loss in your home, as most dampers don’t work well and many older homes don’t have them. Inflatable balloon dampers fit in most chimneys to keep heated air in, and you can remove them whenever you want.

The Great Escape

by Shana Fong on July 19, 2010
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The gaps you can find around the windows and doors of the average American house add up to the equivalent of a hole in the wall that measures 10 inches by 10 inches.

Your house has more leaks than the CIA. There are cracks all over the place. Your doors and windows don’t quite meet their frames; there are tiny spaces where the walls almost join the floor; there are open areas around your electrical and plumbing outlets. And these little gaps eat energy. In fact, an amazing amount of heat in the winter – or cool air in the summer – escapes through them. But you have two simple weapons to fight with: caulking and weatherstripping.

Energy Facts

  • Caulking and weatherstripping an electrically heated home can keep some 1,000 pounds of CO2 out of the air. So if 1,000 of these homes were weatherized, over a million pounds of CO2 would be saved.
  • Believe it or not, stopping air infiltration can reduce your home’s heating and cooling bills by up to 40%.
  • People are concerned that although weatherstripping may save energy, it will keep fresh air out of their homes. While it’s true that some ventilation is necessary, it’s really not much of a problem – a typical house may get twice as much fresh air as it needs. In other words, the air is probably flying out of your house as quickly as you’re heating or cooling it.

Caulking vs. Weatherstripping

  • Cracks without any moving parts – like the places where a wall in your house meets the outside edge of a window frame, or two other dissimilar materials come together – can be sealed with caulk.
  • The places where doors and windows close into their frames can be sealed with weatherstripping – cleverly designed strips of felt, rubber, metal, or plastic that fill the spaces around doors and windows, and compress when you shut them.
  • Weatherstripping materials come in many styles. Some are self-sticking, so you don’t even need a hammer to install them. Others must be nailed on. Still others are crafted so pieces on the frame and the door lock together when the door closes.
  • One of the trickiest places to weatherstrip is where the door meets the threshold. Special “shoes” and “sweeps” are available to stop these air leaks.
  • Besides saving energy, weatherstripping and caulking have an additional benefit: By stopping drafts, they’ll make your home more comfortable.

Leak Patrol

  • Some evening, when your house is at least 20°F warmer than the outdoors, hold your hand up to various places around windows and door frames. If you feel any drafts, the windows and door frames need weatherstripping.
  • You can also use a smoking incense stick to look for drafts. Hold the stick near places you think might have cracks; if the smoke dances or gets sucked in, you’ve found a place to seal.
  • Many of the biggest air sealing opportunities are up in the attic and below your floors. For these harder-to-reach leaks, it’s a good idea to call in a trained professional such as Recurve to quickly identify and remedy your home’s major leakage areas.

Excerpted from 30 Simple Energy Things You Can Do To Save The Earth, by The EarthWorks Group.

Policy Updates

by Matt Golden on
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HOME STAR endorsements continue to grow, now includes U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Support continues to grow for the bipartisan Home Star Energy Retrofit Act of 2010, which passed the House of Representatives in May and now has 25 co-sponsors in the Senate. Meanwhile, the United States Chamber of Commerce has added its highly influential voice to the growing call for swift passage of the HOME STAR legislation; in a letter to Senate leaders on June 22, R. Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s Executive Vice President for Government Affairs, said:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region, supports S. 3434, the “Home Star Energy Retrofit Act of 2010,” which would provide a solid framework for a worthwhile, incentive-based program that would create American jobs while saving energy.

The home retrofit industry is a uniquely American industry: the vast majority of windows, doors, and insulation for these retrofits are manufactured in the United States. Since 2006, this industry has been decimated, with more than 650,000 jobs lost. The incentives provided by S. 3434 would create good, living-wage jobs for American workers, while providing homeowners the ability to make a substantial dent in their overall energy costs.

The Chamber supports S. 3434 and hopes this important legislation is considered by the full Senate in the near term.

Visit www.efficiencyfirst.org/home-star to learn more about the proposed HOME STAR incentive program, and about how you can join the trade association Efficiency First and other national organizations in supporting this important legislation.

A free Webinar recording at www.utilityexchange.org/webinar/20100701 will help your shop get ready for HOME STAR’s performance-based GOLD STAR incentive with a road map to BPI accreditation.

PACE programs stalled by federal mortgage regulators
Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing programs across the country have been suspended following recent actions by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored corporations that back most home mortgages in the United States. The problem is that the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees Fannie and Freddie, doesn’t like the idea of PACE liens taking precedence over mortgages in foreclosure proceedings—despite the fact that energy improvements typically increase the value of a home, and the potential financial impact on the mortgage industry is comparatively small.

PACE programs, which allow property owners to pay for a wide range of energy improvements with loans attached to their property tax assessments, have been lauded as an innovative, transformative financing model for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. But in May, Fannie and Freddie started spreading the word among commercial lenders that properties with energy improvement liens that are senior to mortgage debt would not meet FHFA underwriting standards. The FHFA confirmed the new policy on July 6 when it issued guidelines that have effectively made it impossible for homeowners to get approval for mortgages on homes with pace liens attached. (A grandfather cause exempts PACE loans issued before July 6.)
That leaves homeowners and contractors caught in the crossfire as most PACE programs have stopped making loans, projects are being suspended, and $150 million in federal stimulus funding allocated to PACE financing is being diverted to other programs. However, at least one prominent PACE program—the Sonoma County Energy Independence Program (SCEIP) in Northern California—has announced that it will continue to issue energy improvement loans in defiance of federal mortgage regulators, “predicated on the SCEIP providing full and complete disclosure about program participation to any potential applicants and ensuring the public fully understands the consequences of participation.”

PACE advocates around the country are pushing for a judicial or legislative solution to the impasse. California Attorney General Jerry Brown has filed suit in United States District Court seeking reversal of the FHFA ruling, and on July 15, Rep. Mike Thompson and 29 other members of Congress introduced the PACE Assessment Protection Act of 2010, which would force Fannie and Freddie to adopt underwriting guidelines that support PACE lending. But for now at least, most homeowners will have to find other ways to finance energy improvement projects.

A Bird in the Flue is Worth … A Stainless Steel Intake Cover

by Trey Muffet on
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Simple proactive measures can prevent hours of head-scratching and time wasted trouble-shooting problems that could have been avoided in the first place. But unfortunately, we can’t always predict the scenarios might diminish the performance of installed equipment—or even render it useless, as happened to us on a retrofit job we completed last summer. In this case, we learned the hard way that putting stainless steel mesh covers on intakes is a pretty good idea.

The job in question involved installation of a 95% sealed combustion furnace as part of a performance package. After installation, the furnace was tested for combustion safety and commissioned. A few months later, when outdoor temperatures began to drop, the client turned up the heat. Nothing. The inducer motor was running, but the blower wasn’t kicking on and the furnace wasn’t firing. After much deliberation, we found that the inducer motor wasn’t creating enough pressure, so we replaced the bad inducer motor. After that the furnace worked fine.

Why would a perfectly good inducer motor that worked flawlessly upon installation fail in a matter of months, even though the furnace had been sitting idle the whole time? The answer became clear when further inspection revealed a sparrow’s nest in the intake, which was blocking the flow of air to the motor. And that’s not the only time we’ve seen evidence that intake and exhaust vents can be attractive hiding places for curious critters. A similar situation lead us to find a stash of acorns in an intake (the elusive squirrel was never found).

Now our standard practice is to install mesh covers on all external vents—a quick and affordable fix that can save us and our clients a lot of headaches in the future.

Dialing for Dollars

by Shana Fong on July 16, 2010
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Is your thermostat accurate? If not, chances are that the temperature sensor is being affected by cold air coming through the opening where the thermostat is mounted.

Keeping control of your thermostat is one of the simplest ways you can save a great deal of energy – and money – all year round.

Energy Facts

  • During the winter, you can save as much as 2%-3% of the energy your furnace uses simply by lowering your thermostat 1°F (if it’s set between 65°F and 72°F).
  • In the summer, the process is reversed. You save 3%-5% of the energy used by your air conditioner for every degree you raise the thermostat setting (if it’s set between 70°F and 82°F).
  • Do you chronically forget to turn down the heat? There are low-priced, easy-to-install thermostats that adjust the temperature automatically. The simplest have built-in clocks; the more advanced models are computerized. An advanced model will, for example, turn your furnace on 30 minutes before you wake up, turn it off when you leave for work, turn it on just before you return home, and then set it for 55°F when you go to bed. Some also have a “minimum energy use” setting that monitors temperatures when you go on vacation.

Simple Ways to Save Energy

  • Keep the thermostat under control. Recommended winter settings for heaters: 68°F in the daytime, 55°F at night. In the summer, turn the air conditioner’s thermostat to 78°F.
  • Check the temperature. Using an accurate thermometer, make sure that the temperature near your thermostat is representative of the rest of the house. If it’s located in a drafty or sunny spot, you may be getting false readings and wasting energy.
  • Plug the hole in the wall behind the thermostat with a piece of fiberglass insulation.

Excerpted from 30 Simple Energy Things You Can Do To Save The Earth, by The EarthWorks Group.

Recurve Software Update

by Justin Sears on
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When we presented Recurve home performance software at the 2010 ACI Conference, we introduced a next generation application.

  • Recurve offers one-of-a-kind home performance software built for contractors, by contractors.
  • The software has a no-nonsense interface that’s easy to learn and can be used anywhere (with or without an Internet connection)
  • Recurve users get audits done faster and they collect more valuable data than they did without the software
  • High quality, personalized reports help homeowners understand why they should retrofit their home
  • Recurve’s solution engine creates scope items that calculate the price of the work and the building performance improvement caused by each one

In case you haven’t seen it, check out our software demo: http://software.recurve.com/demo

Since we introduced Recurve software at ACI, our developers have been hard at work on additions to the software that will allow our users to:

  • Show estimated annual dollar savings for each solution package
  • Comply with local and national rebate programs
  • Calibrate audit findings to the homeowners utility bills, to draw a comprehensive detailed picture of how the home’s appliances use energy

Interested in learning the latest on Recurve Software? Register for our next webinar on August 11 at 9-10AM PDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/487007865

Duct Diagnostics: Locating Leaky Duct Runs Without a Duct Blaster

by Trey Muffet on July 12, 2010
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Here’s something to bear in mind the next time you reach for your duct blaster: At Recurve, we’ve found that using a duct blaster to diagnose leaks isn’t always time well spent. And we all know that in the Home Performance business, time is money.

The problem is that you can spend hours in cramped spaces sealing ducts only to find that there’s little real improvement in leakage levels, and using a duct blaster to locate leaks is a slow process. The alternative? Using a pressure pan in conjunction with a blower door can help you quickly zero in on leaky duct runs that need the most attention, so you can achieve good results in much less time.

Assuming you’re already running a blower door on most of your projects (or have one easily accessible), a pressure pan can take the place of a duct blaster for determining the highest priority areas to seal. With the house prioritized to 50 Pa by the blower door, record the pressure drop with the pressure pan when it covers the register. A large pressure drop (3-6 Pa) indicates that significant leakage is occurring close to that location. A small pressure drop will indicate there is no leakage in that duct run, or that the leakage is far away.

Don’t get us wrong—duct blasters are essential equipment in situations where you need to perform a rigorous leak test. But this quick pressure pan test can save an hour or more compared to taping off the registers and running a duct blaster test, and anything you can do to achieve the desired results in less time will benefit both you and your clients. The bottom line: Knowing where to focus your energy to save your clients’ energy can give you a real competitive advantage.

Turn More Audits into Sales: The Basics of Selling Home Performance

by Jason Bowers on July 9, 2010
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At Recurve, we’ve found that every technician who performs home energy audits is also a sales person. And the first rule of sales is, “When you’re talking, you’re not selling.” In other words, if you’re not a good listener, you won’t truly understand your customer’s needs and concerns.

When I first started at Recurve, I was so excited about building science that I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm. I found myself talking nonstop to customers about some pretty technical stuff—like the complex physics behind duct leakage, or the finer points of buoyancy forces and the stack effect. But over time, I realized that all of my lecturing about building science wasn’t motivating many customers to buy. It became clear to me that most customers buy retrofits to address specific problems they are experiencing with the comfort, energy efficiency or indoor air quality of their homes—not because they’re worried about pressure differentials in their heating ducts.

To accelerate sales, you need to do what I did: Stop talking at your customers and start asking more questions. And bear in mind that not all kinds of questions are equally effective. Asking open-ended questions (questions that can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”) is the best way to gain trust.

Here’s an example of the kind of closed question we avoid asking our customers:

Q: Is your home uncomfortable in the winter? A: Yes

An open question goes more like this:

Q: How would you describe your comfort level during the winter? A: It’s terrible! We’re all bundled up half the time, and the house is very drafty, but we don’t like to run the heater too much because the heat doesn’t seem to stay inside anyway.

Notice that with the open-ended approach, you’ll end up gathering a great deal of information that can be used later to support your recommendations to the homeowner. “We’re going to seal up and insulate your attic. What that’s going to do is cut down on the drafts you told me you feel in the winter, and help your home hold the heat longer. You’ll be more comfortable, and you’ll save on your heating bills.”

The more you can get your customers to open up, the more you’ll learn about their real motivations. We’ve found that the majority of homeowners will tell us at the beginning of the process that they want to achieve X, and end up making a decision to buy because of Y and Z. The key to getting to these “real” motivating factors is to ask open-ended questions that will reveal more about what the customer is experiencing. We have found that linking one open-ended question to next in a natural, conversational tone builds trust—and trust leads to good relationships.

Are you listening yet?

Review: The Vertex 100 – An Efficient, Hydronics-Ready Water Heater

by Adam Winter on July 8, 2010
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President Obama has told us that insulation is sexy—but what about water heaters? If you’d like to add an efficient, hydronics-ready water heater to the mix of products your shop sells and supports, check out this hot performer:

The Vertex 100 from Tennessee-based A.O. Smith Water Products
http://www.hotwater.com/products/residential/rg-vertex100.html

  • 96% thermal efficiency
  • True sealed combustion for greater efficiency and safety
  • Accurate, easy-to-use digital controls
  • Higher output for combined hydronics
  • Side taps for combined hydronics
  • Significantly quieter than competing 90% efficient water heaters
  • Significantly less expensive than competing 90%+ water heaters with stainless steel tanks
  • Provides a nice mix of 50 gallons of hot water storage and 100,000 BTU/h of burner power, thereby reducing standby losses incurred with very large tanks and natural draft flues
  • Accommodates high hot water demands without requiring a high-capacity gas line to supply 250,000 BTU/h as is typical of tankless water heaters

Our take: This is a great product for the price point, efficiency level and footprint.

Note: Recurve does not endorse this or any other product. We encourage qualified Home Performance contractors to gain hands-on experience with products profiled in this newsletter before making their own assessments.

PACE Programs Shut Down by Loan Giants

by Shana Fong on July 7, 2010
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Discouraging news on the status of PACE financing began to leak out of Washington this holiday weekend with reports that the Obama administration has failed to persuade the Federal Housing Finance Agency to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to accept mortgages on properties with PACE liens attached. Late Friday, PACE financing pioneer Cisco DeVries of California-based Renewable Funding circulated an e-mail message to PACE advocates stating that:

Unfortunately, the discussions between the Obama Administration and the FHFA have not been successful. DOE and the White House have informed us that the senior lien — regardless of how structured, accelerated, or insured — is not acceptable to the regulators. New guidance from Fannie and Freddie to this effect is due out soon. DOE has begun notifying ARRA grant recipients that they probably want to start moving their grant funds away from residential PACE.

A subsequent report in the New York Times confirmed that Cathy Zoi, the DOE’s Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, had contacted DeVries to say that “the administration needed to begin contingency planning on what to do with stimulus funding for PACE.” The Times also quoted Ben Pearlman, a county commissioner in Boulder, Colorado, who received a similar call from Secretary Zoi saying that “in light of the circumstances we should look at other ways of financing energy efficiency with the stimulus money.”

Although Fannie, Freddie and the FHFA have yet to issue formal guidelines regarding PACE liens, local governments across the country are freezing their property-assessed lending programs pending government action that would clear the way for PACE lending to resume.

Meanwhile, Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Rep. Henry Waxman, head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, have sent a letter urging administration officials to “quickly identify, agree on and publish guidelines that would allow PACE financing programs to continue while ensuring that both taxpayer and private mortgage investments are protected.” And the Washington Post has cited an anonymous source within the Department of Energy saying that the DOE is “seeking protection for homeowners who have already taken on PACE financing.”

Minimal financial impact: Earlier on Friday, before these latest reports began to surface, the Times‘ Todd Woody posted a thought-provoking analysis suggesting that the potential liability related to PACE liens would be tiny:

Putting aside whether such liens are any different from the property tax assessments commonly used to finance municipal improvements, how big a potential liability would Fannie and Freddie face?

Not very big, according to an analysis by the California attorney general’s office.

In a June 22 letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie, Ken Alex, a senior assistant attorney general, cited the example of a homeowner who obtains $15,000 in financing from a PACE program to pay for a solar array and energy efficiency upgrades.

With a 7 percent interest rate and a 20-year payback term, the annual assessment on the homeowner’s property tax bill would be about $1,500.

“At the time of foreclosure for failing to pay the mortgage, it is likely that at most, one PACE assessment of $1,500 would have achieved priority lien status,” Mr. Alex wrote.

“This exercise suggests that with a portfolio of Fannie/Freddie mortgages that have PACE liens, assuming a high foreclosure rate of 10 percent, PACE seniority would average $150 per home,” he added. “Using a more reasonable foreclosure rate of 5 percent, average PACE seniority per home would be a mere $75.”

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