Letter from our publisher Welcome to Home Energy! Manufacturers, distributors, trainers, and certifying bodies make up a large portion of Home Energy’s marketing partners. Since 1984 we’ve worked together to build their businesses, and we look forward to working with you! Our marketing partners use Home Energy to reach a qualified audience of home performance and weatherization contractors—thought leaders in the home performance arena. In 2011 we re-launched HomeEnergy.org with a new design that offers your company advertising opportunities in sections of our site targeted for your market. Our redesigned site has more than 18 years worth of groundbreaking residential building kate henke articles, in over 30 content-rich topic areas, providing your company a multichannel approach to reach our online readership. In addition to Home Energy’s print and online paid subscribers, Home Energy also drives traffic to our site with outreach to our free opt-in e-newsletter subscribers (more than 7,000) and followers on Twitter, and coming in 2012, via outreach on Facebook and LinkedIn. We understand that marketing dollars are tight and have designed this <strong>media</strong> <strong>kit</strong> to let you know the basics. We can work with your budget to design a program that suits your needs and ensures your marketing dollars are spent wisely. With that in mind, we have not raised our print rates for 2012. We look forward to serving your business needs as we continue to attract readers with our mix of fresh, informative, and newsworthy content. Best wishes, Tom White Publisher 2
SRC/DUMONT & A SOC. 9 Home. MAY/JUNE 2011 Vol. 28 No. 3 E3/NORCAL PROCTOR ENGIN ERING by Blaine Fox and Creating Healthy Manufactured Homes Building Code 12 Combustible-Gas Leak Detectors Continuous Insulation 22 Retrofit Is In Prefab(ulous) Homes, The New Wave of Water Heaters, and Leading the Energy Charge 62 Advertiser Index www.homeenergy.org 1 REBUILDING TOGETHER TRENDS and make it as energy efficient as a brandnew dwe ling? homes being built. to work with existing stock.” surface creates an air ba rier. energy efficiency. A two-family home before retrofit. could get in. thicker exterior. air being vented out. 30% less. house, ready to accept siding. ACH50 calculations. These calculations reflec the amount of air leakage in the building envelope. can be purchased in bulk. air ba rier. conditioning. fossil fuels. retrofit 2012 Editorial Calendar Jan/Feb 2012 ▪ All R-Values Are Created Equal—Wrong! ▪ Whole-House Approach with a Half- Monitoring Results for the Factor 9 Home T BY ROB DUMONT House Wallet ▪ Drill & Fill Materials and Techniques Ad Space Reservation 11/3 Distribution at Energy Design, RESNET, Better Buildings (Chicago, The Dells), ACI Regionals March/April 2012 ▪ Case Studies and Recommendations for Multifamily EE Programs ▪ HPwES Contractor Round Table ▪ NASCSP Weatherization and Health Initiative Ad Space Reservation 1/12 Distribution at the ACI National Conference May/June 2012 ▪ Sidewall Insulation Tips and Techniques ▪ How to Pick the Right Water Heater ▪ Heat Pump Water Heater Study Ad Space Reservation 3/8 Distribution at ACEEE Hot Water Forum, Energy Outwest July/August 2012 ▪ Mini-Split Systems for an Efficient Future ▪ Community Energy Challenges ▪ ADDIE-Based Building Science Curriculum Ad Space Reservation 5/10 Distribution at ACEEE Summer Study he Factor 9 Home is a singlefamily residence located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. It was built in 2007 as a demonstration home through the sponsorship of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), the Saskatchewan Research Council, The Factor 9 Home. and other stakeholders. Regina is located in a cold climate at 50° latitude, just north of North Dakota. It has about 10,200 heating degree-days per year. The Factor 9 Home was designed to use 90% less energy per square meter of floor area than the average existing home in Saskatchewan (circa 1970), and to use 50% less water than a conventional home. The resulting energy target was 2.79 kWh/ft 2 (30 kWh/ m 2 ) per year of total purchased-energy consumption, and the water use target was about 8,830 cubic feet (250 cubic meters) of water per year. Both targets assume a house with four occupants. The homeowners, who paid for the construction, wanted to live in an energy-efficient, water-efficient, and very durable home. The energy and water efficiency features are described below. For durability, the family chose upgraded asphalt shingles, brick exterior siding, and a concrete-piling foundation— instead of traditional strip footings—for the highly expansive clay soils under the house, and wood-frame windows with exterior metal cladding. There are four people in the family: two adults and two children under ten years. One of the adults runs a company in Regina—Pan-Brick—that produces an R-12.9 insulating brick siding that is marketed in Canada and Japan. Pan-Brick was used for cladding on the Factor 9 home, which was completed in April 2007. The Factor 9 Home was designed to use 90% less energy than the average home in Saskatchewan. To see if our performance goals were met, NRCan and CMHC funded the monitoring of th energy and water use in the Factor 9 Home for a one-year period ending in May 2008. A number of indoor air quality (IAQ) indicators were also measured. We insta led a low-cost whole-house electrical monitoring device ca led The Energy Detective to provide instantaneous feedback to the occupants on their electrical use and to help them use energy wisely. The readout device was placed in the <strong>kit</strong>chen, where family members could easily read it. ENERGY AND WATER EFFICIENCY FEATURES The house features a very energy-conserving envelope, with an insulation level of R-80 in the attic, R-41 on the above-grade wa ls, and R-44 on the basement wa ls. A l of the wa ls are made of structural insulated panels (SIPs). The R-value in the abovegrade wa ls is a combination of R-28 for the SIPs and R-12.9 from Pan-Brick insulating brick siding for the R-41 total. A the rim joist, the insulation level is R-27. The building is we l sealed, with a measured airtightness level of 1.2 ACH 50 , which is tighter than the Canadian R-2000 standard of 1.5 ACH 50 . Most of the windows in the house face south, capturing the sun’s energy in the winter to help hea the interior. In the summer, the few east- and west-facing windows limit heat gain. The The exterior wa ls of the Factor 9 Home were built with structural insulated panels (SIP). roof overhangs on the south side of the house limi the amount of solar energy that strikes the south windows in the summer. On the south wa l of the house, 220 square feet (20.4 square meters) of solar panels provide space heating and water heating for the Factor 9 Home. The heat is transferred from the solar panels to a 621-ga lon (2,350-liter) hot-water storage tank in the basemen that is a recycled unit from a former brewery. A mixture of propylene glycol and water is used to transfer the heat from the solar panels to the storage tank. A fan coil with a brushless DC motor is used to distribute the space heating. The house was designed so that the passive-solar heating would provide more than 40% of the total annual space-heating requirement. The solar panels provide part of the domestic water heating and a good portion of the space heating requirement. The Factor 9 Home features a drainwater heat exchanger to preheat domestic hot water before it enters the solar storage tank. An instantaneous electric heater provides the auxiliary energy needed for domestic water heating. To provide mechanical cooling in the summer, a network of plastic pipes was insta led in 22 of the 33 concrete pilings supporting the foundation, in order to extract cooling from the ground; the approximate annual ground temperature at the base of the pilings is about 41°F (5°C). The water in the plastic pipes can provide space cooling for the house. The same fan coil used for space heating is also used for space cooling. Manua ly operated valves switch from the space-heating to the space-cooling mode. A heat recovery ventilator (HRV) recovers heat from the air exhausted from the bathrooms, <strong>kit</strong>chen, and laundry room. The incoming fresh air is preheated by the HRV before it enters the return side of the fan coil that distributes heat from the large water storage tank. The special unit has DC fan motors with low electric consumption. Two different heat-exchange cores are used, one with plastic plates and one with treated paper plates. The latter wi l a low moisture in th exhaust air to be recycled back into the home in the winter, when the indoor air tends to be too dry. 40 Home Energy | September/October 2010 www.homeenergy.org 41 BOTH IMAGES: SRC/DUMONT & A SOC. On the south wall of the house solar panels provide space heating and water heating for the Factor Energy-efficient CFLs and an Energy Sta refrigerator, freezer, clothes washer, and dishwasher are insta led in the house. Rainwater and melted snow water runoff from the roof are stored in two 9,500-liter tanks in the crawl space beneath the basement floor. This nonpotable water is used for ultra low-flow toilets and landscaping. Landscaping was designed to reduce the need for water. Faucets are aerated, showerheads are low flow, and the dishwasher and clothes washers are low-flow models. MEASURED PERFORMANCE Annual Energy Consumption (kWh/m 2 ) Figure 1. Comparison of annual purchase energy consumption of a typical 1970 Regina Home with the Factor 9 Home. Annual Purchased Water Consumption (m 3 ) Sept/Oct 2012 ▪ Insulating Masonry Walls ▪ Hot Water Distribution in Multifamily Buildings ▪ Central Exhaust Systems in Multifamily Buildings Ad Space Reservation 7/12 Distribution at NASCSP, EEBA, ACI Regional, NCAF Nov/Dec 2012 ▪ Deep Energy Retrofits ▪ Fixing Wet Crawl Spaces and Basements ▪ Phased Retrofit for Deep Energy Reduction Ad Space Reservation 9/13 Jan/Feb 2013 ▪ QA in the Home Performance Industry ▪ Clean Energy Works, Oregon ▪ Online Marketing Strategies Ad Space Reservation 11/1 Distribution at Energy Design, RESNET, Better Buildings (Chicago, The Dells), ACI Regionals new construction Figure 2. Comparison of the annual purchased water consumption of a typical Regina Home with the Factor 9 Home. 30 Successful Warm-Weather Infrared Inspections by Ma t Schwoegler While infrared cameras are relatively easy to operate, it is the task of interpreting the image that turns ou to be the most cha lenging aspect of this technology. 38 Air Conditioning Best Practices by Joe Kuonen and Jim Bergmann Recent studies of charge and airflow revealed that as many as eight out of ten A/C systems have inco rect airflow, and seven out of ten systems have inco rect charge. Potential savings from correcting these deficiencies are substantial. 44 If You Build It, They Will Come… But Wi l They Buy? by Stephanie Thomas-Rees, Todd Louis, and Ken Fonorow With few banks loaning money and a more competitive market, how can high-performance new-home builders marke their homes? Here are some success stories. O ne of the most frequently asked questions that I get when I teach building science courses is, “What equipment should I buy to get started in this business?” There is no question that ge ting started takes a big investment in tools, and there are more and better tools availabl every day. This magazine provides a unique resource into how to use the tools. The column is aimed at helping you select one. TOOLS Manometers are the most fundamental tools for building science, so that’s where we’ l start. Although manometers are commonly part of a blower door <strong>kit</strong>, they are capable of going way beyond the basics of blower door or duct testing, so this discussion is focused just on the features of manometers as stand-alone tools. These devices are very smart, doing many calculations automatica ly, but it is important to understand wha they are measuring and how they are calculating the numbers they display (see “Manometer Basics”). There are two primary competitors in the field: The Energy Conservatory with the DG- 700 and Retrotec with the DM-2A. These are no the only digital manometers available, but many are not designed to provide the lowpressure readings that we need to measure in houses (see “Other Options”). 50 Building a Digital Manometers 12 Home Energy | January/February 2011 Multifamily Home Performance Program Tales from California by Julieann Summerford More money than ever before is being invested in residential wholebuilding retrofit programs, bu these funds are largely geared toward single-family homeowners. Can we continue to ignore the roughly onethird of us who live in apartments? 58 Taking the First Steps To Sustainability Part 1: Strategies from Successful Energy Contractors A business consultant shares what makes some contractors vulnerable to changing market forces and what keeps others on the road to longterm sustainability. FRONT COVER PHOTO: Technician readies an air conditioner for peak summer performance. Photographer © Ernest Prim — Fotolia.com The DG-700 digital manometer and ca rying case. The Energy Conservatory’s DG-700: Dual-Channel Digital Manometer The DG-700 is a dual-channel manometer, which a lows the pressure between the house and outside to be displayed on Channel A and the airflow through the fan to be displayed on TH ENERGY CONSERVATORY TH ENERGY CONSERVATORY Channel B. The manometer is measuring pressure on both channels, but, through the wonder of electronics, the manometer calculates and displays the airflow on Channel B using a variation of the formula CFM = 1.07 x A x √∆P where A is the area of the hole (blower doo ring, for example) and ∆P is the pressure di ference. The DG-700 performs other internal calculations to make the user’s life easier. For example, when entering the baseline pressures, the DG-700 automatica ly subtracts the baseline pressure from the pressure displayed on Channel A, indicating that it is “Adj Pa.” (Note that when changing modes from Pressure/Pressure to Pressure/Flow, for example, the baseline measurement is erased and needs to be reset.) Other internal calculations are made depending on the device the manometer is a tached to—the Model 3 Minneapolis Blower Door fans, the Model 4 Minneapolis Blower Door fans, the Series A and B Minneapolis Duct Blaster fans, the Exhaust Fan Flow Meter, or the TrueFlow Air Handler Flow Meter. The DG-700 gauge measures 7.5 inches by 4 inches by 1.25 inches (19.5 cm x 10.16 cm contents Editorial 2 What Tokyo Must Do Letters 3 CO Health and Safety Codes 6 CalGreen: California’s Tools Trends 18 Insulated Siding Provides 26 Indoor Environmental Quality Daydreams and Nightmares New & Notable 61 A Common Knowledge, 63 Sustainable Connections 64 Calendar Paul Raymer is chief investigator of Heyoka Solutions (www. HeyokaSolutions. com), a company he cofounded in 2006. He has been wandering through the mysteries of building science since 1977. He has multiple BPI certifications and is a HERS Rater. x 3.175 cm) in a hard plastic case that is interna ly shielded. It weighs 16.5 ounces and can be handheld. It has Velcro strips on the back to mount it on a measurement bracket. The 12 membrane-covered control push bu tons are protected from the field dust. There are four brass pressure-hose connectors, an “Input” and “Ref” connection for each channel, clearly marked as “A” and “B.” On the top there is an RS232 connector to a tach to a computer for using the manometer in conjunction with TEC’ software. There is also a jack for connecting the DG-700 to TEC’s speed contro ler to operate the blower door or Duct Blaster fans in “Cruise” mode; this a lows the fan to be automatica ly speed-contro led, maintaining a pressure di ference by automatica ly adjusting the speed of the fan. The sound of the fan changing pressure can aler the operator to an unanticipated door or window adjustment (like the homeowner coming in from the garage). The DG-700 use six AA, alkaline ba teries, but on the side there is an AC adaptor input for an optional AC power adaptor. According to the manufacturer, ba tery life is over 100 hours of continuous use. The DG-700 is a dependable device, working under pressure in a lot of houses for a lot of years. It i solidly built and reliable. The PAUL RAYMER Retrofit is I t’s easy to talk about building new houses that are energy efficient. When you build from the ground up, you can do anything— the thickest insulation, the best sealants, the most efficient furnace; but what about older houses? Is it possible to take a house built 100 years ago—when insulation, if it existed at a l, consisted of wadded-up newspapers— Greg Pedrick is a project manager at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), a state organization that invests in hundreds of green energy-related projects. The Albany-based organization is a public-benefit corporation that works to encourage green technologies and building practices. One of the unique aspects of NYSERDA, compared to clean-energy incentive programs o fered by other states, is that it heavily promotes research and development programs around the state to encourage new types of clean-energy technology. Three years into his NYSERDA job, Pedrick had been working with new-home builders to promote his ideas on home air sealing and insulation. But this was upstate New York—there just weren’t that many new Bu there were plenty of old homes. “A lot, probably 70%, were built before the 1980s, when insulation became common,” says Pedrick. “So there’s a lot more opportunity So began a bold idea. What if NYSERDA began to work with a bunch of contractors, and showed them some innovative ideas on retrofi ting old homes to be more energy efficient, healthier, and more comfortable to live in? Perhaps wha they learned from this experiment could encourage contractors a l over the state to o fer this service to homeowners. Begin Extreme Retrofit In early 2010, NYSERDA introduced the deepenergy retrofit concept in a classroom training targeted to the employees of insulationcontracting companies located around the state. When the teams learned about new insulation technologies and ideas for sealing and insta lation, NYSERDA requested bids from the groups that participated and hired two contractors to begin the work on four houses chosen beforehand as good retrofit This flash coat of SPF applied to a cleaned a tic GREG PEDRICK candidates. Each contractor was awarded one house to work on, and when that project was completed each one did a second house. The houses were located in the heart of upstate New York, where frigid, windy winters are the rule. Three were in the Rust Belt city of Utica, and one was i nearby Rome, home to a now-closed Air Force base and the 1999 Woodstock concert. What fo lowed was a basement-to-a tic retrofit that turned four drafty, chi ly houses into four models of In the basement, insulating foam with a moisture ba rier was added to the wa ls of eac house. A dense insulation that could Ce lulose insta led to a se tled depth of 12 inches on top of the SPF gives an R-50 insulation value. I always like to read Home Energy magazine as our internal trade journal and rely on it for the latest home performance and building science information. waRM wEatHER IR INSPECtIoNS ▪ MaRkEtINg HIgH-PERfoRMaNCE HoMES GREG PEDRICK GREG PEDRICK withstand foo traffic was added to the floor, and 3 x 5 sheets of Dura Rock were insta led on top of it. The insulation was connected to the upper wa ls to ensure that no air In the main part of the house, the exterior siding was remove down to the sheathing. A new air ba rier and 4 inches of rigid insulation were added, with appropriate moisture ba riers, before the homes were resided. High-efficiency windows were insta led if existing windows were in poor condition, and casings were built out to match the new, In two houses the roof was removed, and the roof deck was topped with 4 inches of rigid insulation. The roof was then replaced with co rugated metal sheets. In the other two houses, a flash coat o foam and blown-in cellulose insulation was added to the a tic after it was thoroughly cleaned of any old insulation. Existing mechanical systems were removed and replaced with significantly scale down systems. The new system supply domestic hot water and space heating through a tankless hot-water unit and a sma l furnace equipped with a fan coil. An air-to-air heat exchanger was also insta led in each house. This a lows fresh air being pu led into the house to be warmed or cooled by the used Performance, Performance, Performance Utility bi ls were used to evaluate the energy performance improvements. Therm usage, which reflects space and water heating, and electrical usage were compared before and after the retrofit for each of the fou retrofitted houses (see Figure 1). In addition, blower door tests were performed before and after the retrofits to gauge the improvements in air leakage. The four retrofi ted houses realized an average 76% reduction in the In some cases, the amount of air moving through the house during a blower door test was 6 times lower than it was before the retrofit. And the size of the required heating system was reduced from 250,000 Btu per hour to 45,000 Btu per hour in some houses. Air quality was also improved, thanks to a forcedair system that circulates fresh air regularly throughou the house, and to the elimination of the unlined chimneys that typica ly vent atmospheric heating appliances. As with many projects by NYSERDA, the cost of this project is an investment in learning new ways to make homes mor energy efficient. As the contractors gained experience working on the projects, they worked faster, and so the cost of labor went down. However, the work was expensive—an average cost of $76,900 per house. These costs may drop considerably when retrofit projects like this become more common, contractors become mor experienced, and materials “We learned a lot,” says Gary Edwards, project manager at Kalex Energy Company of Utica. Thanks to what they learned, the Kalex team significantly cu the time i took them to complete the job from the first house they worked on to the second. For example, For more information contact 22 Home Energy | May/June 2011 www.homeenergy.org 23 GREG PEDRICK NEW & NOTABLE LABELING FOR A CAUSE A new energy label has taken e fect for refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, dishwashers, and TV sets in the European Union (EU) countries. It retains the distinctive design and classification of products into seven energy classes from A to G, color coded from dark green (high energy efficiency) to red (low energy efficiency). Novelties include the option of including three new classes: A+, A++, and A+++. The new classes take note of the fac tha there have been improvements in energy efficiency since the labels were first required in 1995. According to the EU, a triple-A-rated fridge/ Strapping is insta led over four-inch polyiso on this Carol Markell 510-207-2420 cell 510-524-5405 x116 camarkell@homeenergy.org 58 Home Energy | July/August 2011 freezer wi l consume 60% less energy on average than the same appliance in class A, while a triple-A dishwasher or washing machine wi l use The labels, which wi l become mandatory in April 2012, have been changed in other ways as we l. For the firs time, TV sets wi l be required to ca ry the label; and the labels on a l appliances wi l be text free. Up to now, labels have contained wri ten descriptions of such features as energy usage (in kWh per year), water usage of dishwashers and washing machines, and the noisiness and capacity of these appliances. These descriptions presented problems because of the many language spoken in Europe, and they are being replaced with pictograms. Products delivered to retailers by suppliers must bear an energy label, and retailers must display the label on a clearly visible spot, a the front or upper part of the product. Products with the old labels may be sold until the inventory is cleared. —Ted Shoemaker Ted Shoemaker first went to Germany as a U.S. Army o ficer. He ma ried a German woman and stayed on as a writer and editor. Now retired and based in Frankfurt, he keeps his hand in by acting as a co respondent for a number of American magazines. learn more: MAy/june 2011 Air Conditioning Best Practices Retrofit Is IN! Strategies from Successful Contractors Multifamily Home Performance Programs IEQ Daydreams and Nightmares Charles Segerstrom Manager, PG&E Energy Centers President of the Board of Directors, ACI Learn more about EU energy labels at www.energy.eu/ focus/energy-label.php. For more information on energy efficiency in EU countries, contact Ted Shoemaker a ts fm@aol.com. EPA RECOGNIZES NYSERDA E www.HomeEnerg y.org GREG PEDRICK PA has honored the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) with a 2011 Energy Star Sustained Exce lence Award in recognition of its continued leadership in protecting our environment by promoting energy efficiency. NYSERDA’s accomplishments were recognized at an awards D.C., on April 12, 2011. ceremony held in Washington, This award recognizes NYSERDA’s ongoing leadership across the Energy Star program, including the promotion of energy-efficient products, services, and new homes and buildings in the commercial, industrial, and public sectors. The 46 Sustained Exce lence Award winners were selected from more than 17,000 organizations that participate in the Energy Star program, and the selected winners have exhibited outstanding leadership year after year. The 2011 winners have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by se ting and achieving aggressive goals, employing innovative approaches, and showing others what can be achieved through energy efficiency. “We very much appreciate this recognition from EPA,” says Francis J. Mu ray, Jr., president and CEO of NYSERDA. “Energy efficiency is a cornerstone of New York’s energy policy. We view our Energy Star partnership as an important way to address climate change and reduce energy consumption in the state.” 2010 NYSERDA Highlights ▪ With the goal of se ling nearly 17 million Energy Star-qualified CFLs in three This unlined chimney is isolated below the thermal A tankle s heater loop supplies hot water to this fan coil, which distribute space conditioning with a high efficiency electronica ly commutated blower motor. years, NYSERDA created the Shining Example campaign and was recognized for a 2010 Communication Award of Distinction and 2010 Bronze Te ly Award for the campaign’s accomplishments in The tankle s heater with combi-storage tank supplies domestic hot water and hot water for space NYSERDA marketing and promotion. The campaign surpassed its 2010 CFL sales goal by more than a mi lion. ▪ More than 2,400 New York Energy Star homes were built in 2010, saving nearly $2.4 mi lion in energy costs, 5,717,063 kWh in electricity, and 88,884 MMBtu in ▪ With the help of 117 vendors, NYSERDA’s Clean and Tune program provided preventive maintenance services to the heating systems of 2,315 Home Energy Assistance program households. ▪ More than 6,000 Home Performance with Energy Star jobs were completed in 2010. ▪ The low-income component of the Home Performance with Energy Star program accounted for approximately 20% (1,267) of a l 2010 projects. ▪ EmPower New York provided electricity demand reduction and hom energy performance improvements to over 6,334 low-income households in 2010. ▪ More than 1,300 Energy Sta retailers now se l and promote Energy Star-qualified products, with more than 288 new retail partners added in 2010. learn more: To learn more abou the Energy Star program, visit www.energystar.gov. For more information on NYSERDA, visit www.nyserda.org. GREG PEDRICK GREG PEDRICK GREG PEDRICK NYSERDA $15 3
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