Your House and Your Health.

As we have noted before, the house is an interconnected system. Yesterday, David Keefe of Vermont Energy Investment Corporation took a few minutes at the Affordable Comfort Institute Conference to talk about the implications of that reality for home performance evaluators, raters, investigators, auditors, and home owners. Two points about his presentation grabbed my attention. (1) A weatherizing specialist who is effective (who actually provides dramatic air sealing improvements) runs the risk of doing harm, whereas an ineffective air-sealing job is unlikely to bring about changes substantial enough to warrant concern. (2) Home performance professionals have the capacity to make extraordinary improvements in the lives of home owners.

I will start with the second thought, because it was so simply and beautifully illustrated. Keefe showed a picture of a 62 year-old man balanced on an icy roof clutching a hammer in the dead of a Vermont winter. He was chipping away the ice dam that had formed on his roof. Keefe asked him how often he had to do that. The answer: about 3-4 times a winter.

Ice dams are preventable. The repairs don’t cost that much. “We can fix that problem for him,” Keefe said, "And he would never have to climb up there again." This is part of a much bigger point: “If that man slips off the roof and lands on the sidewalk, is he going to be worried about his energy bill?”

Energy efficiency improvements saving lives? Oh, my!  And... oh, yeah. This conference is all about people. It’s about enabling low-income home owners to live in safe comfortable housing, with seminars like “No house left behind.” It’s about making sure you leave a house better off – which means safer – than when you enter it. And it’s about giving the planet a little bit of breathing room. So, yeah, it’s grand. But it’s also real. When a home energy auditor inspects your house, she might just spot a huge problem you've been looking at for years and never thought twice about.  (Here is one that struck home: is your clothes dryer sitting next to your water heater in the basement? Are you drawing toxic air out of your water heater every time you wash a load of laundry? I think I might be).

Most of us live inside the biggest purchase we'll ever make. But, as Keefe pointed out, unlike our cars, microwaves, blenders and watches, this particular investment comes with no instruction manual. To make matters worse, the people we hire to make changes to the big anomaly we call home don't speak to each other. He talked about a homeowner installing a huge beautiful new gas range with an equally huge, beautiful range hood over top of it that drew a huge amount of air. That same house features an enormous chimney. Even if those two items were installed during the same week, there's a good chance the contractors did not have this conversation:

"So, I'm installing this fireplace, and it's going to draw air from this air-tight space every time they light a fire, what are you doing?"

"I'm installing a fan that's going to draw more air, with more force than your fireplace. And that means all of the gases that are meant to go up your chimney are going to get drawn back into this room, causing a toxic environment."

"Let's go talk to the home owner!"

Sitting through this session was a powerful motivator for a home energy audit. I've been putting off an audit. But now, it's time. Interestingly, the motivation to pay for a professional audit turns out not to be saving money on my utility bill. I will put down good money to have a knowledgeable professional walk through my house and teach me how to make it a safe environment in which to live.  Chances are, improving the indoor air quality of my home will produce energy savings. At the moment, that feels like a great fringe benefit.